It’s slightly overdue, but I figured now would be a good time to write this post. I’ve been working in Ghana for the last week, on some very cool stuff. More on that much later — for now, I feel it’s important to begin the new year with a post, as is customary for me. I have found as a writer, that writing is an art of irony; it is able to bring closure to the self, and other times it opens the mind and heart to unconsidered possibilities. In all things, writing can heal. 9 days into a new year, I have reached a point where I recognise my need for closure, or for opening, in all, to heal. 2016 was the second most difficult year of my life to date, and 2 days to the end of it I almost lost my life on the flight to Accra. It has taken me all the days since to come to terms with what could’ve happened, and how God saved my life. It has taken me all these days, to wrestle with myself over what need there could be in writing about what happened. For the sake of closure, that I may be opened, here is what happened.
Mid flight to the transit stop (non-direct flight, etc), I began to feel nauseous and unwell. I stood up and stretched my legs and spent what felt like an eternity in the plane toilet pleading with my body to either vomit so I could feel better or behave itself. No luck, but determined to sleep it off, I asked for some water and walked back to my seat and tried to sleep. About 5 min later, I started to feel really faint and I didn’t feel right, there was a sensation down my spine, as though I was slipping away from my body. Most people were asleep on the flight by this point. So again, I woke up the passenger next to me and actually couldn’t wait for her to unbuckle her belt, I climbed over her to the back, desperate to go back to the toilet because I felt I’d throw up any second. The toilets were both occupied. I asked a hostess sat at the back of the plane to get me a sick bag. She took one look at me and became flustered — I wasn’t sure why at the time. But later figured this could’ve been because by that point I had gone pale and my lips were apparently white. In the words of the man who saved my life, I “looked like shit.” Anyway, now this woman is panicking and I’m not sure why but I really need that sick bag and I can feel that I’m about to lose consciousness. She’s asking me “what’s wrong? What’s wrong?” and then suddenly there are all these men around me asking her what was wrong with me, and then one of them grabs me and asks me directly — his name was Dr H. I mumbled that I felt nauseous and faint, and he takes one look at me and moves me to his chair and commands me to put my knees up so blood can get into my brain. “I’m a doctor,” he says. “Me too,” I reply, quite irritated by all the attention. He begins to talk to me, asking “oh where do you work? What specialty?” etc etc and I know that this man is trying to save me because he is trying to keep me responsive while he searches for my pulse. He is kneeling down, checking for a radial pulse, shifting his fingers again and again, pressing hard, he looks up sharply, “I can’t feel a pulse.” I am too weak now to care, but I understand this is now serious. I already knew I had become hypotensive midflight — that my blood pressure had dipped — all the symptoms were there. But I hadn’t expected that my body was going into shock, that effectively it was shutting down. Dr H is now shouting orders to the flight staff around us at the back of the plane, “where is your medical kit?! Bring me a blood pressure machine! Bring her juice!” Now to me, he is feeling for a brachial pulse.
The idea is to work from far away (distally) from the centre of the body closer to the heart. The further in you need to feel for a pulse, the weaker the heart is pumping blood. When the distal points of the body aren’t receiving enough or any blood, we say that your body has “peripherally shutdown.” Give it some more time, and the body will continue to fail itself, eventually you become centrally shutdown and that is what is termed a cardiac arrest (or respiratory arrest), which is commonly what you see in films and shows like Gray’s Anatomy.
Dr H can’t find a strong enough brachial pulse, so he feels for a central pulse, in my neck. And he finds one. “Drink this.” he orders as he passes me a plastic cup of juice. “Listen to me, you’re peripherally shut down. You need to drink all of this right now.”
Fluids are the main way to bring blood pressure up.
I nod. He stands up to look in a briefcase of first aid materials that a hostess has arrived with. He fumbles, moving things around. Finally he says, “Okay, listen to me. We have adrenaline. We might not need it, but we have adrenaline.” He almost sounds relieved.
Adrenaline is one of the things you use to restart the heart when it stops in a cardiac/respiratory arrest.
Adrenaline is what you use when a person has technically died, to try to bring them back.
That is the moment I realise that things are more than serious. I am not afraid or panicked yet, I honestly just want to sleep. And I can see all the staff rushing around. By this point Dr H is checking my blood pressure. After the first attempt, he shakes his head and tries again. “What is it?” I ask. He ignores me. I persist, “What was my blood pressure? What is it?” He replies, “You don’t want to know.” And the world now seems quite far from me, I had already given up on life a while ago, mentally and emotionally, grieving, so the physical manifestation of this wasn’t as surprising to me as it would otherwise have been. Dr H tries again. I demand, “what is the blood pressure?” He says, “72/40 now.”
In hospital, very sick patients that go into shock have an average blood pressure of 80/60 at the time of the incident. The average healthy young person, has a blood pressure of 120/80 give or take a few.
I’m a 24 year old healthy female with no major health issues to date, especially not blood pressure issues. So why was this happening? Dr H becomes very quiet and says, “Lie down. How are you feeling now? I might need to put a drip in, there’s a bag of saline on board. Are you happy for me to do this? If not, you need to keep drinking a lot right now.” I pause and then agree to the drip. So there we are, mid-flight over northern Africa, as this doctor saves my life by putting a long needle into my vein and connecting it to a bag of saline (salty water). He holds the bag high above his head and squeezes it, and I eventually begin to feel better. “The colour is returning to your lips,” he says at some point.
Fast forward to the plane landing, and paramedics and an ambulance have already been called. All the passengers are let off first and then they come on board to attend to me. A repeat blood pressure: 80/60. Improvement, mild but welcome. I am unsteady on my feet, but they help. “No ambulance” I smile weakly as I say it, disagreeing with the doctor and other medical staff’s advice. I refuse to be taken to a hospital, I just want to catch my second flight home. I am driven off the tarmac. Again and again, they insist, “let us take you to the hospital and get you checked out. Do not get on that second flight. Do not get on it.” But I am stubborn. I am getting on that plane.
Fast forward again, to several hours later — and I still have the needle in my arm, plastered to secure it — as the wheels of the second plane touch the tarmac in Accra, I feel overwhelming relief and gratitude that I have survived despite the risk. I am still alive. The rest of what happens, is that all my subsequent blood tests come back normal. And actually, when a cause isn’t found for something like that, it doesn’t put the mind to rest. As a doctor, I knew that a major factor in my case was that I had been sleeping little, eating little, and emotionally wrecked. In summary, I was fatigued and burnt out. As if that weren’t enough, spiritually? The door was wide open for an attack. But God being so good, He provided. Do you know it turns out that Dr H had trained at the exact hospital I now work at, years ago? What are the odds? There are no coincidences. Had he not been on board, I would have known what was happening, but I could not have cannulated myself to connect the drip bag, nor could I have checked my blood pressure. There really is no doubt, that without God’s hand, I would have died that day. And in the midst of all the pain that 2016 brought me, that was the moment I decided to live. Two days to the end of the year, I decided that I would no longer give up my life. I would fight for something. And I would fight to stay.
I’m believing that 2017 is a year of healing and restoration. God who mends the broken heart, and restores the ruins of our lives, is here. We are alive, because He is still present. We shall live by faith, and not die. Because we are already saved by a love that does not perish. One that is available to every one of us, each new day that we see to encounter it.
May you resurrect this year, in Jesus’ name. Happy 2017.
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