In this episode, I talk about a harrowing experience I just had in the hospital that nearly cost me my life. We will return to my regular topics soon.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to a very special episode of Contemplating Life. Episode 66.

You might have noticed this episode is extremely late. I’ve been busy trying not to die. The title of this episode is “I Was Nearly Murdered.” That is only a slight exaggeration. It was more like negligent homicide but my life was still at risk. That doesn’t include the health challenges that I’ve had recently. In the past 45 days, I’ve been in 2 different hospitals 4 different times and that doesn’t include an in-and-out trip to the ER to get my G-tube replaced on May 5.

Let’s start at the beginning… Let’s see…The earth formed, the dinosaurs came and went… No, We are not going to do that again. We will have a flashback to the day I was born but let’s start this story with Saturday, April 13, 2024. I had been having some respiratory issues for a couple of days and by Saturday it was bad enough that I thought I needed to get checked out at the hospital. I took an ambulance to St. Vincent Hospital on W. 86th St. here in Indianapolis. St. Vincent is the only hospital I’ve ever been to. Well, actually it’s been 2 different St. Vincent hospitals.

There have been four locations for St. Vincent Hospital over its history. It was founded in 1881 by Indianapolis Bishop Silas Francis Chatard and a religious order called The Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. I highly encourage you to read the article I linked in the description chronicling its history. For our purposes, my story starts with the third incarnation of St. Vincent Hospital on Fall Creek Blvd. between Capital Avenue and Illinois Street. That was the hospital where I was born as were 50% of all children born in Indianapolis between 1913 and 1974. The St. Vincent Hospital on W. 86th St. is the only other hospital I had ever been in. It was opened in 1974 and I believe my first visit would have been in the spring of 1979.

Anyway, back to April 13, 2024… A chest x-ray confirmed what I suspected. I had some mild pneumonia in my lower left lung. I was admitted to the hospital and put on IV antibiotics. Anytime I am admitted to the hospital, I have to go to the ICU because I use a ventilator to help me sleep at night. It’s not that I’m ventilator-dependent. It’s more like an overblown CPAP machine. You can’t use a CPAP when you have a trach. Sometimes I feel guilty about being in the ICU when I’m not really very sick but that’s their policy and I like the extra attention. The nurses enjoy taking care of a patient who isn’t critically ill. It was an uneventful stay and I was out two days later on Monday the 15th. I was confident I was fully recovered. They sent me home with oral antibiotics which I completed. Everything was okay after that.

The next significant event was Tuesday, May 7 when my friend Rich came over to help me repair my 3D printer. I have a Prusa MK3 that I purchased about six years ago and it has given me wonderful service up until recently. A failed print resulted in a huge glob of melted plastic spread all over the extruder. It has taken me several attempts to recover from his failure.

Several months ago, when I still didn’t have the printer working properly, it was going to cost me at least $100 just to get someone to look at it. A new Micro Center store opened on the northeast side of town. They had a Creality Ender S1 printer that usually lists for $450 on sale for $150. I desperately needed a 3D printer and it was just too good a deal to pass up.

I have regretted the decision ever since. The machine works but it just doesn’t work as well as my good old Prusa. You get what you pay for. I still didn’t have the money to pay for someone to look at the old machine. I thought perhaps Rich and I might be able to do something with it ourselves since I didn’t like the new printer.

I was pretty sure all I needed was to reinstall the nozzle in the extruder. It was leaking plastic around the edges. When we got the old nozzle out, it was in pretty bad shape so we decided to replace it completely. Fortunately, I had several in stock.

The normal operating temperature for a 3D printer is between 210° C and 230° C depending on the plastic you use. The instructions for replacing a nozzle say that you should crank up the temperature to about 270°C. From my previous misadventures with the printer, there was melted plastic all over the heat block. At that temperature, PLA plastic will vaporize into smoke. It’s possible that the PETG plastic that the printer is made from could also melt although I don’t think it did.

Vaporized PLA plastic doesn’t smell very bad, but it does tend to stick in your sinuses and you continue to smell it for a day or so. At one point we opened the window and turned on my ceiling fan. Part of the problem was that neither Rich nor I knew what we were doing. So we had to have the thing overheated longer than should have been necessary.

