February 23, 2013- One of those days

It started out as a routine day. I was working in Houston at a chemical plant. It was a cold and windy day.  I was working with a team of three and I was forty feet up a smokestack, which I had climbed via a ladder mounted on the side of the  stack.   I was alone but I had a radio.  When suddenly, I felt a wave pass over me.  I knew something was wrong, but what? I felt like I was on the deck of a ship, gently rocking. The world felt like it had gotten fuzzier, and weird.  I decided to wait it out and hoped it would pass.  But it didn’t.  And  I was getting weaker.  I decided to get off the stack while I could.  As I looked down the ladder, I thought “This could get ugly”.  I got weaker as I descended.  I concentrated to keep my grip on each rung of the ladder. Slowly I descended, until I reached the ground, exhausted. I sat down to rest.  Instead of the rest re-energizing  me, I felt exhausted.  I tried to get up and walk to the lab trailer, but I collapsed. My muscles were paralyzed yet I could feel sensation in my extrematies.   I was fully aware of what was going on but bewildered as to  what it was. As I lay on the ground, I heard the radio chatter.  “Where is Randy?”…..silence…..”He has fallen at the base of the stack. ” The plant’s first responders were summoned and they arrived within minutes. They rolled me on my back and asked me questions, but I could barely talk.  One of them said, “I think he has had a stroke”.  My thoughts raced.  “Oh crap, this can’t be happening, I’m only 58.”. An ambulance arrived and I was taken to a local hospital.

In the hospital, I started to recover.Though weak and shaken, I could talk and ask questions , and my hands and arms had recovered to the degree that I could sign forms. My prospects were looking hopeful.  A priest showed up to give me Last Rites, which I found confusing. It turns out my mother had been notified and demanded I be given Last Rites. I was started on an IV of tPA, which is a clot buster and flown by helicopter to a near-by hospital that specialized in strokes. We were met by a nurse and I was  taken to the ICU to be checked in. It was decided to take me to get a MRI. On the way , I started having trouble breathing. Real difficulty. There was a problem transferring me to the MRI table.  The technicians were mostly petite women and I was a big guy(6’2″, 280#). My breathing worsened. Fade to black..I don’t remember anything from this point.

It was one of those days.

 

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