Wasted: An Alcoholic Therapist's Fight for Recovery in a Tragically Flawed Treatment System (27 page)

“Thanks a lot, Will. I’ll have some later.” I stare up at the ceiling.

The taste of food sickens me. The incessant drip-drip-drip of the tub faucet makes me want to rip out the plumbing with my bare hands.

The thousands of pilled threads on the cheap duvet dig into my skin. The damn sun is too bright. And no matter how much I scrub, the stench of vomit seeps from every pore.

My cellphone rings daily. It’s work. I don’t pick up.

How could I
screw up work again? Will I end up in another recovery house?

Why can’t I stay away from Dana? I have to see her. No—I have to never see her again.

I have to get up and walk to the liquor store.

One day, Big Jack and Don show up, two of the guys living at Two-Finger Ted’s, the White Rock sober house I should have moved into.

“Come on, Mike,” says Don. “We’re taking
you to We Surrender. It’s August sixteenth. You’ve been drinking two weeks straight.”

“No.” I lay on the couch, one arm covering my eyes. “You’re not taking me there. Let me be.”

“Listen. We picked you up at the hospital the other night and brought you home.” Big Jack steps into the living room. “A lady found you passed out in a lounge chair in her backyard with a bottle of vodka
still in your hand. You’re really fucked up. You were talking about offing yourself. The cops took you to Peace Arch Hospital and they wanted to admit you to the psych ward, but you were too fucking drunk.”

My cellphone rings. It’s work. On the sixth ring, I pick up.

“Hello, Mike. It’s Odette.” She sounds annoyed, impatient. “We’ve been phoning you for almost two weeks.”

“I’ve been very sick, Odette. Some kind of bug.”

“
HR
received a letter today from Dr. Acres. A standard lab report from Peach Arch Hospital Emergency, positive for alcohol. You’re suspended indefinitely without pay again. I don’t like being lied to, Mike. The Review Committee will meet soon to decide what the next step is. You’re probably looking at termination. I’m sorry, Mike.”

It’s starting to make sense now. If the cops took me from a woman’s backyard to Peace Arch, of course they’d run lab work. I don’t expect Fraser Health to give me a third chance. I suspect I’m done now.

I look up at Big Jack and Don from the couch.

“I’m going to the liquor store. Can you give me a ride, or at least pick me up a bottle?” I reach in my pocket, searching for money.

“You’re really fucked up, Mike.” Don shakes his head. “You’re on your own, buddy.”

I call my mother.

“The number you have dialed is blocked.”

My mother blocked my calls. What have I been saying to frighten the old woman into silence this time?

My hands tremble out of control now as I drain the very last drop of vodka. Outside, I crouch down and—aha!—find
a stray bottle holding a couple of ounces hidden under the deck. Still crouching, I swallow a sip.

As I carry my prize inside, I spy baby spiders crawling up the kitchen wall. As I move to swipe them away, they disappear.

Clinical Notes—Mental Status Exam:

Appearance and Behaviour: Patient is unshaven and appears underweight. He is gaunt with dark circles under his eyes.
Psychomotor agitation, restless and agitated. Upper extremities tremulous.

Speech: Slurred and muffled.

Mood and Affect: Depressed, anxious and fearful.

Thought Content and Process: Guilt, self-recrimination, shame. Suicidal ideation. Poor concentration.

Perception: Visual, tactile hallucinations.

Orientation: Disoriented to time.

Sleep: Poor.

Appetite: Poor.

Insight: Fair.

Judgment: Poor.

DSM-5
Diagnosis: Alcohol Use Disorder—Severe; Withdrawal Delirium.

Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) score: 30/100—Major impairment.

I retch, and the booze I just swallowed spews onto the floor.

I take another sip. Automatically rejected. Another trickle of vomit lands on the floor.

I try and try, and it just keeps coming back up. My system rejects every attempt, no matter how small the sip. What the hell?

I pour the last of the vodka down the sink. Must go to bed and sleep this off.

I ROLL OVER
and grab my cellphone, eyes straining to read the date: August 29, 2009, seven days since I took my last drink. This detox feels different. I’ve done it hundreds of
times, and I know the drill. By now, the retching, writhing, chills and sweats should be history. I’d be wobbly and shaky for sure, but my energy should be coming back.