On a previous occasion when I tried to remove that big blob of plastic from the failed print, my roommate Josh helped me clear it by melting the plastic away with a soldering iron. That had also created vapors that stuck in my sinuses. A few days after that, I noticed that I had a lot of secretions in my lungs and I had to do more trach suctioning than usual. It was more than a week until things got back to normal. Still, it was manageable.

While Rich and I were working, we should have opened the window sooner but we didn’t. I kept thinking, “We’re almost done.” It’s harder than you think to screw in a tiny nozzle that is 270° C. When we had done this before, I didn’t have very good tools. It was still difficult even with the right size metric socket wrench.

The following day, I could still smell burnt plastic but I did not notice anything wrong with my lungs.

By the second day, Thursday, May 9, I had to begin doing excessive amounts of trach suctioning. This continued throughout the weekend. I figured this was the same thing that happened when I inhaled fumes when Josh was helping me.

My roommate Barb had been having recurring intestinal issues but woke up Monday morning May 13 with severe breathing difficulty. As my home health aide was getting me dressed, Barb’s son Josh told me that Barb needed to go to the hospital. I told him no problem. I would get someone to come stay with me. As soon as I was up in my wheelchair I began calling friends and quickly found someone who could be here in about a half-hour.

Josh called 911 and paramedics from Fire Station 31 just a few blocks away arrived. I went to the living room and found Barb sitting on the sofa gasping for air. The paramedics put an oximeter on her finger and it registered in the low 80s. It should be well above 90%. Josh had already given her one breathing treatment but the paramedics put her on oxygen and more nebulizer medication. By the time the ambulance arrived a minute or two later, her oxygen was back up to 90.

The entire incident was quite scary for me and everyone involved. It will have long-lasting consequences that we may discuss in future episodes.

My friends Stu and Pat Byrum arrived about 20 minutes later to stay with me. Josh took off to the hospital to be with his mom.

My friends and I picked out a movie to watch but it was interrupted frequently because I needed trach suctioning. Pat has done it many times before but we were having a particularly difficult time getting it cleared. I could tell she was concerned but I kept trying to reassure her that everything was okay.

Somewhere along the way, I developed a low-grade fever of just over 100. Tylenol took care of it easily. My sister arrived at about 6 PM to take over my care. My home health aide also returned to put me back to bed.

Each Tuesday and Thursday, I have a respite nurse who stays with me from 9:30 AM until 4 PM so that my roommates can have time off to go to the doctor, run errands, or just get out of the house for a while. I kept Nurse Toni busy all afternoon Tuesday doing breathing treatments and suctioning. By the time she left at 4 PM, she was worn out and I was in pretty good shape. My friend Judy arrived to stay with me until my sister Carol could relieve her. I think Judy only had to do perhaps one suctioning if at all.

There was a miscommunication with my home health aide (entirely my fault) as to whether or not I needed her for the evening shift. Carol ended up putting me to bed and by then I was needing yet more suctioning. Carol noted that my secretions were extremely thick, had turned yellow, and even looked a bit chunky. My fever had returned.

Carol suggested I needed to go to the hospital and I quickly agreed. This was more than just a little irritation from the 3D printer fumes. It was likely that whatever sent Barb to the hospital the day before was giving me fits as well. Or even if it was just the irritation from the fumes, it was way beyond anything I had experienced previously.

We packed up everything I needed to be prepared to stay in the hospital. We packed up my laptop and got my ventilator ready to transport because I like to use my own vent when I’m in the hospital. I would go by ambulance. Carol would bring my stuff in her car in case I was admitted. I was pretty sure I would be.

Anytime I go to the hospital, we have to clear out my bedroom of my wheelchair, bedside table, and Hoyer patient lift to make room for them to bring a gurney in and drag me over onto it. We also have to move a small sofa table in the living room to make it easier to get the gurney down the hallway. It’s quite a production to get me in an ambulance. It’s a good thing I’ve not had to do it in a dire emergency.

The ambulance arrived and they loaded me up for a trip to St. Vincent. Along the way, I had a pleasant conversation with the medic who rode in the back with me. She had just gotten back from a trip to Disney World. I asked, “Did your kids enjoy it?” She chuckled and said, “Uhh… I don’t have any kids. It was just me and my boyfriend.” She explained that she had family in the area and was visiting them. But the highlight of the trip was still the trip to Disney.

