OCR Text |
Show 385 The Last Option Dr. Emerson is looking glum. I do not blame him. The pump works - and it works well - but because my dura was so perforated, we turned the pump off and experimented with various other drugs, to no success. Then we tried IVIGg, which did help, but it is no longer a possibility because I contracted meningitis from it. We next tried plasmapharesis and after initial success came the subsequent rebounding, the failure of two grafts, the second just a few days ago, accompanied by a cardiac arrest. It does not likely seem a future treatment either. We have been turning up the Versed as I stiffen, day by day. "How long has it been since we've turned off the pump?" I am asking. I have no ability to traverse timelines. I am thinking it has probably been a year. "Three, four years," he is saying and in that fragment of speech I realize just how much of my life has been lost to Versed. "Then let's turn it on again," I am saying. Three or four years is a lot of time for the dura to heal, if it ever will, I am thinking. He raises his eyebrows and studies the sheets at the foot of my bed. He is weighing the potential for overdose with the certainty that I cannot live in this hospital on Versed forever. |