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8/14/2019 The Cold Room and Pump Head
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The Cold Room by Steven Donnini
THE COLD ROOM
by Steven Donnini
This true story can cause hysterical amnesia, nausea,
spontaneous weeping, insomnia, shingles, blood loss, chest
pain, headaches, backache, flashbacks, shortness of breath,
post traumatic stress syndrome, melancholy and pump head.
Copyright 2009
Steven Donnini
Austin, Texas
Orlando, [email protected]
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The Cold Room by Steven Donnini
One morning in May 2005, I was heading out for a meeting
when I noticed my chest hurt more than usual. I asked my
loving wife to take me to the hospital in Orlando, Florida
which is just 4 blocks away from our house in Winter Park.
We arrived at the ER in a few minutes she was very worried
about what was happening because she has a medical
background. A long history of heart disease have plagued
be, but nothing like this. It was clear to me that my
heart wasnt working too well and I was likely having a
heart attack. The ER doctors and nursing staff were
concerned about my blood pressure 240 over 160. The
testing went on for three days to determine how clogged the
arteries were in my heart. We blew off the stress test, no
point in stressing me anymore. The primary issue in my
mind was will I survive surgery? Insurance companies like
to use stets and balloons to open arteries in the heart
because they are relativity quick and cheap. On the third
morning a polite young cardiologist stopped by to see me.
He had the tattered look of the resident who had not had a
full nights sleep in many months. He said, The Cardiology
team has concluded that you are not a good candidate for
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about the 4thbye pass. I didnt want to know any details
because there was nothing I could contribute.
The next morning, I was riding feet first into a hospital
operating room. The glass doors slid open to release ice
cold air that flowed across me from my feet to my face. It
smelled like antiseptic coming from the huge sterile room.
I thought, this could be the last thing I experience in
this lifetime. I could see nurses and doctors and surgeons
preparing the tools of the trade. My memory of what
happened during the next 15 hours is completely gone. A
bright light at the end of a long tunnel? Dont know. All
I know of those hours is that one team of doctors removed
veins from my left leg below the knee to the ankle.
Another team cut my chest open from just below my neck to
just below my ribcage, revealing my sternum. They cut
their way through the sternum bone with an electric saw and
opened my chest like a Christmas Turkey. My heart was
still pumping when it was exposed to the cold air. A surge
of potassium and my heart stopped beating for 26 minutes
while the surgeon grafted four veins around blockages in
arterys creating four bypasses. The procedure has been
done to many people, but bypass surgery doesnt mean you
bypassed surgery by no means. When I awoke in ICU I was
agitated and angry. I had been awakened from a deep sleep
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against my will. I had been fighting back at life itself.
I was thinking I dont want to come back. Then, I thought
of my wife and 2 children. What would they do without me?
I dont think they would let me die even if I wanted to,
but I like to feel I had a choice in the matter. I chose
to live even with the pain, 4 broken ribs, chest tubes and
catheter. Time was fleeting in the ICU but the sound of
plastic containers opening every few minutes became
unbearable. Everything in the ICU has to be sterile, so
everything is packaged in sealed plastic containers which
when opened make a very unpleasant sound. The next day or
so was a struggle in consciousness. I was told that to get
out of ICU I had to drink fluids, have a bowl movement and
get the three chest tubes and the catheter removed. This
was a tall order, but when I heard the following words over
the intercom I was motivated. Spoken in a soft womans
voice, Number 7 to the morgue. That cant be me. I must
be 11 or 12 at least. Who is number 7? That has always
been my luck number. I looked around through the clear
plastic drapery walls and across the hall to a woman that
looked quite alive, but very unhappy. I thought I got to
get out of this place even if it means getting a
suppository from the young nurse who was caring for me.
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I could only hope amnesia was part of the deal with this
procedure. In fact, everything is a procedure. Its
almost ritualistic the way the cardiac nurses do things.