Whenever the ambulance is about five minutes away from the hospital, they get on the radio and ask the dispatcher for a line to the hospital ER. They report a description of the patient, me, my vitals, and what I’m coming in for. The dispatcher notified them that St. Vincent was on full diversion. They were not accepting any EMS patients.

Apparently on May 8 the entire Ascension Healthcare Network of over 140 facilities spread across 20 states was hit by a ransomware cyber attack. They had to shut down their entire network and start using paper record-keeping. They had no access to old patient records from previous visits. Although the ER was open to walk-in patients, they were not accepting EMS patients.

The question now was, “Where do I go?” As I mentioned, I had never been to any other hospital. I asked them, “What is closest?” The choices were Indiana University/Methodist Hospital or Eskenazi Hospital. I didn’t have a coin to flip so I picked Methodist because that’s where they take injured IndyCar drivers. While I had not hit a concrete wall at over 230 mph, I figured if it was good enough for the Indy drivers it was good enough for me.

I had my iPhone with me so I had the medic call Carol who was also just a few minutes from St. Vincent. We both turned around and headed for Methodist.

When I arrived at the ER, at first they were just going to put me behind a curtain but when I explained that I needed suctioning they moved me to a small ER room. I was seen by a resident ER doctor almost immediately which is unusual. Then again, I’m usually in for something minor like a G-tube replacement or a urinary infection. When you come in with breathing difficulty, you get quicker attention.

They started an IV, drew blood, and took me for a chest x-ray. At St. Vincent, they use portable X-ray machines but at Methodist, the X-ray department is right down the hall from the ER so they just roll you down there and roll you back. When I returned from the x-ray, Carol was waiting for me. She had stopped to grab a bite to eat the way. She knew it was going to be a long evening and she was right.

Carol and I passed the time talking about the day’s events and our concerns about Barb who by now had a confirmed diagnosis of pneumonia and was still in the hospital.

Finally, the resident returned to tell me there was a slight fogginess in my chest x-ray that could be pneumonia. He said, “You said you had to do extensive breathing treatments and suctioning. Do you have what you need at home to treat this?” Much to my surprise, I answered, “No.” When I thought about the difficulty that Pat had suctioning me on Monday and the excessive amount of work I put Nurse Toni through earlier that day, as well as the friends I had lined up to be with me on Wednesday, I did not have sufficient backup to deal with this crisis of my own. The doctor replied, “That’s all I need to hear. We will admit you.”

In retrospect, even if Barb had not been in the hospital and I had had all the support i usually have and I needed, I really did need to be admitted. And I don’t think I would’ve had any difficulty convincing them of that. I think it was more of a case of, “If you really really want to go home I guess I can release you but if you want to stay then stay.” I needed to stay.

Unlike St. Vincent which automatically sends me to ICU whether I’m in need of intensive care or not, Methodist Hospital has a Pulmonary Care Unit and they would be sending me there. Unfortunately, it’s a small unit and it took until the following afternoon to get me in a room in the PCU. Carol went home around 2 AM. I did not want to get on the ventilator until I was settled in the room. I didn’t want to be moved when I could not communicate while on the vent. I can sleep a little bit without the vent. I estimate and not have gotten 3 hours of sleep max.

About a year ago, I had my G-tube replaced as I do about every six months. There is a new style of G-tube with a different type of fitting on the top called ENFit. It screws on about one-half twist. It is unique to feeding systems. That is a safety feature so that you can’t accidentally put IV medication into a G-tube or worse yet put feeding formula into an IV.

Unfortunately, Methodist Hospital had never heard of it. They didn’t have any syringes that would connect to my G-tube. That meant that they couldn’t grind up pills in water and give them to me via my G-tube. They had to partially disassemble the G-tube in a way that wasn’t intended to be disassembled to give me medication. It also meant I would not be able to get G-tube feedings. The next morning, Carol brought a half-dozen or so of my ENFit syringes from home.

It wasn’t until about 2 PM Wednesday afternoon that I was finally able to get a G-tube feeding. That was 23 hours since my previous feeding. Being dehydrated and not getting any nutrition or calories is not good for the healing process.

Normally at St. Vincent, they let me use my ventilator from home but at Methodist they wanted me to use their ventilator. That was okay. I was a little bit ambivalent about it but it didn’t give me any difficulty.

