I lay in an emergency room at St. Agnes Hospital shivering from chills brought on by my rapidly rising fever. I was waiting for Dr. Keller and Mama to arrive. I still had enough sense to know I needed to tell someone I was on my period and was using a tampon. So, I let my step-dad, Roger, know since he was in the room with me. He quickly grabbed the first staff person who passed by the room, told them, and asked them what I should do. That person simply responded, “Tell her to take out her tampon so that the doctor can fully examine her.”
Roger relayed the instructions to me, and with some false hope, he stepped out of the room to allow me the privacy I needed to remove the tampon. But we both knew that I was physically unable to do anything more. I was able to nod, but barely able to move. The fever had made me too weak. I was wandering in and out of consciousness by then, and suffering from increasing dry heaves as my body tried to rid itself of whatever toxins were taking over.
I lay there for a short time before my stepfather finally came to my assistance. This had to be up there with some of the more courageous things he had ever had to do in his lifetime. He assisted me with the removal of the tampon and placed it onto a paper towel. He put another paper towel over the top of it and lay it on a counter in the room. I remember this happening very quickly and was glad he couldn’t see the blush from the sunburn that I wore on my cheeks.
Then a new male nurse came into the room. It was the change of shifts. He took my temperature and blood pressure again and provided me with a vomit pan. Before he left the room, Roger grabbed this guy’s arm and pointed to the tampon that lay covered up on the counter. He said with strained whisper, “That thing’s there!” And with a swish of his hand, the male nurse knocked the tampon and towels into the trash. No one would know then that the tampon should have been saved and sent to a lab for a culture. The tampon was the wrench in the works. It was believed to play a major role in the Toxic Shock Syndrome I was finally diagnosed with two and a half weeks later.
I was drifting in and out of awareness when Mama arrived. I heard her talking to the doctors and nurses there. They were telling her that they had taken blood tests and found my white cell count was off the charts. They still didn’t know what was wrong. They seemed to be making a big deal about the blister on my heel though. Apparently, it was beginning to fill up with fluid and they thought perhaps I had an infection inside. They asked Mama what I had been doing over the last couple of weeks and how I got the blister. Mama asked me, but I couldn’t remember. She mentioned that I had gone to the beach recently, and they all wondered if I stepped on a shellfish, or picked up some kind of bacteria from the ocean.
A short time after Mama got there, Dr. Keller arrived and examined me with his charismatic Southern warmth, and serious attention. He told me he was going to have someone do a spinal tap and draw some fluid from my back to test for what he thought might be spinal meningitis, which would later prove negative.
I remember Mama coaching my breathing while the Anesthetist told me to curl up into a ball and to try to relax as he inserted the long needle into my back. I was glad Mama was finally there, holding my hand, because I was scared. I remember feeling the sharp prick of the needle and then a long burning sensation. I hissed and clenched my teeth while Mama kept telling me to breathe and relax. Then I must have fell unconscious.
