The ex used to talk disparagingly about what I do--the practice of medicine I do in a different sort of way. It's never actually worked, in his mind. At least, not in my shitty prescriber hands....He likes to wonder aloud if it works to my kids, enjoys telling folks that he just hasn't seen results, in spite of the instances to the contrary that he seems to conveniently forget.
This week I arrived on the East coast for a family visit. Unfortunately, the night before one of my DNA donors had collapsed and been hospitalized. Febrile, convulsing, and delirious with labs and imaging revealing nothing out of the ordinary, my other DNA donor was in a state of overwhelm and constant panic....
I thought he was dead when I found him on the floor....
Nonetheless, he'd come to a bit for the paramedics.... Tylenol was given. IVs, Pharmaceuticals followed. Plain Film. CT. EKG. MRI. Many labs. DNA donor seemed to grow worse in the hospital. The Tylenol, et al would not suppress the fever nor the violent convulsions and chills nor the delirious hallucinations. By the time I saw him, he was acting strangely, loopy, not himself, expecting a miracle from the Miracle Max who worked for the king for all those years.... But he didn't want to help me help him. He was too loopy for that. No pressure there.
Did I mention, I'm no Miracle Max?
Did I mention, that I'm actually trying to take a much needed break from my work?
But that is always seemingly the timing for when somebody nearly dies or needs an acute prescription of the little nothingness that I do. And ultimately, these things matter not. When your own family member is in danger of dying, and you're a doctor you do whatever the hell you can in spite of the voice of your ex ringing in your head telling you just how fucked up at prescribing you are. You try to shut down the echo of how he thought you'd fail out of med school. How you suck at being an entrepreneur. How you will never amount to anything....You try not to focus on all that and the fact that the practice of this holistic medicine is pretty damn difficult....
Focus on what is Strange. Rare. Peculiar. Those chills and tetanus-like-convulsions and violent trembling as part of the lead up to the fever are strange as far as fevers go.
And so you do.
And that is when everything absolutely and dramatically shifts for him or so he tells you the next day in his old self. He's normal. Non febrile. He tears up and seems to think you saved his life. They are going to discharge him, he tells you.
But you--you still aren't sure. Perhaps it was something else. Or so says the voice in your head, at least.
