As each day passed, things grew more and more bleak. The fluid backed up inside of my body from my failing kidneys continued to build, putting more and more pressure on my lungs and heart. There was great concern about potential respiratory failure as a result, so I was put on a respirator. After testing negative for Lupus, Dr. Keller called in the Kidney Specialist.
The Kidney Specialist poked and prodded me some more looking for any clues yet uncovered. I vaguely remember coming in and out of awareness, hallucinating from the fever that inflamed me, and feeling afraid of this doctor. He did not have the characteristic Southern charm Dr. Keller had. He was much too serious and not at all friendly. I remember him leaning in too close to my face and asking me in a low, husky voice, “Have you had sexual intercourse?”
‘What?! What did he just ask me?!’ I was caught off guard.
“I need to know if you have had sex?” he clarified, his eyebrows tense and furrowed.
‘Did I hear him right?’ I asked myself again in disbelief. I was still connected to the respirator, but I was too stunned to answer, even if I could.
Then leaning in even closer, he demanded to know. “Have you been sexually active?”
‘Unbelievable!’ I thought. I began shaking my head, “No! No!” My face showed both fear and protest, as I felt wrongly reproached. But, he continued to ask me several more times, even sending my mother out of the room so he could ask me again in private. He must have thought I was holding something back because she was present. The truth was, I had not yet had sexual intercourse.
But this doctor was persistent. There had been bacterial staph present in my previous Pap Smear and he wanted to know what that was about and how it was involved in shutting down my kidneys. What he and the other doctors didn’t know then was that the staph detected was most likely tied to the tampon I had removed just before my examinations began in the emergency room days before; the tampon that went uncultured and got thrown away.
Though the Kidney Specialist was just doing his job thoroughly, I became angry and distressed with him. I wanted nothing to do with this doctor! In my groggy hallucinations, this Kidney Specialist seemed to shape-shift from a doctor to a demon and back again. He was scary!
The Kidney Specialist, apparently unsatisfied with my answers, announced that he wanted to move me down to the bottom floor to do another pelvic exam. Mama said rather anxiously, “But we’ve done the pelvic exam already. We don’t need to do it again, do we?”
But, the Kidney Specialist was adamant about doing one again anyway, and wanted an ultrasound as well. Though I didn’t know it then, this doctor wanted to rule out the possibility of a previous pregnancy or an incomplete abortion. He explained to Mama that an abortion remnant could have been absorbed in my body, which would cause my white blood cell count to skyrocket.
I’m glad I wasn’t alert to his intentions then. I would have been livid with such an accusation! I had not had sex, I had never been pregnant, and I had never, ever had an abortion! But the doctors were getting desperate, looking for everything. They had to be sure.
Mama wasn’t the only one uncomfortable with plan for the second pelvic exam. There was also great concern from the other doctors and nurses who worried about moving me to the bottom floor because it would mean they would need to take me off of the respirator. But it had to be done.
I recall being wheeled out of the warm ICU room into the cool, sterile hospital halls. I remember a nurse in a green hair-net walking briskly beside me, holding a ventilation bag over my mouth. She was squeezing puffs of air into my lungs, while another person quickly guided my gurney through the corridors. My eyes rolled back with each of the florescent lights that passed overhead as I drifted in and out of awareness.