A very nice nurse checked me into my room in the PCU on Wednesday afternoon. I don’t recall her name. The shift changed at 6 PM (St. Vincent changes at 7 so that was just another thing that was different about this place.)

The new night nurse seemed quite friendly. She appeared to be in her late 50s or perhaps 60 years old. She said something like, “Sorry you’re going to lose your cute young nurse. You’re stuck with an old battleax like me.” I didn’t mind. She exuded an air of confidence that in her many years of nursing, she had seen and done everything. It turns out she was a “traveling nurse.” These nurses are not employed directly by the hospital but are on contract with them for a few months at a time.

I explained that I needed to get on the vent soon because I had only had three hours of sleep. I explained to her the signals that I use when I cannot talk more on the ventilator. If I wiggle my eyebrows up and down that means “Yes.” If I twitch my mouth left and right it means “No.” If I make a clicking noise with my tongue, it means I want their attention. I was quite explicit, “If you can’t figure out what I want after a couple of yes or no questions, just call the respiratory therapist to take me off of the ventilator temporarily and I will tell you what I want once I can talk.” She seemed to understand. I explained I would not be able to use any of the various types of nurse call buttons they have available. She agreed to check in on me periodically.

Despite my lack of sleep, the tension of everything that was going on kept me awake. Around midnight she checked in and I clicked my tongue to get her attention. I was going to need to get off of the vent so I could direct her on how to comfortably put me on a bedpan. I was hoping that she would ask me a couple of yes/no questions and then call respiratory but she didn’t. She seemed hell-bent on trying to figure out what I wanted. But she was no good at reading lips. All I was saying was, “Call respiratory”. Rather than do as we had agreed, she brought another young nurse in to attempt to read my lips but that nurse had no more luck than did Nurse Battleax.

At one point they asked, “Do you want off of the ventilator?” and I signaled “Yes.”

Before we proceed, I need to explain briefly how a trach works. It’s a simple curved tube 7 mm in diameter which enters my windpipe through a hole in my neck. Normally there is a cap on the outside called a “Passy Muir Speaking Valve”. It is a one-way valve that allows air to be inhaled. But when you try to talk or exhale, it closes the trach allowing the air to come up your windpipe across your vocal cords soon you can speak. When you are on the ventilator, you remove the valve and attach a hose from the vent on the outside of the trach where the valve once was.

Air comes to the hose and into your lungs. However, it could escape back out your mouth and nose which is no good. The bottom end of the trach tube is surrounded by an inflatable cuff. There is a tiny tube extending out from the trach. You inject air into the tube and it blows up the inner cuff. This blocks off your upper airway so that the air coming from the vent doesn’t escape out your nose and mouth but is exhaled through the trach into the vent tubing where there is an exhaust port.

On the end of the tiny tube, there is a small balloon that is an indicator of how much air is in the trach cuff. When the tiny blue balloon on the outside is inflated, you know that the inner cuff is inflated.

When removing me from the vent, you have to connect a syringe to the little blue tube and extract all of the air. When the external balloon is flat, you know that the internal cuff is flat.

If you put on the speaking valve which is one way in, but you do not deflate the cuff, your airway is totally blocked. You can inhale but you cannot exhale.

The nurse removed the hose from my trach and replaced the speaking valve without deflating the cuff. I began signaling no, no, no frantically and clicking my tongue but she proceeded anyway. I was completely unable to breathe. Eventually, she sensed the panic I was experiencing and removed the valve allowing me to breathe. My airway was totally blocked for at least 20 seconds but it seemed like an eternity.

On several occasions, my dad, my roommate Barb, and I believe perhaps even my sister Carol have accidentally forgotten to deflate the cuff before putting on the valve. I just click my tongue a couple of times and they say, “Oh crap! I nearly killed you.” and they quickly remove the valve and we laugh about it. In a future episode tell you about the first time my dad did it.

That’s not what happened here. This wasn’t a, “Oh crap! I forgot.” This nurse was totally clueless about what she was doing. She had no idea that you needed to deflate the cuff first. The other nurse stood there and watched and was similarly unaware that I was unable to breathe at all because of their actions.

