Eileen Loveman Daily Posting

Like any tomboy of the 60’s,  I played “War” with the neighborhood kids.  The only thing was, they wouldn’t let me shoot any of the guns or lay in the foxholes.  They said I had a more important job to do.

To be the nurse.

The street where I lived was called Spinner Lane, a housing tract hosting the grand exodus to Long Island. The families who had recently migrated along with the rest of us from Brooklyn filled the 3 bedroom ranch homes to capacity.  Everyone’s mother was pregnant, and everyone had at least one brother or a sister.

Most front lawns displayed bicycles on their side, strewn hastily next to bushes under the big bay windows, in an effort to be able to pick them right back up again after lunch.   Skate boards and scooters also dotted the landscape, completely oblivious to the fact they could be stolen.  We rode our bikes for several miles, all the way to the elementary school and back, without even thinking of someone abducting us.  It was unthinkable, back then.  

The noon whistle at the fire station was the signal to go home for lunch.

Most War games were played in the summertime, sometimes early Fall on the weekends, if we were lucky.  Begun after dinner, we played until the darkness brought the street lamps on, creating shadows of the heroes’ footsteps, illuminating the path to sick bay which was housed under the oak tree.

I was the nurse, and my job meant patching the wounded back together.  While most other little girls were home playing with Barbie dolls, I would travel back and forth from the kitchen.  Grabbing wads of toilet paper, I would run them under the tap water.  Wetting them to bring out to the injured, they became magic bandages which miraculously healed my fallen comrades.

It never occurred to me to challenge them as to my role.  If they wanted me to be the nurse, I would go along with the designation.  It seemed to fulfill the nurturing side of my personality, a need of which had continued many years into adult hood.

Graduation day from high school brought the realization I would have to work full time as well as go to school, if I wanted to become a real nurse.  Television news shows back then only had three stations, and it seemed they were chock full of weekly pleas for the youth of America to go into medicine, especially nursing, because there was a shortage of qualified nursing care.

Time passed and slowly the determination and stamina to work and both educate myself became less and a less a necessity.  I was more interested in getting married and starting a family, so the idea was put to the back of my mind.  I learned that I was a better mother than a nurse and I accepted that designation. I’ve ridden in an ambulance many times before – but never as a patient.

So imagine my surprise, driving home early from work at 6:00 pm, as opposed to the 8:30 – 9:00 quitting time, when suddenly I couldn’t catch my breath.  I was having my first asthma attack brought on by the bronchial infection. I came face to face with my own mortality.

I had been feeling lightheaded all afternoon, but attributed it to not eating – I didn’t have an appetite all week and was kind of looking forward to getting on the scale to see just how much weight I had lost.

When I started getting dizzy on Route 104, a busy corridor of traffic that links one county to another, I didn’t really panic.  I figured as soon as I got home I would have some dinner my husband had simmering on the stove.  I had called him twenty minutes earlier to let him know I was leaving and would be coming straight home.

I didn’t make it.

My breathing became labored and I heard the wheezing of my chest get louder and louder.  The world began to spin and I suddenly became aware that my hands were getting tingly and I was having trouble holding on to the steering wheel.  I was going to pass out.

All while I was driving.   I thought I was having a heart attack.

My prayer became, God please don’t let me get into an accident, to Oh God Oh God OH God I CAN’T BREATHE…….

Pulling into the NY State Troopers barracks, I called 911 on my cell phone, with barely a whisper to tell them where I was, to please to call an ambulance and then my husband.

The few minutes before the man with the big hat flashed the lights in my eyes were some of the most terrifying moments of my life.  I laid across the drivers seat, trying to get some air and wondering what would happen to my kids, even though they were adults.  I couldn’t believe that God had given me Stephen and then was going to take it all away, only after 4 shorts years with him. There is nothing so terrifying as not being able to breathe.

Every gasp of breath was torture, and the rumbling in my chest became tighter and tighter.  Please God I prayed.  Not like this.  Please don’t take me like this, in the dark parking lot of the NY State troopers, alone, afraid and with no one around who loved me.

The banging on the window shook me and I opened the door, oxygen at the ready.  Three angels in the form of Sodus Volunteer Ambulance volunteers arrived.   Joe, Vicki and Nicole all tended to me in their own way. 

My first thought was how could these kids possibly know what to do for me?  We were off to the hospital, and this time I wasn’t driving.

I was quick to learn how efficiently and professionally they could do for me.  They moved swiftly and quickly to get me the treatment I needed to be able to breathe, and comforting me while they tended.   With calm directness, they asked me questions as I nodded my head, dizzy and scared and still gasping for blessed bits of air.   Wires and blood pressure cuffs secured to my person, I looked into the smiling eyes of the young woman sitting beside me.  I remembered thinking This could be the last face I see…….

There is something to be said for having the right people in the right job.   I would have been an okay nurse, but not the best – and that is what people deserve.  Receiving the best there is in Emergency Care, I believe they saved me.   I was helpless, unable to do a thing for myself.  They left their warm homes on a cold and rainy evening because somebody needed them, and they wanted to be there.  

When all is said and done, I know that millions of people live a full and active life with asthma, and this was not really that big of a deal.  But they tended to me like it was, and that is what I came away with as I was wheeled into the ER.  I had to trust them, and they didn’t let me down.

Kudos and a big thank you to Nicole, Vicki and Joe to the Sodus Volunteer Ambulance, our smiling agents of trust.  I hope I got your names right.  If I didn’t, you know who you are.  Just check your head for a halo.