Not this time.

I can’t take a deep breath without coughing. Sweat drips off my face. The pain in my head is so severe I vomit. Is this a migraine? Have I had a seizure?

I can’t breathe. I have to get up
and get to a doctor.

Sweat-soaked and cold, I sway and stop and prop myself up on the signpost at the corner of Russell Avenue and Johnston Road.

“You can do it, Mike, another thirteen steps,” I propel myself forward. I keep stopping because one lung is on fire. Vehicles cruise up and down Johnston Road. As I rest I notice two brand-new pale green glass condo towers. Spectacular
views of the bay, I bet. Maybe someday, in another life, I’ll live there.

I left an hour ago and I’m only halfway there. I can powerwalk this half-mile in ten minutes max. I mark my painful progress with each power pole passed.

A spit-polished black
BMW
purrs by. The driver glances my way. A blend of sympathy and revulsion flashes across his face and he’s gone. I drank vodka for
twenty days straight. Next to no food. No sleep. I can only imagine how I look.

I gurgle with each inhale. Something has a stranglehold on my sternum. Something is seriously wrong.

Gasping for breath, I clutch the door frame at the entrance to Dr. Holic’s clinic. His receptionist glances up, dashes around the desk to grab my arm and supports my dead weight as she hauls me into
the examination room.

Dr. Holic rushes in. “Have you been drinking?” His face furrows with concern.

I can’t answer because I can’t breathe. Dr. Holic holds his stethoscope to my chest, then my back. He pauses on the lower left quadrant of my back. He taps my right side and produces a hollow resonant sound, like a drum. He taps the left side and we hear a thud. A dull, muffled thud.

“We need to get you to the hospital immediately.” Dr. Holic tries to sound calm, but urgency and worry break through.

“Call the ambulance,” he says to his receptionist. “Mr. Pond needs to go to Emergency.”

The ambulance arrives in four minutes. We pull into the
ER
bay at Peace Arch Hospital, and the attendant rushes me through the automatic sliding doors.

The admitting
nurse is waiting for me. “Temperature 40.4 degrees.” She calls out my vitals to the
ED
doctor. “Pulse 110. Respirations 28 and shallow.
BP
164 over 96.”

The doctor presses his stethoscope to my back. “Your left lung is full,” he says. “It’s most likely empyema—complicated bacterial pneumonia. We will probably be transferring you to Surrey Memorial for surgery.”

I aspirated vomit
into my lung. While I holed up drinking for weeks, the infection advanced to a seriously dangerous stage. In their own version of a scared-straight program, the nurses are blunt. “Lots of guys who get this don’t make it, Mr. Pond.”

No. No. No. I’m not going out as a drunk, like my grandfather did, at fifty-six. This is not the legacy I wish for my sons.

And that is my last thought.

• 27 •

I WAKE UP IN
a hushed room, bathed in a spaceship-like green glow. Machines whirl and gush and beep all around me. I glance and see tubes inserted everywhere.

I am in an intensive care unit. A nurse gazes down at me. Her mouth and nose are hidden behind a mask. She smiles and her eyes crinkle. I’m in isolation. Everyone who comes near adheres to
strict infection protocol, partly to protect my immune-suppressed state, partly to protect everyone else.

I’m not dead. But I feel so bad, I’m not far from it.

Big Jack, Don and Tim crowd at the door. Don and Big Jack don mask and gown. Tim shuffles nervously at the door. “You’re gonna be okay, Mike,” he says. “I just can’t get any closer.”

Tim is obsessive-compulsive and
pathologically afraid of germs. Even setting foot in a hospital is a huge show of strength. Big Jack and Don hover anxiously above the bed.

“Mike, it doesn’t get much worse than this,” says Big Jack.

“Is this bottom enough yet?” Don laughs.

I fall once again into a deep, drug-induced sleep. I wake up to my own personal angel of mercy. Dana sits lotus-like at the foot of
my bed. I hear a bottle clinking in her purse. She’s semi-loaded but still manages to minister a sponge bath. She’s unusually quiet.

“Just get better,” she mumbles. “Please don’t let it get any worse. It can’t get any worse. You’ll die.”

After a ten-day stay at Peace Arch, the infection resists all treatment and I am transferred to Surrey Memorial, the hospital where I work. Or
used to work.

