1
It was a beautiful summer that year. I was awfully busy at work, but was spending every minute I could find seated on the back porch soaking up as much of the vitamins D and K that Ol' Sol had to offer, maybe reading a detective novel or a baseball biography or maybe just having it at my side.
A team of VP's and other senior administrators were working hard to put together a dynamite overnight retreat in August, for team-building, group revitalization, and tightening our focus on a slightly new approach to making further progress. We'd done one five or six years earlier, and it was time again. That was the extra factor, making it a particularly busy time.
I had a regular, formal meeting on Wednesday mornings with my chief associate. We checked signals, chatted, crossed paths and the like several times every day, of course, but she was also taking care of some special projects of her own that we needed the set-aside time to discuss in some depth.
Well, one Wednesday morning my associate didn't seem her usual robust and energetic self, so I asked: "Are you okay?"
"Didn't sleep well last night. I think maybe I've got a touch of the 24-hour flu that's been going around."
"Ick," I said, drawing back just a bit. "Look, why don't you just take off? We can re-schedule Friday or so...."
"I want to finish up the morning and then go home for the day," she said, with characteristic determination.
So, we got right to it, and we did at least run through her little stack of papers and notes in less than the 90 minutes allocated. I shooed her out, made a call or two, and took off for lunch.
2
For a few months already back then, at my heart doctor's suggestion, I had been taking a little 20-minute nap each day after my sandwich and apple for lunch. Nothing seemed unusual either to me or to my wife that particular day as I slipped off to the bedroom and found some white noise on the television sufficiently lulling for the nap thing to take hold.
Only, when I woke up a few minutes later, I didn't feel all that normal anymore. I told my wife I was going to take another 15-20 minutes but not to call the office.
By that time I was feeling a little chilled. It was summer, remember, but I put a light blanket over me. I told my wife I must have picked up the flu from my associate. She call my secretary, who confirmed that I didn't have any meetings scheduled. I dozed again.
3
Maybe I dozed again, but I wasn't comfortable. My temperature was over 100, and my wife was beginning to talk about the doctor. When my shivers began to shake the whole queen-sized bed, I agreed she should call to see if I could come in for a quick exam.
During my cold-hot-cold-hot travails, I tired to pay attention to her side of the conversation. It turned out - as apparently everyone in town knew, but us - the doctors all took Wednesday afternoons off in the heart of the summer, presumably to play golf!
My doctor's service didn't have anyone "on call," as they say. "When you say, Go to Emergency," I heard my wife saying, "Do you mean go in at sit with my shivering, groaning husband in those hard chairs in the waiting room for 4 hours until someone can fit us in?"
Then she said, "Yeah, I thought so!"
4
I made do with a warm bath, an ice pack and an electric heating pad, and she launched into an attack on that list of household chores that we never got around to. Anything to keep her busy as she muttered about golf-playing doctors while their patients suffered. She checked on me from time to time, of course. We both felt the same about Emergency, but weren't happy about having to wait all the way to Thursday morning.
I kept dozing off and waking up to change from heat gear to cold gear. After a couple of hours, I hauled myself to the toilet. Afterwards, I propped myself up on the vanity and looked into my eyes... Only, what I noticed was a total surprise! My right jaw had suddenly swollen up as if I'd had a tooth extracted without benefit of any drugs.
5
Now this is a surprising development for someone who thought he was suffering from flu. Flu doesn't make your jaw puff up like that. My problem instead had to do with my teeth, despite the fact that I'd had no mouth pain, no gum bleeding, nothing like that. Was it, my wife and I wondered, an abscess?
The possibility of my having a tooth abscess may not sound like good news, but at least there was a chance that - even though it was a nice summer Wednesday afternoon - all the dentists in town might not be out of their offices.
My wife was back on the phone in an instant, as I limped back to bed. She got through to an oral surgeon we knew. He was booked up in an office in another town, but his staff got to him and got back to us how best to manage through the night, and he would see me before any other patient in still another little nearby town at 7:30 a.m. Thursday.
Just to have some of the uncertainty removed was a relief.
6
I don't remember how tough it was getting through to seven that next morning, but at that time, my wife had me hunkered down in the passenger seat as we slipped out the driveway and headed west.
We hadn't been to Dr. C-----'s office next to the hospital before, but it wasn't hard to find. The parking lot was empty, but the door was unlatched, the lights were on, somebody was looking out for us. I was ushered directly int0 the dental chair in the first office, and Dr. C----- himself was at my side.
Both his nurse and he said, "Oh my," or something of that order in a tone of voice that didn't instill confidence. I was a little blue, I understand.
Blood pressure: 60 over 40.
That's low. There was a little exchange of views about the Emergency Room, but that idea wasn't pressed. Dr. C----- explained that I clearly had a bacterial infection in one of my lower right side tooth cavities, that by now had spread into the rest of my body. I learned the term "septicemia." Anti-biotics were in order: an all-purpose one immediately, and tomorrow a more focused one determined on the basis of lab tests.
The doctor explained that he needed to extract from my jaw all the... well, all the pus he could get out, both to relieve the pressure on the spot and to provide the same for the lab tests. The needle he held up to show me looked about the size of a baseball bat. There was just a little spurt when he first slipped the point of it into my gum.
They phoned the 24-hour pharmacy and sent us on our way.
7
So that was the scary part. The recovery part started as soon as I popped the first antibiotic pill, and started getting a lot better when the lab report helped to determine a more specialized antibiotic. But after than pervasive an infection, I found, it takes a long time to fully recover.
Dealing with the abscessed tooth, the root canal, and all that seemed superficial compared to the effort my whole body seemed to have to make to get fully healthy again. I slept a lot, stayed in bed when I wasn't sleeping too, and - yes - sat reading or dozing for hours on the back porch soaking up the healthful rays.
And all that extra work? Somehow, it seemed to be getting done. I spent lots of time on the phone with my staff. My associate had not gotten the flu, by the way, and missed only that one Wednesday afternoon at the office. By Tuesday, I started tottering into the office for half days. I would typically go home around noon, have lunch, and then lie down for a nap... but the nap wouldn't be for 20 minutes or so. It might be for a couple of hours.
Fortunately, the group work for those of us planning the big August Retreat was already finished before that fateful Wednesday. I was scheduled for two important roles myself. A dozen or so of the participants were to be people who reported to me, so I was a key member of the team we were hoping to "build" (or re-build); it was important for me to be participating in the Retreat activities as much as possible. Then, I was charged with giving a final wrap-up speech designed to review key points made during the whole event and to help everyone leave charged up and ready to take the next hill.
The event was all set to start two weeks after my little adventure, and although my preparation work was pretty well done already, I was far from feeling the strength and energy I would have expected of myself during the Retreat itself... What could be done?
8
All my colleagues were very patient with me. As it turned out, I slept at home instead of spending the long evenings socializing with everybody at the Retreat. I'd show up after breakfast and jump into whatever we were doing... for a couple of hours. Then, I'd go find a quiet corner, lie down (more than once on the floor), and take a nap, after which I'd find a way to re-insert myself into all the hoop-la and group discussions. It was still a strain, but I could take it.
And I managed to get through my own wrap-up message still standing, although the razzle-dazzle must have been a little the worse for wear.
Afterward, that back porch was even more inviting! But on Wednesdays, I still thought resentfully about the doctors strolling around the fairways while their ailing patients talked to their answering services.
***