It was bad enough that my airway was completely blocked for nearly 20 seconds, but had they chosen to give up, leave the room, and call the respiratory therapist, I would’ve passed out. Fortunately, I was connected to an oximeter and heart monitor but they would’ve had to call the code to resuscitate me. Even if they were able to do so successfully, I probably would’ve ended up with broken ribs at least. Given my overall weak condition and the fact that I was weak from my illness, they might not have been able to resuscitate me at all.

I could have been dead.

Fortunately, they removed the valve, put me back on the vent, and finally called the respiratory therapist to take me off the vent properly. The therapist took me off the vent but I needed my trach suctioned before I could speak clearly. I insisted the nurse not leave the room until I could speak to her. When I could speak and breathe easily, I explained to her in no uncertain terms that she had nearly murdered me. I use those exact words. I described exactly what she did wrong. The respiratory therapist who was standing there was appalled.

After I said my piece, I explained that I wanted to get on the bedpan. She got me on. I did my business. She got me off. I told her I didn’t want to get back on the ventilator. I was too scared to be in that situation again.

I tried to get to sleep but couldn’t. Eventually, she came back in around 3 AM and I told her to call respiratory to put me back on the vent and keep your damned hands off. I told respiratory I wanted to get off around 6 AM when the shift changed. She agreed.

I might have gotten three more hours of sleep but maybe not that much.

The next morning I spoke to the day nurse who was the same one I had before. She was very nice. I explained to her what had happened and she had already heard. News of the incident was spreading fast. I told her I wanted to speak to a supervisor. She sent in a woman named Olivia who was the “Charge Nurse” for the unit.

Olivia had already had a meeting with the supervisor of respiratory therapy. I explained in great detail the series of events. She told me that it wasn’t just my request that the nurse should have called respiratory to take me off, it is their absolute policy that they are not to touch the ventilator and they should call RT.

I said, “That’s even more disturbing that you had one nurse doing something she wasn’t trained to do. It violated not only my instructions but also your policy. The thing that really concerns me is there was another nurse was standing there watching and was just as clueless as to what was going on. You have two nurses in a Pulmonary Care Unit who have no idea how a trach works and who violated policy watching one another. One is a mistake. Two indicates a pattern. You have a systemic problem in this unit. The bottom line is even if you promise me I never get either of those nurses again, I can’t trust this unit. I’m leaving here today and if the doctor will not discharge me I’m leaving AMA.”

By the way, I won’t bother philosophizing about the coincidence that the letters AMA stand for “against medical advice” and “American Medical Association” but there has to be a joke in there somewhere but I haven’t got the time to figure one out.

Anyway… The charge nurse was highly apologetic and very sympathetic. She understood why I felt the way I did. I told her I’m not the kind of guy who’s going to file a lawsuit or call a press conference. In retrospect, I could have called the police and I had the woman arrested. The bottom line was I wasn’t going to stick around and risk my life. Just call it a teachable moment. But I’m not staying.

I was later visited by the unit supervisor who was also appropriately sympathetic and apologetic over the incident. I gave her exactly the same speech I gave the charge nurse.

When my doctor arrived for rounds that morning, I told her what happened. I asked, “Am I okay to leave?” I knew her answer would be no and it was, “no.” Then I told her, “Under the circumstances, I have no choice but to check myself out AMA.” She said she would prescribe oral antibiotics. I explained I would be going to St. Vincent at the earliest opportunity.

Sometime before I spoke to all of these supervisors, I had the day nurse set up my laptop computer on the bedside table. I made a voice call via Facebook Messenger to my sister Carol.

“Carol it’s me. You’ve always said any time I didn’t feel safe that I should call you. Well, I don’t feel safe here. The nurse didn’t know what she was doing and tried to take me off the vent wrong. She put the speaking valve on without deflating the balloon and I couldn’t breathe for nearly 20 seconds. It wasn’t one of those, ‘Whoops I forgot.’ She was totally clueless as to what she was doing. She had no idea she nearly killed me. If she hadn’t removed the valve when she did I could’ve been dead.”

Carol has been babysitting her one-year-old grandson for my niece Alaina. My niece was off work that day because she was going on a field trip with her daughter. I told Carol, “Don’t ruin their field trip. But if you can get someone else to cover for your babysitting, can you come stay with me until we can get the ambulance to bring me home? If not, I will just go home after 6 PM whenever you can get there.”