The last procedure in ICU was the removal of the three
chest tubes and the catheter. The first to go was the
catheter. It was a relief to get that thing out. The
chest tube removal was a strange dance of nurses and
procedures. It all began with the who part of the
procedure. Which one of the nurses was going to do the
procedure that involved instruments and a carefully
executed technique. The procedure is to remove three, 24
milky white large plastic tubes from my chest at once by
pulling on them all out with one motion. One tube was
inserted in between my ribs under my left breast, another
was coming out just below my re-attached sternum and the
last tube was to the right of that one. I could remember
what it felt like when the tubes were removed from my
kidney surgery years before. It was unforgettable. Being
disemboweled is the only word I can use to describe the
feeling. I wasnt looking forward to this tubular
Trifecta. A type of bet, esp. on horse races, in which the
bettor must select the first three finishers in exact
order. But it was the only way out of the ICU. This was
gonna hurt and there was no way around it. I was just
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That Christmas years ago in Dallas, my two daughters came
to visit from Florida for the Holidays.
We had a great time shopping in the local malls and eating
out. Two days before they were to return home my chest
started to hurt so I called my cardiologist for an
appointment. I booked it for the day after their
departure, so they would know what was going on. They were
young and I didnt want to frighten them. The morning of
their flight home I looked down in the toilet and noticed
several bloody polyps floating in the water.
That night I lay awake writing letters to all my loved ones
telling them how much I loved them. The next morning at
the Doctorsoffice I got an EKG and examination. My Doctor
said, Get dressed and come to my office we need to talk.
I know hes going to be pissed that I failed to mention the
bloody polyps but I can only handle one deadly symptom at a
time. So, Im holding back on that one since it could be
the worst of the two. The other thing is I was terrified
that I was going to have a heart attack and bleed out at
the same time. I sat down across from him thinking
everything in my life is about to change. Doctor M. said,
You have asthma and a enlarged heart. I though thats
not too bad. He went on explaining things.
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Then I said, Theres one other thing. I had bloody polyps
in my BM today.
He asked, Have younoticed that before? No. Then
what did you eat the night before? A chocolate cake with
cranberries. We had a good stress relieving laugh.
I walked away feeling better. As I was driving home I
remembered a session with my therapist Charlie Clark who
specialized in dealing with the many problems creative
people have in life. He said, You are an early dier. We
need to work on that. I dont want you dying on me. He
explained that people like me dontlive long lives.
Now in the ICU , all the things he said were about to come
true. I didnt have any choice. I started to prey. God
Ive come this far, dont let this kill me from fright
before I can see my wife and girls. The male nurse walked
in and stood over me with clamp scissors and asked, Are
you ready? I closed my eyes and said, God help me. I
waited for the horror that was to come. I looked up at his
surprised face. He had removed all the tubes at once and I
didnt feel anything, not even a tug. He was about to say
something like Im sorry. But instead he said with
amazement, Were done! In rapid succession came the two
nurses to see me. They couldnt believe that the tubes
were out. I must have passed out with relief.
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I awakened out of ICU with my friend Marshal sitting in a
chair next to my bed. He was dressed from head to toe in
black.
At 63 and weighing in at over 300 lbs he resembled
character Rubeus Hagrid played by actor Robbie Coltrane
from the Harry Potter movie. He had been sitting there
quietly waiting for me to come to consciousness. You would
never guess he is a rocket scientist with NASA. The next
week, was a drug induced blur of doctors and nurses coming
and going, making notes on my chart that was growing into a
Russian novel. When I was told it was time to go home I
was terrified that newly stitched bye passes could spring a
leak and I would bleed to death before I could get to my
feet. I started crying and didnt stop for about 2 years.
I still dont know when its going to start. I wasnt a
big crying man before the heart surgery. But its been
uncontrollable. We sit in a restaurants and I start crying
over salad. Watch a movie and I start crying. Listen to
music and I start crying. Look at my wife and tears come
gushing out. At first it was a surprise and a search for
what was the problem. Now its become a joke. Shopping in
a store I will get the feeling and cry. I try to hide the
tears but that only makes thing worst. I know there are
other people who are afflicted with the same problem
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because I see them in supermarkets and restaurants other
places.
In fact, I find myself stopping to talk to them. I always
open with How you feeling? They know what Im talking
about. So we talk about whats going on and how expensive
it is to stay alive these days. Then there are things I
dont talk about like the feeling that I was spared to be
shut out of the world I worked in for so many years. I
love my work. But I made the mistake of telling people
what had happened. I learned that many people see me as a
throwaway now. Ive become unreliable to them. The
insurance industry wont touch me. Its very hard to get a
film completion bond or health insurance. Maybe its a
primitive tribal thing that happens when someone in the
village gets sick. They dont want to here about it. Just
get out of the way so we can get on with life. I had an
occasion to call a lawyer who after hearing my story said,
So you survived death to become the walking dead. The
way he said it, the tone was sarcastic and rude. But he
was right. He couldnt help me. Interestingly that didnt
make me cry. That stuff doesnt do it for me, but a club
sandwich and salad will. I started to do some research
into what happens to people who have had the same surgery.
