“Carl, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t feel too good,” I told her.
“Do you want to see a doctor?” she asked.
Suddenly it all came back to me. Yes, I needed to see a doctor. My past history from my first life came roaring back. “I think so. I think I’m having a heart attack,” I told her.
Marilyn shrieked a little and scrambled out of the bed, grabbing her robe and running out of the bedroom. When this happened the first time, we had to call the ambulance and wait for them to show. Now, I had a doctor in residence, and an ambulance down below able to haul me away in a heartbeat. I had all sorts of amazing quality health care, probably able to give me a heart transplant at a moment’s notice.
I knew it wasn’t a heart attack.
I had gall stones. I was in the middle of a gall bladder attack. It is very painful and unpleasant, but not fatal. I was in my mid-40s when this happened to me the first time, too. The gall bladder is a small organ on the right side of the abdomen that is involved with digestion, and secretes bile into the intestinal tract. Every once in a while something goes wrong and the gall bladder accumulates some crystals that form into little stones, similar to kidney stones in the kidneys. When the stones work through the bile duct, it can be very difficult and painful. Nine times out of ten, that pain is located on the right side of your abdomen, somewhere near the gall bladder. You have pain there, the doctor figures it out quick, they yank your gall bladder, and you are back up and running. Okay, it’s a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea.
I am that one-in-ten patient. I don’t get pain near my gall bladder. I get pain up between my shoulder blades. I spent six months and three doctors going through gall stone attacks, visiting two separate hospitals, and God alone knows how many tests figuring it out. Every fucking doctor would examine me, tell me it sounded like gall stones, but it was in the wrong place, and order more tests. Finally I went to a surgeon who told me to stop screwing around. I could live without a gall bladder, so he would yank it, and if the pain stopped, we would know I was cured. It sounded crazy, but it worked.
Now, I had to go through the whole miserable experience all over again. Whoopee.
My health on this go had been much, much better than on my first trip through. Over the years I had skipped over some diseases I had on my first trip (for example, back then I caught pneumonia at 14 but didn’t this time, no idea why) and had a few I didn’t have then (terminal infections in that Honduran jail cell this time). I didn’t smoke, I kept my weight down, and I stayed in shape. When I was smoking I had seasonal colds, four a year (a winter cold, a spring cold…) along with frequent sinus infections, and my weight caused a bunch of other issues. Now, I only had colds every couple of years, and the biggest health issue I had was from eating all sorts of fried foods while campaigning at state fairs. I am a Southern boy and I love fried food! That stuff will kill you, but what a way to go! As far as anything else was concerned, my cholesterol was high, and I had been on Lipitor for ten years. Other than my right knee being shot, and gradually getting worse, I was a whole lot healthier than my first time around.
All of this flashed through my miserable mind as I sat slumped there in agony. The pain kept increasing, even as Marilyn ran back in, trailed by a pair of Secret Service agents. I knew these guys got all sorts of medical and first aid training, and they took a look and one guy started muttering into his sleeve. About thirty seconds later the night shift doctor and nurse came running in with a ‘crash cart’, everything needed to revive me.
Doctor Rhodes asked, “How are you doing, Mister President?”
“I’ve been better,” I told him. What was I going to say, that I had already diagnosed myself?
“What’s wrong?”
“I have got a lot of pain, in my back, up between my shoulders, and I feel pretty hot, and have been sweating and nauseous. I mean, it sounded like those warning signs, you know, like we used to teach the kids in the Boy Scouts,” I answered lamely.
I knew what was going to happen next. It had happened to me before, and these guys don’t fuck around with the President’s health. “That’s pretty smart thinking, Mister President. Let’s take a look. Let’s get your shirt off.”
I awkwardly peeled off my undershirt, and then lay back on the bed. Marilyn was off to the side holding Stormy by the collar, and the agents were hovering over me. A few more came through into the bedroom also, along with a stretcher. Meanwhile, Doctor Rhodes and the nurse hooked me up to a portable EKG machine, and examined it for a few minutes. Meanwhile, the pain just kept increasing.
“Well, good news, your heart is just fine. Whatever is causing this, it isn’t your heart,” he told me.
“Well, can you give me something for the pain then?”
“In a bit. I think we are going to want to run a few tests, though.”
Oh, crap. There was no way to avoid it, and I didn’t even want to try. “Like?”
“Maybe an MRI, an ultrasound, the stuff we can’t do here. I think we’re taking you over to George Washington University Hospital. Maybe we can do something about the pain there.” He motioned to the others, and about thirty seconds later I was loaded onto a stretcher, wrapped in a sheet and blanket, and rumbling out of the room. One of the agents was holding onto Stormy while Marilyn scampered along, still in her robe.
I looked over at my wife, and told her, “I’ll be fine. I’ll be back in the morning. Go back to bed.”
“Have you lost your mind!? I’m getting dressed and coming with you!”
“Ma’am, we need to go now. You should get dressed and have one of the agents bring you over,” interjected Rhodes.
“Okay.” Marilyn bent over and kissed me, and then I was on the elevator, heading downstairs.
Well, that was a fun ride. We didn’t have the sirens going in the middle of the night, but we did have the lights flashing on the whole fucking caravan, and about five minutes later I was being trundled into an exam room. The best part was that the White House is manned 24-7 by reporters with cameras pointed at every conceivable exit. This whole episode was going out live on the news channels right now. In the morning, the stock market was going to take a dive!
Marilyn showed up about ten minutes later, dressed and accompanied by a pair of Secret Service agents. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Like crap, if you must know. How bad are the reporters?” I asked.
“I didn’t see anybody. Why?”
I snorted, and that hurt, too. “I just came roaring over from the White House with everything except sirens. You watch. They’ll be pronouncing me dead by dawn. John McCain is warming up in the bullpen by now!”
“It won’t be that bad, Mister President. Come on, let’s get you to the MRI,” said, Doctor Rhodes.
Off we went, first to an MRI machine, and then to an ultrasound. Everybody looked at my heart first, and I simply told them to get pictures; my family was of the opinion I didn’t have one. I got a few dutiful laughs over that one. Finally they decided I could have something for the pain, and a hypodermic went into the IV line that had been already run, and the pressure magically began to drop.
My mind was going over my past history. I knew that part of the improvement in my condition was simply that the stone was passing and the attack was ending. An attack would last anywhere from two-and-a-half to three hours, unpleasant all, and leave me beat and wiped out. I was starting to slide down the end slope now. One particularly bad evening I had two stones pass in a row, and I went through it for six hours. The best I could hope for then was a few old Tylenols with codeine from the back of somebody’s medicine cabinet, and opiates mostly make me nauseous as hell.