Of course, Carol was furious at what had happened to me. She said she would get back to me as soon as possible. She contacted her other daughter Heather and Heather agreed to fill in babysitting. Soon after, Carol messaged me back, “Don’t bother with the ambulance. I’m coming up there with your wheelchair and your clothes in the van to get you up, dressed, and out of there.”

I was ecstatic.

I checked with the nurse to see if they had a Hoyer lift. They said yes and I messaged Carol.

It was midafternoon when Carol arrived. Not only had she brought my clothes, back brace, and wheelchair. She also brought our lift from home. She said, “I wasn’t sure I knew how to work their lift so just in case, I brought ours.” It was not easy to get my wheelchair and the Hoyer lift in and out of our van. It reminded me of the kind of thing my mother would’ve done under the circumstances. Carol was in full “Tiger Mom” mode and nothing was going to get in her way of getting me out of the place.

Carol is 60 years old. Although she is capable of getting me dressed and into the wheelchair, we typically have my home health aide do it when Carol is taking care of me. It is very difficult for Carol to do it. I think she did it in record time. One of the male nurses gave her a little assistance positioning me in the wheelchair once she had transferred me using the lift. That is always easier as a two-person job.

We packed up all my belongings and got ready to leave. They had said they were giving me oral antibiotics to take home. I thought they were going to deliver it to my room but I had to pick it up in the public pharmacy in the lobby. Carol, who is my designated medical representative and has power of attorney signed the release for my discharge AMA. I asked if there were other discharge papers or instructions and they said, “No. Not when you go AMA.”

I saw the charge nurse Olivia and I thanked her and my dayshift nurse for understanding. “I don’t want to cast aspersions on the entire facility”, I said. “Everyone else has been quite nice to me but I just can’t stay here.” It looked as though the nurses were all about to have a big meeting. My guess is there were lots of big meetings as a result of this incident although I haven’t talked to any of them since then. I don’t know what the end result was.

When we got to the lobby, the pharmacy where I needed to pick up my antibiotics was at the far end of the building. We had to go already over there and all the way back. We loaded up the lift and me in the van which wasn’t easy and we were finally off

Carol offered to take me directly to St. Vincent as a walk-in patient but I explained I only had at most 6 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours. I wanted desperately to get home in my own bed with my trusty emergency call button and my own ventilator. I knew if we went to St. Vincent it would probably be hours before I could get to sleep. I was so exhausted and stressed I was seriously worried I would have a heart attack or something if I didn’t get directly to sleep.

When we got home, then Carol had to drag me and the Hoyer lift out of the van, reassemble the lift, put me back to bed, get me undressed, give me my afternoon G-tube feeding, and get me on the ventilator. It had to be exhausting for her considering she was up in the middle of the night two nights ago with me in the ER.

Josh was home. He left his mom at the hospital because she needed to rest and wouldn’t do so if he was there. He helped out setting up their lift and he set up my laptop.

I mentioned my own home emergency call button. It’s a little device with pushbuttons I hold in my right hand. It allows me to operate my TV, cable box, iPad, and a buzzer that rings in the living room and master bedroom when I need something. A previous version of the box had a backup battery in case of a power outage. But my latest version plugs into my laptop because I figure it’s got a bigger battery than anything I would put in my little box.

Unfortunately, when we were plugging in the power on the laptop, we didn’t get the power cable plugged in all the way. In the middle of the night, the laptop battery went dead and my pushbuttons became unusable. It was my fault for not double-checking it but I was a zombie at that point.

I had gotten my G-tube feeding, got on the ventilator, and fell asleep at about 6 I woke up around midnight to discover the buttons were not working. I should’ve had another G-tube feeding around 9 PM but she let me sleep.

My only way of getting someone’s attention is by making a clicking noise with my tongue. I could hear that Josh was still awake watching TV or playing games online. When I determined he was no longer using his headphones I tried clicking as loudly as I could from time to time. Around 2 AM he realized what that sound was. He saw it was perhaps Barb’s pet hedgehog making noises. He finally realized it was me and called Carol.

Carol had to do a breathing treatment, massive suctioning, and my G-tube feeding. All of that took about 90 minutes. We finally all got back to sleep around 3:30 AM.

