My Next Step (12 page)

And it always came, especially late at night.

I’ve always thought of myself as a tough son of a bitch. Hell, I tell people that all the time. And for most of my life, they believed me. Well, that bravado works fine with the curtains open and the sunlight shining through the windows in daytime, but it quickly disappears at one o’clock in the morning when no one else is around and unimaginable terror starts to seep into the dark places of your mind. Even with Junior in the room, my dreams often turned to nightmares that seemed so real I felt all alone.

At some point, one of the drugs they were giving me really started to affect my mental state. As a result, I began having extraordinary hallucinations. They started when I was in the ICU and continued throughout my stay at Craig Hospital. They only came at night—never during the day.

Prior to getting sick, I’d heard all sorts of stories about guys who go into rehab and during their withdrawal, hallucinate all kinds of crazy stuff, seeing monsters, snakes and such. I always laughed and thought it was a heap of crap.

It’s not.

Almost all of my hallucinations took place with me in the jungle and even though it didn’t make sense, usually involved a boat of some type. They were all brilliant, vivid and felt as if they were actually happening. The most common hallucination had me in a huge gunfight with some bad guys. There were three of us on my side and dozens on the bad side. I recognized the two guys who were with me—they were police officers I’d known for years from Denver. I have no idea why they were in my dream, but I was glad they were there.

In that dream, we were in a terrible shootout where we killed almost all of the enemies. There was one guy left to kill. I could hear him moving around and see his shadow, but I couldn’t get to him.

Exhausted, I leaned against one of the officers. Just then, I saw the last bad guy standing. He had a beard, was heavily tattooed and looked American. I could see that he was holding a six-shot eight inch barrel .357 Colt Python. I could smell his sweat and taste his fear. I remember thinking it was strange that he was using that kind of gun, because these days it’s so obsolete.

I watched as he made a mad dash across the woods and hid behind a tree. I didn’t know why he was such a bad guy or why we were fighting. It was obvious that we were in a situation where nobody could win. Either all of us died, or only one of us walked. Tired of waiting, I stood up and shouted across the forest: “Why in the hell are you trying to kill us? Why don’t we call it quits? It’s been a long day. Lots of people are dead. Why don’t you turn around and leave?”

The stranger answered back that he had fought in Iraq and had been left behind. He felt like nobody cared for him then or after he got out.

“Brother, I’ve been there. I understand the pain you’re going through. I’ve lived alone myself. This has been a hell of a day and there’s no reason for anyone else to die,” I answered as I threw my gun down on the ground. “Go ahead and leave. It’s over.”

The stranger looked at me and said, “Were you in the military?”

“Yes.” I told him about my experiences and even though we fought in different wars, I knew we were brothers in arms.

“We will both live another day,” he said as he placed his weapons down too. I watched him get on a motorcycle when suddenly a pretty woman got on with him just before they rode away.

“How did you know he wouldn’t kill you?” one of my cop friends asked.

“He wasn’t going to kill me. He was the one who was hurt and trapped,” I said.

I had that same hallucination several times, which started to grow into more stories of me in the jungle. In one variation, I was tied up and being held hostage. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t get loose or summon help. Another had me working for the DEA fighting drug lords, while several others took place in a hospital where I tried but couldn’t get anyone’s attention. I was so thirsty, but people were ignoring me. I was lying in a hospital bed, unable to move my arms or hands, crying, asking someone, anyone for a glass of water, but nobody would help me.

Finally, a nurse came into my room and asked, “What’s the problem? You’re making too much noise!”

“I need help. I’m thirsty and no one will take care of me. Where is everyone?” I was always panicked during this particular hallucination.

“We’re busy!” she said, before turning her back toward me and walking out the door. Although all of my nurses in the ICU and Craig were extremely kind to me, the nurse in this hallucination was a real Nurse Ratched, the awful nurse from the movie,
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
.

The various hallucinations were endless, and they all had this strange gurgling sound in them that I’d hear every eight to ten seconds. I sometimes got so violent from the thrashing about, I’d pull out my IV and try to take off my oxygen mask. Whenever that happened, an alarm would go off, alerting the nurses on duty that I was without oxygen. Junior was usually around and had my mask back on before anyone could get to the room. Still, my nightly episodes were trying for everyone. The hospital wanted to tie me down, but my children wouldn’t allow it. They knew that was the worst thing they could do to me because I’d feel like a prisoner instead of a patient. Instead, whenever Junior couldn’t be there, they placed a technician or a nurse by my bedside all night so I wouldn’t hurt myself. If I started to have a hallucination of any kind, they’d reach over, touch me and hold me until I woke up. Sometimes their face would be right in front of mine.

“Dave, you’re having a nightmare. Do you know where you are?” they’d ask.

Sometimes I could answer; other times I could not.

“Dave, you’re in the hospital. You’ve been injured and you’re having nightmares. I’m your nurse and I’m sitting with you to keep you safe. You’ll wake up and it will be daytime again soon. I’m here to take care of you. Don’t be afraid.” They always spoke in a calm, rational and kind tone.

I was terrified by these experiences. I had no control. I couldn’t sit up, swing my legs over the side of the bed or stand. I couldn’t turn on the lights, find the switch to call the nurse or anything else that seemed so near and yet so very far. Sometimes I’d go to sleep with the nurses call button tied to my bed rail, but even then I didn’t always have the strength to get a hold of the rail, pull myself over and grab the switch. To compensate, I’d put the switch in my hand or lay it on my chest.