What I discovered is PUMP HEAD.
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In the highly competitive surgery business theres a post-
op effect in the brain they call Pump Head. Its one of
the leftovers from being on a heart lung machine. What
happens is that tiny bubbles of oxygen are pumped into your
blood to keep the brain alive and some of these bubbles get
stuck in between brain cells and stay there. Its like
having microscopic ball bearings in you memory banks.
Sometimes a word just rolls over them in the middle of a
thought. You know what the word is but you cant get it
out. Its just gone on down the memory highway and makes
for awkward moments. It helps to have a standard out to
another subject. Like a sneeze or cough. I have asked
myself, why not talk to Doctor about this stuff? The thing
is I have a Doctor who is an ass hole. I cant talk to him
about stuff like crying because he is only interested in
the numbers. He says, I dont care how you feel. Lets
get the numbers right. I think he has issues with me
about the fact that I didnt have the surgery on his watch
and he lost out on some fat cheese Doctor payday. Im
going to stick around to gig him a bit before I tell him
how I feel about him.
He could be trying to get rid of me before he has a death
on his resume. Cant have too many of those or his
insurance company could raise his rates. Or maybe hes
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really a sensitive guy who doesnt want to show guilt
feelings that come when one of his patients falls over on a
treadmill during a stress test.
My wife is in the medical business. She knows all the
procedures, insurance, and what can go wrong. She also
knows many medical workers. One night she invited a friend
over for dinner. I made dinner while they talked shop.
I served dinner and asked, What do you do? She answered,
I work in the OR. Lana told me about your heart surgery.
I handle the heart during the operations. By job is to
hold the heart with both hands to keep it from beating
while the surgeon stitches in the bye passes. She looked
up at me and saw my expression. Oh sorry.
Theres a lot more stuff they dont tell you. Like how
much this is going to cost you in cash and suffering. A
few weeks later, my wife asked the insurance person in her
medical office how much my surgery cost. Its confidential
but she looked it up on the company insurance plan we have.
The total was 1.7 million dollars. I thought what would
life be like if we didnt have A+ health insurance? First
of all the hospital wouldnt do the surgery. They would
give me blood thinners and push me out the door.
In fact, 10 days after my release from hospital I made a
creative presentation to head of production at
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NBC/Universal. It involved presenting 12 new TV show
ideas. Just before going in the hospital the same people
offered me a job as Executive Producer of the production
company. I considered what it would be like and offered an
alternative where I would develop programming with them but
not be on staff. I told him what had happened and he said
that his Dad had the same thing happen. He was very
understanding.
When people discover you have heart surgery they wont hire
you unless your Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bill Clinton,
Charlie Rose or Larry King. Youre screwed as far as
employment is concerned. Companies dont want an employee
who could spring a leak and drop dead in a meeting. What
would the clients think? You could ruin a perfectly good
meeting and make everyone feel bad.
The reason I wrote this is to express these feelings to
others who may have experienced the same thing. And to
share what I have learned in the process. The truth is
that in our society we dont like to be uncomfortable. We
expect that everything should be made secure for us. Every
situation we encounter will not be easy. In fact it can be
down right miserable and or abusive. Other people have gone
through the same thing I did and never complained about it.
They just go forward with their life and never talk about
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what happened to them or what they were feeling. I think
it takes a lot longer to heal when we dont express our
feelings. Many knowledgeable people have said we heal from
the inside out. However there is one thing that nags at
me. Where did my spirit go to during the 30 minutes my
heart was stopped? My mind had to know what was happening.
After all my body was cut in half. I have a feeling of
coming back from somewhere. But where? Where did I go
that I didnt want to return from? The drugs the doctors
used are very powerful, yet many surgeons ask that the OR
staff be quite. Or that a soothing kind of music be played
while the operation is in action.
Many people have reported to hearing different sounds or
talking after being completely unconscious.
Now, I look back and realize that everyone will handle the
same experience differently. And that is as it should be.
The important thing is Im here with the people I love.
We cant solve problems by using the same kind of thinking
we used when we created them.
Albert Einstein
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