The next morning, Carol had to leave to go babysit her grandson again. Josh would stay with me until about 10 AM when my friend Rich would come. My home health aide Kiara arrived around 9 AM. She gave me a bath, got me dressed, and got me up in the wheelchair. She stuck around a little longer to help me and Rich pack up everything for me to go to St. Vincent in my wheelchair van as a walk-in. She is a real blessing in my life as are all of the people I mentioned. (Except for the ones that tried to kill me.)

Anyway, It was a struggle for Rich to get me and the ventilator into the van. He is only a year younger than me. We had carefully packed in two bags. One contained my suction machine in case we needed to pull over en route to the hospital and suction my trach. The other contained my laptop. Rich would drive up to the ER entrance, unload me, and bring the suction machine bag. There is valet parking at the ER.

If they admitted me, which I presumed they would, Rich would carry the suction machine back out to the van because we would not need it. He would also take my wheelchair to the van. He would come back with my laptop bag and my ventilator.

When you go to the ER with respiratory problems, they see you quickly. It was amazing to see the people at St. Vincent using only paper records and no computers. It had been a few days now and they were getting into a routine but it was clearly difficult for them. It was just amazing to watch them work.

When I told the doctors and nurses what I had been through at Methodist, especially since I had checked myself out against medical advice, they didn’t hesitate to admit me. They warned me that they were not operating at peak efficiency because the computers were down. I told him I was aware of that. I said, “I feel safer with you guys under these difficult conditions on your worst day than I would be at Methodist on their best day.”

They had no difficulty lifting me from my wheelchair onto the gurney. I had Rich hang onto my feet as I was being lifted because in the past I got my feet tangled up beneath me when someone had tried to lift me like that and that had been quite painful. The manual lift went smoothly and they got me undressed. Another chest x-ray confirmed there was still some “opacity” which meant slight pneumonia.

I have spent so much time at St. Vincent ER there that I see familiar faces and they recognized me as well. I felt like this place was my second home. I was really happy to be there.

I was assigned a room at about 4 PM. They always bathe you when you first arrive in the ICU. By the time they finished, Rich was there with my laptop and ventilator. He left around 5 PM. He had tickets to an Indianapolis Indians baseball game that night. There was also a Pacers NBA playoff game on TV that he was recording and I would watch live. I told Rich to just leave my wheelchair and everything in the van and leave it parked in my driveway. He would then go home in his car. Josh said Rich looked pretty tired. Again I am so blessed to have someone like him in my life.

By the time I got to the ICU, they all said, “We heard what happened to you at that other hospital Chris. That must’ve been scary.” News of my misadventures reached the ICU from the ER before I did.

This was Friday, May 17. By Tuesday, May 21st, both the doctors and I felt I was ready to go home and I was released. The stay at St. Vincent was uneventful. I had wonderful nurses and I could tell lots of stories about them but that’s not important right now. It was a very pleasant visit.

I had to wait until about 6 PM for an ambulance to take me home. I wasn’t going to make Carol come get me dressed and take me home herself again.

By this time, Barb was back home from the hospital and doing well.

Back at home, throughout the day on Wednesday the 22nd, I still needed breathing treatments and significant suctioning. Way more than I had needed the previous day in the hospital. In the late afternoon, we did a breathing treatment and it broke up a bunch of congestion. We had to struggle to suction it all out. I was having serious difficulty breathing. Barb had an oximeter so we checked my oxygen level and it was in the low 80s which is where hers was when she went to the hospital.

Fortunately, after I caught my breath, it got back up to the low 90s which is where it needed to be. We also took my temperature and it was in the high 99s. I made the difficult decision I had to go back to St. Vincent. I called the hospital to see if they were open to ambulance patients and they said no. That was surprising because while I was still there, they said they were reopening completely.

I was up in my wheelchair so I could go by van. Josh agreed to take me. I offered to go by ambulance to Eskenazi Hospital. I wasn’t going to go back to Methodist. That was for sure. Josh said he didn’t mind taking me. That was a wonderful gesture. I asked if he was comfortable with leaving Barb home alone because she was still recovering. Barb had to phone in her vital signs to the hospital periodically so she was still under the care of the people at the hospital even though she was home. Josh was confident she would be okay and so was she.

