NormWhitehurst.com

All I wanted to do was play tennis. Well, truth be told, I really didn’t want to play; I just wanted
something to do. Anything. You see, I was recently divorced and it was Christmas week, 1988. I
was in the Coast Guard stationed in New London, Conn., and now my new un-marital status
found me living in the barracks.

The problem was I woke up with a painful, crushing feeling in my chest. “Just a bad cold,” I
thought. “I’ll just walk up to the base clinic and get some drugs.” I was a lousy tennis player but
I did look forward to swinging my racquet hopelessly at that damn yellow ball.

The walk from the barracks to the clinic was only a few hundred yards, up a steep hill. By the
time I entered the reception area, there wasn’t an ounce of air left in me. “I’ve got a cold” I
gasped to the young pimple-faced corpsman.

I was given a number. It’s always a number in the military. I sat in one of those hard plastic
formed chairs and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally my name was called. It was now
noon and the likelihood of making the tennis court was rapidly fading.

Into the exam room I went. They’re all the same. Whether you are at your local doctor’s office or
in the Coast Guard Academy’s clinic…all the exam rooms look the same. Same thinly padded
table with the crinkly paper. Same posters on the walls showing you muscles you never knew
you had. Same glass jar of tongue depressors sitting on a bed of cotton.

The doctor seemed kindly enough. She held the rank of commander so to me, a lowly enlisted
guy, that was good enough. What ever she said, I’d take to heart. So, what did she say?

“I don’t see or hear anything wrong.”

“Doctor, I can barely breathe. I’d say that should amount to something being a little wrong, don’
t you think?”

She vanished behind a curtain that separated the exam room from what I could only gather to
be an enclave of scholarly doctors feverishly looking for the cure to seasickness. A moment
later she returned and ordered me upstairs for an x-ray and a stress test.

That really was putting the damper on the day’s tennis. I walked across the building to the
elevator. I needed to go to the 3rd floor and being the strapping young Coast Guardsman I was,
should have taken the stairs. But I was sick. I felt sicker when I saw the “Out of Order” sign on
the lone elevator. I took the stairs.

First stop was the x-ray department. Right arm up, radiation on. Left arm up, radiation on. Not so
bad at all.

The stress test was hell. You may recall me saying I could barely breathe. That was before the
stress test. After hooking me up to this computer-like machine and putting me on a treadmill, I
can attest to the fact I had NO oxygen left in me. I passed out.

I woke up in the exam room where I began this medical odyssey to hell. I was alone. I could
hear the doctor enclave jabbering behind the curtain but I couldn’t tell what they were saying.

I crept off the exam table and slowly made my way to the curtain. Nothing but mumbling. I bent
closer to the curtain. And as I did, the curtain ripped open with a sound that was totally
drowned out by my startled and frankly, embarrassing scream.

Commander Doctor woman had some interesting news for me. “Did you know one of your lungs
has collapsed?” she asked.

I wasn’t even sure I understood the question.

Up on the lighted wall in the enclave was my x-ray. Now I’ve seen pictures of x-rays in books,
but this was the first time I saw an actual x-ray. And, much like the sonograms I’ve been shown
of my children, I saw nothing.

This was apparently serious. A stretcher was wheeled into the room and IV’s were inserted into
my arm. I hate needles and that hatred was about to get a whole lot worse. But first, I had to
come to terms with the fact that tennis today was out.

The Coast Guard Academy Clinic was just that…a clinic. When things were going south and
you needed hospitalization, you had to go across the Thames River to the Groton Naval
Submarine Base. One other item of note on the clinic, it’s located on top of a very steep hill.

For the first time in my life, I was on a stretcher being wheeled to an ambulance with an IV in
my arm--through the reception area, out the door and to the ambulance parked not quite at the
precipice of the hill. Now I am strapped down on this stretcher. I can’t move. Above me, on a pole
is a bag of clear liquid which is flowing into my veins. My eyes focused on that bag and the thin
tube connecting it to me. A quick algebraic calculation in my head told me that pole wasn’t
going to clear the ambulance door. For once, my math was correct. A sharp clang of aluminum
pole banging against the ambulance roof (I saw this all coming) and then the needle pulled out
of my arm. I’d like to say that what I said at that point was reasonable, calm and informative. It
wasn’t. In fact it probably wasn’t even English. But my problems were only beginning. The
corpsmen lowered me back to the ground to adjust the pole and re-insert the needle. That’s
when gravity reared its ugly head. The stretcher began to roll. Downhill. Whatever nonsense I
was jabbering before, escalated to foamy babbling. So, down the hill I went. Strapped to a
stretcher, clear plastic tubing fluttering like a dime store flag off the pole and rumbling down
the hill. And all I could do was look up.

You know how people say they see their life flash before their eyes when facing imminent
death? Well, that didn’t happen to me. The morning flashed before my eyes though…walking
into the clinic, passing out and waking up minus the use of a lung, having an IV needle ripped
from my arm and now this--rumbling down a hill, on a stretcher with wobbly shopping cart
wheels.

End of sample...wait for the book!