Down for the count in Singapore

Hua Hin is where Thai royalty goes for vacation.

     We were supposed to spend the first part of this week with friends Amy and Todd, who traveled here from Denver, at the Hua Hin Hyatt Regency. Instead, I managed to get a room with three incredibly stoic cancer patients at Singapore General Hospital. Apparently, there's no wing devoted to skull fractures.

Singapore General's admissions office. I didn't have to stop here. I got the red-carpet
treatment, going through the ER.

     It all started last Saturday morning, exactly 24 hours before our flight to Bangkok. I went out for a jog about 8 a.m. I didn't get home until after 6 p.m., however, on Wednesday.  

All smiles at home now, but still
plenty of aches, pains and dizzi-
ness to go around. Does it show?

    The medical consensus is that vasovagal syncope took me down. That's medical speak for a complete and sudden blackout. The best guess is my blood pressure had fallen too low and when enough blood had drained out of my head, I did a face-plant on the pavement. That was around 9 a.m. 
    I was about a block from home when I went down. Margaret didn't get a call from the hospital around 1 p.m., while she was out looking for me. Who knows how long I was on the street waiting for someone to call an ambulance. Luckily, I had managed to stuff my ID and medical cards into the little key-pocket on my running shorts.
     Conditions weren't particularly hot, 82 degrees, though humidity was right at 100 percent. I listened to my body, I thought, and stopped running when it said to stop. I didn't feel sick or light-headed. The last thought I can recall having was whether or not to stretch out my walk or go straight home. Next thing I knew I was fighting off a gang of young men all dressed in blue, trying to fit me with a neck brace. That's when the pain in my head caught up with my consciousness and I started begging for drugs. They offered pills, but I needed relief, NOW! "I need an injection," I remember saying. I must have been convincing because they jabbed me right away. It was good, not great, but I was grateful. 
     At least my head didn't explode as I had fully expected. That's small consolation because my skull is still fractured, cracked like a hard-boiled egg. It sucks as much as it sounds. 
     I regained consciousness in the emergency room of the world's third largest teaching hospital. It seemed like the entire staff of 7,200 was on hand to put humpty-dumpty back together again. 

Down for the count.

     My team of specialists and the gaggle of interns that appeared around my bed each day with the lead physician, Dr. Bok, seemed to agree I had fainted. 

     "So I have a fairly routine concussion," I said. "There's nothing routine about a fractured skull," Dr. Bok said, unamused. Clearly, he didn't want me taking it lightly. The mystery, and his main concern, was why my blood pressure had suddenly dropped. I wasn't doing anything unusual and I don't have history of fainting. So he kept me around for a few days to try and figure out what had caused the black-out and, of course, to monitor my vital organs. I got the full treatment. I visited the eye doctor twice, the ear-nose-throat specialist once, the neuro-surgeon at least three times, took a stroll around Ward 78 with the physical therapist (her advice: stick to a stationary bicycle for awhile) and saw the cardiology team a couple of times every day. They did an ultrasound on my heart and also strapped a portable EKG monitor to my chest for 24 hours. No clues emerged, but they happily eliminated any heart problems.

     Because I had said my head pain felt like a severe sinus infection, the ENT doc showed me on the CT scan that my sinuses were clean. He then gave me a look at what my skull looks like with a crack in it -- just above my right eye.  I go back to Singapore General next week for another brain scan to see if I'm bleeding or if I'm leaking any other fluids. 

     Thailand will happen eventually. The hotels are paid for, plus change fees. Maybe we'll be able to go in July. Whenever the docs say the cabin pressure on the plane won't blow my brains out. 
     Stay tuned.


(Left) Dr. Han, ear-nose-throat expert, shows me my computerized axial tomography scan. He said the fracture was as clean as were my sinuses. "It should heal nicely," he said cheerfully.