Again we packed up my suction machine, ventilator, and laptop and loaded all of that and me into the van. We did the same procedure I had done with Rich. When I got to the ER, they lifted me out of my chair onto the gurney. Carol arrived around 6:30 PM. Josh took her car and she would drive the van. We still weren’t sure if I was going to be readmitted. I might have to get back in the wheelchair, back in the van, and go home. But eventually, another chest x-ray still showed some congestion and they decided to admit me again. Carol took the wheelchair to the van and brought back the ventilator and the laptop. Then I told her she could go home. I forget what time I made it back to the ICU. Another bed bath upon arrival and then I got on my ventilator and got to sleep.

The next morning, Thursday, May 23, I had the same pulmonary doctor I had before. I don’t recall his name. We talked about the situation and agreed we both we had done the right thing by sending me home. He said, “I trusted that if you needed to come back you would and in the end you did. So no second guessing our decisions.” I really liked the guy.

I had a peaceful and uneventful stay until Saturday, May 25. I told the doctors I wasn’t going to push them to send me home but I had to go either Saturday or Monday. Sunday would be the Indy 500 and the traffic around my neighborhood would make it impossible for me to get home.

The ambulance picked me up around 6 PM Saturday evening and I was home in bed by 7 PM.

My weekend home health aide Shatoya had to take an Uber to get to my house Sunday morning because she is temporarily without a vehicle. They had to fight through the race day traffic to get to my house. By the time she got me up, most of the traffic had cleared and we gave her a lift home.

The race was delayed by rain but the weather cleared mid-afternoon and they completed all 500 miles. During the opening ceremonies, there was a flyby of the Air Force Thunderbirds. I went outside to watch them but they flew very low and I could not see them because of trees in the neighborhood. Usually, I can see the military flyby but this time I only heard it.

Normally the race is blacked out in the Indianapolis area but I can watch it on streaming using a VPN to mask my vocation. Because of the rain the delay, the Speedway allowed the blackout to be lifted so I could watch it on cable on our big-screen TV instead of my computer monitor.

It was a very exciting race with several crashes. Fortunately, no one was hurt. There were multiple passes for the lead during the final few laps. Josef Newgarden was victorious for the second year in a row. This was the first back-to-back win for any driver since 2000-2001 wins by Hélio Castroneves.

I was glad to be alive to see it.

I’m recording this on Monday, June 3 and I have been doing well ever since I came home. I’m doing breathing treatments in the morning as a preventative measure but my lungs have been doing quite well.

The doctors never decided if I had some sort of respiratory virus like Barb had or if it was just the fumes from the 3D printer. I think it was the printer fumes but we will never know. Also, we discovered that my suction machine at home wasn’t working right. It could have been that Wednesday at home when we were having so much trouble getting me cleared up, that I really didn’t need to go back to the hospital. I thought we were having trouble getting my lungs cleared because they were in bad shape. It might have been that the machine wasn’t working. We called my supplier and they brought out a replacement machine on Memorial Day. That was much better. I’ve been able to get my lungs cleared much more easily. Again, I don’t know if that contributed to the problem but it sure didn’t help.

Before we sign off, I need to explain that my life is getting a bit complicated right now. Some of it involves a very exciting assistive technology project I’m working on. It’s going to take a lot of my time. Some of it involves some major life changes and tough decisions and making.

As a result, I cannot commit to producing a new podcast every week on a regular schedule. I fully intend to continue the podcast but I will not guarantee when new episodes will arrive. This isn’t the end. It’s just a new phase.

I cannot say when the next episode will be but when I return I will continue with more stories about my history as a race fan including the first time I ever attended the race in person. I had intended to get out at least 2 more episodes about racing before the race itself. That didn’t happen. Anyway, after we wrap up the racing series we will go back to more stories about my college days and my mentors Drs. John and Judith Gersting.

If you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and other exclusive content. Although I have some financial struggles, I’m not really in this for money. Still, every little bit helps.

As always, my deepest thanks to my financial supporters. Your support means more to me than words can express. And thanks also to all the people who helped me get through this health crisis.

Even if you cannot provide financial support. Please, please, please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience. I just want more people to be able to hear my stories.

All of my back episodes are available and I encourage you to check them out if you’re new to this podcast. If you have any comments, questions, or other feedback please feel free to comment on any of the platforms where you found this podcast.

I will see you next week… Oh well, I’ll see you next time as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.