Recently I underwent a reconstructive procedure on my arms. Jim and I travelled to Tulsa.
When I woke up in recovery, except for the male nurse, things seemed to be OK. All except for my left arm. By 4:00pm it was very painful, and it wasn't the same color as the other arm. It was swelling, too. The doctor was alerted, and thought I had held my arm in some way that occluded something.
But holding my arm up on pillows in a perfect way didn't fix it and around 11:00pm the doctor arrived. Soon I was having a second surgery. Things weren't OK. My arm looked like you might imagine an arm would look that had died, all purple and black, swollen and mangled. The manager of our hotel personally went into Jim's hotel room and rounded him up and took him over to the hospital. The doctor wanted him to be there so he could give the OK to remove my arm, if it became necessary.
They didn't remove my arm. Two hours later I was in recovery waking up again, and was surprised to see how much better my arm looked, all six of them. There seemed to be arms everywhere. "Is that the arm that was so swollen and black?? " "Yes..." "I thought it would be months before I recovered from that!"
My doctor came in and said, "The artery in your left arm was nicked." Nicked? How nicked? And I was sent to rest for a couple of days in the hospital.
On Thursday I was discharged, and Friday morning I had my first post op with the doctor. Before the appointment I called the doctor. I was kind of alarmed. I noticed that my legs were swollen, then my kidneys weren't working, then trouble breathing, then severe dizziness. The receptionist got with the doctor and called me back. "That's all normal," she said cheerfully. I wondered what could happen that wouldn't be normal. "The doctor says you need to move around..." OK. Jim is on oxygen, so I used that for my breathing, and started moving some, and resting some. By the time of my appointment I did feel a lot better. I had slept for, oh, eleven hours without moving, so right after surgery, the body doesn't like the lack of circulation.
At the doctor's office, I asked if I was OK to drive. He had insisted that I not drive for two weeks before surgery, but seeing that poor Jim was my ride, he decided I could drive for 30 minutes to spell Jim. Away we went for a three hour tour home.
Boy, what a ride. Jim was in dire straigts, direr than mine, and as soon as we got out of Tulsa, he handed me the reins. I was OK for about an hour, but I started fading. However, I felt safer with me driving than with Jim.
Before I go for any ride in a car, I pray for safety. I pray before trips out of town that it will not rain. No matter how bad the weather is, it almost never does. This day was no exception. I had also prayed that God would protect me from road rage. This seems to be the hardest thing for God to arrange for me and the more impaired I am driving, the more people seem to want to express their displeasure about that with their semis. So there was some of that. We got half an hour from home, and even though we had stopped and walked three times, my legs were swollen again, and I was having trouble breathing. Jim complained that his vision was very bad. He could hardly see. Everything seemed dark. It was 3:00 pm so it wasn't dark out yet. That was why he hadn't wanted to drive. Then my vision suddenly just went. Another normal problem. First things were blurry, then things got darker and darker and darker. Weird.
I've heard that at high noon, at the bottom of a well, one can look up into the sky and see the stars. It was like that. The lights of oncoming traffic shone out in the darkness. Jim complained about people driving with their brights on and I wondered why all the bright headlights at this time of day. And why was it so dark? Dark, dark, dark.
But we arrived home, and both dove into bed and stayed there, both on oxygen, until about two days passed. Ahhh.... I revived and felt stronger.
I was very worried about my next appointment in a week with my doctor in Tulsa. It was three hours there hours there and three hours back. What if things went as bad on that drive as this one had gone? So I broke down and asked Mrs. Billingsley to go with me as a backup driver. OK.
I imagined that the Muckogee Turnpike would be a nice place to change drivers. I stopped at the first picnic area. I didn't turn off the car to it would still be in cruise at 75, the speed limit. It's a beautiful road, in good repair with not much traffic. Practically the whole road to yourself. Most trucks avoid it because the toll gets expensive for them. Piece of cake. I took a fairly long walk first, and climbed into the passenger seat, with Mrs. Billingsley at the wheel.
The sun shone bright in the west, which was the driver's side, and she stepped on the gas. We were about five miles from the first toll. The next thing I knew, we were going 90 and seemed to be picking up speed. Mrs. Billingsley claimed also that the sun visor didn't work. I had resumed the cruise so that she wouldn't have to deal with staying in the speed limit, so I asked her about her speed. Also, she was having a whale of a time staying on the road. First we raced down the shoulder, then careened over to the other lane, then back to the shoulder. Her voice was becoming tense and kind of spooky. Hmmm....
