David B. Silva

Well, here’s how weird things get sometimes …

I had a tooth that needed big time attention. It was infected and causing a great deal of pain. So I found a dentist that was open on a Sunday (ever notice how all pain-related events tend to occur late Saturday night or on Sunday when everything’s closed?) and agreed to pull the tooth at an affordable price. But first, he wanted to take my blood pressure.

I won’t tell you what the numbers were, but they were high enough that he refused to pull the tooth. Instead, he sent me directly to the emergency room at the local hospital with motivating words, “You could die any second. Walking out to your car. You could die.”

Well, I thought I be in and out in a day at the most. Give me something for the blood pressure and send me home, and once it’s in the right range I’ll go get the tooth pulled.

I’m so naive when it comes to hospitals. It took them four or five hours to get it down, but of course, they had another concern and wanted to keep me overnight for observation. Okay, one night. That didn’t sound too unreasonable for a hospital stay.

They continued to give me meds for the high blood pressure, took X-rays, hooked me up to a heart monitor, etc.

The next morning, the doctor comes in and she says their initial concerns were unwarranted. I was fine in that area of my heath. But they really wanted to get the blood pressure under control and they wanted to do it in a safe and timely manner.

By then, my life belonged to the hospital. Every few hours, they took blood, checked my blood pressure, gave me a pill for my tooth pain, gave me a pill for the infection, analyzed whether or not the meds were working, on and on. And six days later, still unable to control my blood pressure, they finally conceded that I might be in there for a month and still not have my blood pressure under control. So, they let me out so I could continue monitoring at home.

Couldn’t wait to get out of there.

I’m back home at last, and grateful to be home. Lost six days of work, went stir crazy, and came out incredibly weak, but I’m home. While I hated every moment of the experience, I do have say that everyone, from the doctor to the nurses to the food service (I lost 11 pounds!) to the house keeping, were all wonderful people. Friendly. Helpful. Concerned. And that truly made an intolerable situation tolerable.

So, now I have a few days of catching up to do and then it’s back to work.

And sometime in the next week or so, when my blood pressure is looking a little rosier, I’ll get that nagging tooth pulled!

Note: Just wanted to finish this off on a positive note. I’ve got a new short story collection coming out from Dark Regions in next month or so. It’s called The Shadows of Kingston Mills, and eleven of the twelve stories are brand new. I’ll share more as I get stronger and the publication date gets closer.