My room is two floors directly above the adolescent psychiatric unit. Three chest tubes, inserted into my side and back, drain litres of blood-tinged fluid from my left lung. I go for X-rays and
CT
scans daily. On one of those daily gurney trips down to X-ray, as I lie in the hallway and wait my turn, Mark, the young
APU
nurse, walks by with a patient he’s brought down for
treatment. Our eyes meet. He can’t quite get his head around what he sees. Neither can I. That life, that work, seems lost forever.

He approaches, obviously not actually sure it’s me. I suspect I’ve lost at least thirty pounds since we last saw each other. I barely recognize myself either.

“Mike, is that you?”

“Hey, Mark, yeah, it’s me.”

His face floods with concern.
He leans in close. “Get better, Mike,” he says. “You’re needed at work.”

I’m needed at work. After all I’ve screwed up, Mark knows, intuitively, what I need to hear. And I think he actually means it.

After the scan I’m wheeled back to the room, where I’m overcome by coughing fits. When they finally subside, I close my eyes and rest.

“Well aren’t you a sick sight to behold.”
My eyes still closed, I recognize that voice. It’s the man who shamed me at the
AA
meeting on the beach. I open my eyes and see him observe me with contempt.

“You won’t surrender, this is what happens. Jails, institutions and death. Next step is death. Is that what you want to do? You may fuckin’ die right now. Hope you’re ready to surrender now.”

Too sick to put up any defense,
I lie and nod in agreement. His voice softens as he sees how ill I am, yet he continues insisting if I could just give myself over to the program, I’d lick this thing. He leaves and I wonder yet again how in some
AA
groups we’ve come to accept this kind of treatment as essential to recovery.

Recovery seems a long shot now.

The six-inch
IV
bag becomes the centre of my world. The
promise of the silent, steady drip-drip-drip so far unfulfilled, I contemplate my death—not in a despairing suicidal manner, but with cool pragmatism.

How will I be buried? What’s my final resting place, the small centuries-old cemetery in rural Ludlow, New Brunswick? Or should I have my ashes scattered across the mountains above Skaha Lake in the Okanagan? Who will pay for it? Rhonda,
my ex, is so upset with me—
she
wouldn’t.

At least I won’t have to declare bankruptcy.

Dr. Ashton, my thoracic surgeon, holds out more hope than I do. Convinced it’s just a matter of time until the potent antibiotics take hold, he delays surgery. “You’re a tough guy, Mike, you just may pull through this without me having to open you up.”

My mother is not convinced. She calls
daily, likely thinking each will be our last conversation, crying and offering words of encouragement. How many calls to drunken sons can one woman make?

Some of the
AA
guys never give up. Carey, Big Jack, Tim, regularly drop by and I half-wonder whether I’m still alive because these guys resolutely refuse to let me go.

All but one. Angry Gord, who lent me the money for my original
medical assessment with Dr. Acres, visits.

Don’t need the money back, he had said back at We Surrender. I’d been humbled by his offer. But you know what they say about offers that seem too good to be true.

Angry Gord scans me head to toe and checks the AccuVac container, almost full with red, mucus-like fluid.

“You look like shit,” he says, and nods.

“Thanks, Gord.
I feel like shit.” I hack and spit.

“Do you have any money? I hear you were working again.”

“I just used my last bit of cash.” A sense of dread washes through me. “I asked Tim to buy me some minutes for my cellphone.”

“But do you have any in your bank account?” Gord persists.

“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to check.” I stare at the door and pray a nurse will
walk in to check on me.

“That bitch hasn’t been in to see you, has she?”

I cough steadily for over a minute. I can’t get my breath. Gord steps into the hallway and brings back a wheelchair. “Here, get in this. We’re going for a walk.”

“I don’t know if I should, Gord. I have all this apparatus attached to me.”

“Fuck that.” He unwinds all the tubes, hooks the containers
to the chair and wheels the
IV
pole over. “Here, hold this. I’m taking you down. Bring your wallet.” We creep down the hospital corridor in silence to the elevator.

Gord stops the wheelchair in front of an
ATM
. He moves off to the side and watches over his shoulder, arms crossed.

I insert my bank card and enter my
PIN
. Push the display balance option. $77.73. I withdraw $60.