I’d doze off, and even if I wasn’t hallucinating, I could still hear that strange gurgle in the back of my mind. Months after the hallucinations started, I began to regain my cognitive reasoning and realized the gurgling sound was actually coming from the IV pump they had me hooked up to. It would pump for eight to ten seconds and then reset itself. When that happened, it made a gurgling noise. I didn’t recognize it when I was awake until one day it just hit me: That’s the noise I heard in the background of every hallucination I had.

As I began to get better, the doctors took me off the pain medication that likely induced the hallucinations. They subsided, but the terror never truly went away. Once I started thinking clearly, I worried about how I would get around on my own, specifically how I would get to the toilet by myself. I worried about regaining my speech and my overall quality of life. I wasn’t even sure I’d ever regain the motor skills needed to wipe or feed myself. I still couldn’t hold a tissue between my fingers. I obsessed about being a burden on my family and friends, something I found terribly disturbing to even think about. I had always been the caregiver, not the care-“taker.” This new role was not one I could readily accept, which would make things harder for me than they needed to be. Still, I’m the kind of man who would rather find my own way than depend on others for the basic necessities I’d come to take for granted. It was humiliating and frustrating to think that this is who I would become if I allowed it.

These are the thoughts that come into your mind when the sun goes down and everyone has gone home. When morning came, the nurses could always tell I’d been awake all night. They could see the worry and shame in my eyes. Still, I’m a man’s man who would never admit I was scared, especially to a woman. Now, that’s not a sexist statement so much as it’s one filled with the bravado I was talking about a few pages back. You see, the bravado returns when the sun comes up.

“Are you ok, Dave?” the nurses asked.

No matter what I said, they knew I wasn’t, and they never once emasculated me by pointing out the obvious. They’d simply pull up a chair, hold my hand, rub my arms or legs and talk to me until my mind and thoughts were diverted to something positive. They knew I wouldn’t talk about how I was really feeling so they did their best to help me move through it with kindness and compassion.

Once I was on the road to recovery my cognitive thinking returned. To monitor my cognitive reasoning skills, a therapist came to my room every day to ask me a series of simple questions. The first was always, “What day is it?”

I finally had my kids put the day and date on the wall behind the therapists so they couldn’t see it.

“Today is Wednesday, May 16
^th
, 2012,” I’d promptly answer.

“Very good! You’re coming right along!” They never once figured out what I was doing.

Around the same time, one of my nurses started talking to me about dealing with my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder—PTSD. I had no idea what she was referring to. But then I realized my psychiatrist was trying to tie my hallucinations to my time in Vietnam.

As part of my healing process, I sat with a psychiatrist twice a week. He said it was obvious to everyone there that my dreams, nightmares and hallucinations were all indications that I was suffering from my time serving in the war. I adamantly disagreed, as the hallucinations first started during my hospital stay and immediately ended when I was taken off a certain pain medication. In my everyday life prior to getting sick, I hardly ever thought about the war, and I certainly never suffered disturbed sleep from serving in the military.

Vietnam veterans get a real bum rap because society wants to paint them as damaged goods, when in fact our rate of suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism and homelessness is no different than those who served in World War II. The media created the story about soldiers who came home from Vietnam who couldn’t fit into society. Sure, there were those who genuinely suffered from their experiences, but there are also some who took advantage of it and used it as a crutch. That’s not unusual and it certainly isn’t the first time in history it happened. I was vehement with the psychiatrist that my issue wasn’t PTSD but rather the fact that I was paralyzed and handcuffed to a gurney. I was unable to move and was scared to death because I was on such heavy drugs for my pain that it was messing with my brain. If that suddenly clustered me into a lost generation, it was time to review my entire life.

Once they took me off of that drug, the hallucinations stopped and my world began to slowly come back into focus. I’d still wake up in the middle of the night, but at least I knew where I was and the reason I was there, and though there were still moments filled with fear, given my circumstances, they were reasonable and to be expected.

I was clearly getting more and more like my old self—and I liked the way that felt.

CHAPTER 9

Just 10 Feet

T
he last prescription my doctors gave me for pain was one hundred and fifty tablets of morphine. He told me it was better for me to live through my pain—to learn to use it as motivation to move, build muscular strength and to stand up again. After four months of being flat on my back in hospital beds, most of my muscles had atrophied. I had no quads, glutes, abs or framework of muscles to support my spine. If I had a prayer of getting back on my feet someday, I would have to start by building enough strength to support each of those muscle groups just so I could sit up on my own.

When my physical therapy began, the techs had to use a lift to get me out of my bed and into a wheelchair. The lift had a yellow tarp, which they would slip underneath me. I had to roll onto it so they could wrap the remainder of it around my body. There were straps that came up between and outside of my legs with another two that went over my shoulders. The lift itself dropped down from the ceiling above my bed or exercise platform where I would have my physical therapy and daily exercise sessions. They would snap the lift to each connection point on the tarp and slowly raise me into the air until they could position me into my wheelchair. This same device was used every time I needed to be placed on or taken off a therapy table and in or out of my shower chair.