I saw a movie once with Michael J.Foxx, I think. An ex girlfriend picked him up as he walked down the road and gave him a ride. They seemed to be having a nice conversation... Not. Her voice became shrill, and at the same time her speed picked up, this in heavy traffic in town. He had RUINED her life! Sixty mph, seventy mph...What to do? What would you do? Oh, I suppose people think that in that situation, they would unfasten their seatbelt and move over and fight with the driver or turn off the ignition, or step on the brakes from the passenger's seat or, or. Or what? He did what I did. Try to talk to the agitated person, calm them down and hope they were able to think clearly enough to lift their foot off the gas pedal. That's what he did. That's what I did. In that case, his girlfriend got up to, oh, a hundred and twenty and then went off a bridge. What would Mrs. Billingsley do?
Rather than distract her by speaking, I signalled with my hand for her to move back onto the road. We were still going fast, at least 75. We approached the toll booth. About half a mile before you get to it, there's a sign that says, "Speed limit 65." She ignored this and I pointed it out to her. "Now the sign says 55 mph," I pointed out carefully. She ignored that, too. Then it said 45 mph... "NOW IT SAYS 35 AND YOU'RE STILL GOING 75!! HIT THE BRAKES!!" I couldn't tell if we were heading through the gate and about to smash it to smitherins, or if we were going to crash into the little building where the guards live out their days. I saw a toll guard in their blue policeman looking uniform walking around, walking across the road, apparently imaging we were going to stop. Suddenly it occurred to Mrs. Billingsley to try the brakes and we screeched up to the basket. She had trouble again with everything about that little basket, but somehow paid the toll, opening the door and getting out to reach the basket. It's not that difficult!
On the other side of the toll is a parking area. I pointed it out. Did we pull over and park? No. Why didn't I leap from the car as soon as it was stopped at the toll booth? I'm still asking myself that.
I thought the flashing lights and bells and the myriad of warning signs and guards in their stern looking uniforms had unsettled Mrs. Billingsley, and once we were through all the confusion she would settle down. I kept thinking, "I know she knows where the brake pedal is. I know she knows where the gas pedal is. She knows that one controls them with one's foot. The steering wheel steers the car....She knows how to drive...: " Soon we were bobbing and weaving through what little traffic there was, again going real fast, which is not typical of her driving habits. She will drive along next to a semi for an hour before she passes it, rather and speed up past the speed limit. The sun visor hung at a cockeyed angle as her foot put the pedal to the metal, glaring sunlight hurting my eyes. We drove off and on the road over to the other lane and far shoulder. I had tried to get her to slow down going through Muskogee, where the speed limit is only 70, but she also ignored this, passing everything in sight. It seemed like one could at least use other traffic as a measure of speed. No...not today! Then we came to a work zone..."The speed limit is 45 here..." I pointed out hopefully. "Oh, my," she responded. "Oh my?" I wondered. Why was that a problem? Take your foot off the gas pedal. In the work lane, they were digging up the road, and every now and then, there were mile deep holes in the road, and people milling around doing stuff. There were barricades. She seemed to zero in on them, then suddenly change her mind and zoom over to the far shoulder. The deep holes went all the way to our lane, so there really wasn't room for error. It wouldn't be pretty to run into a hole. She finally seemed to slow down when she ran up on someone's tail who had slowed down to 60 anyway. There weren't any other options. Steady, steady....
The work zone went on for six long, frightening miles, miraculously without incident, and then the race down the road resumed. I told her that in two miles we would come to a concession area. I'd like to stop there. The exit is on the left. She seemed as agitated as ever, and I sensed that almost anything I said would be her cue to speed up to 120, let go of the wheel and take us into oncoming traffic. To my great relief, I saw the concession area and told her again that we needed to exit on the left. On the left. OK, on the other lane than this lane. She got into the left lane, but why were we not slowing down? "This is the exit, on the left, this is the exit, on the left....you need to slow down...you need to actually get onto the exit..." These words seemed to drift to heaven like a prayer that went seemingly unanswered. I knew she spoke English. Or did she? Had she forgotten her words?
She summoned her courage and put the left wheels over onto the exit. I reminded her to slow down. Could we get onto the exit? Some daring fellow in a beautiful black BMW decided that we were indeed taking the exit, so therefore he would go ahead and go by us in the lane we were still in, assuming that we were exiting. He passed by my window, missing us by inches.
Mrs. Billingsley slowed, and after seeming to consider running into a grassy knoll, elected to stay on the exit. Ahead of us lay many gas pumps. She couldn't decide whether to run them down or not, but at least we were going slower and we were off the road. I suggested we stop at the McDonalds. There was a big sign with the golden arches...over there...over there. We simply stopped, still sitting in the exit. I pointed out the parking spaces. She drove into one of them finally as if it were spring loaded with a trap for cars. Was it over? Really?
We got out and headed for cover. "What happened back there?" I asked. She complained of being completely confused and disoriented. "Yeah. OK. I'm OK to drive now..."
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