Brain Bleed in the Time of Covid:
Lessons which, I Hope Will Help You
By
Marcielle Brandler
Marcielle and her new kitty, Ballet, Nov 2019.
Marcielle at a Glendale, Ca restaurant with a good friend before the accident.
The Situation:
It’s March 6, 2020. There has been talk of a virus called Corona. I am driving to my favorite hiking trail in Eaton Canyon, in Altadena, CA. I am off the road looking for a place to park. Everything turns black. Out my left eye, I see a red circle filling up the blackness and think, Did someone throw a bomb? Why is it a silent bomb?
What seems like a moment later, I open my eyes in a bright room. There are people standing over me. I become aware that I am in a hospital. A voice says, “You were in an accident. You had surgery.” I am calm. I take it all in. I don’t even think to ask questions.
Events and explanations just come when they come. I learn that I’d had a crainiotomy. A surgeon has removed a large portion of my skull and, because I’d had a “brain bleed”, he had to get under the bone and stop the bleeding. Then he stapled, yes actually stapled, my skull back together with large metal staples, about 23 of them across the length of my head and around my left ear. About four staples are below my ear near my cheek. The surgeon, whom I have never met, stands over me and uses a wire cutter and snaps a staple in half.
“Ow!” I say loudly. He does it again twice more, “Ow! Ow!” , then he walks away, never to be seen again. He never introduces himself to me. He just says, “You had a brain bleed and a craniotomy.”
I search for the good in everyone and am full of compliments. “Your name is Esther? She was a great woman in the Bible. Did you know that?” For everyone I meet, I have a sincere compliment to brighten their day. I joke about my condition.
They tell me that I will be staying overnight here. On the adjustable bed is a clear plastic bag with the clothing I had been wearing when I crashed. The ambulance people had cut them off my body- my favorite light blue bell-bottomed jeans, a fashionable hoodie (a gift from a girlfriend) and one of my favorite bras with the straps and back cut off. They even cut my shoelaces to get my hiking boots off.
On my bed/gurney is a bag of my hair, which they have shaved off. I ask to use the ladies’ room and the nurse tells me that I have a tube up my ying yang and I don’t need to use it. I lie here for hours. I do stay one night, and I am just here, with nothing happening. They move me to another room upstairs. I cannot sleep, because the young people at the desk laugh and joke all night and it’s freezing here. How can I get well when I cannot be comfortable? This “bed” hurts my back. I have no place to stretch or do anything, except make phone calls to the ambulance people and find out what happened.
Now, it’s morning. I keep beeping for someone at the desk and ask when I get to go home. I talk them into letting me walk to the bathroom. I ask for a cane, which I use. I look in the mirror. On my head is a white turban of gauze. My right eye is swollen closed. My left eye has broken blood vessels. I look like a wounded guru. I keep hobbling to the desk to ask, “Did you find out when I get to go home?” I am polite and persistent maybe even a nag. They really don’t like it when you want to go home early and seem to stall it. I finally go home against doctor’s advice. I don’t care. I want to go home. Home!
Pic of Frankie and me
My brother, Frankie, comes all the way from San Bernardino area to Santa Fe Springs, which is about a two and a half- hour drive to get me. Because I carry an Emergency Contact list in my purse, the hospital knows whom to contact. My best friend, Janet has a key to my house and chooses some clothes for me to wear. Frankie brings them to me. I am given a generic for Keppra, enough for a week.
Frankie brings me home. He is walking me to the bathroom. I am shaking. Now, the weakness becomes a desperate struggle to remain conscious, as Frankie holds me up. Looking back on that moment, I realize that was my first seizure. I should have taken my Keppra.
I take off the turban and see what I really look like. I am depressed by what I see. I write a letter to Janet and hint that she has not done enough for someone she claims to love. We’ve been friends and confidants for fourteen years, and so many times I felt let down by her.
When I get home, I see myself in the mirror. (pic of me, awful)
When I run out of Keppra, I have a seizure, the first I have ever had in my life, that I know of. The accident would have been an easy death, no pain. I would just be gone. Now, I really don’t believe in Heaven or reincarnation. Everything had gone black until I woke up. There was no white light or meeting family on the other side, just blackness
(pic)
It’s a week later, and I am talking on the phone to Scan, one of my health insurances, and I start slurring my speech. The lady says, “You’re having a seizure. Call 911, now.” I do so and the ambulance comes and takes me to Arcadia Methodist Hospital. I stay with a needle in my left arm and two in my right arm, all day and all night. Some stranger comes up to me and sticks another needle in the fat of my right thumb. No one tells me anything. A doctor, a brain surgeon) gives me a quick look. They roll my gurney to the CAT Scan room, where they scan my head. That Doctor Withers surgeon comes by and says something about my being in danger and that I need to stay overnight. I promise my ex, Bruce and Frankie that I will stay, which I do. Then I leave after the first night, “against doctor’s advice”. I don’t care. All I do is lie around with stress on my back, because of the gurney, in the freezing cold, not allowed to walk around with my cane. How can I get well like this? Since I am alive, I have to survive and act against what society advises. No one talks to me or explains anything.
(pic of me in pink hat)
I reveal to Bruce and Frankie that I did stay one night. Bruce pleaded that I stay the whole time they advised. “Bruce,” I say on the phone, “I feel like a trapped animal.”
“ You said that when we were married.” Poor Brucella.
Frankie gets mad at me. After much explaining and Frankie pushing me, I say, “Frankie, I need to get well and be alone.”
“I’ll leave you alone.” Hang up.
I feel surrounded by other’s wishes and fears, but I have to survive. I feel no emotion after Frankie hangs up. After about a week or more, I call and all is well.
No one wants to drive me to Mt SAC to get my cell phone and grade book, so I pay a cab $68 dollars. No one is on campus and it is a Tuesday. That Covid virus has closed everything down. I am just one of many who must stay home. I blend in.
I realized that people cannot read my mind or know what I need, unless I ask, and that little upsets are nothing in the big picture. Janet and I have shared so much. I am sorry I sent her the letter with the ugly photo of my mead damage. I call Janet to apologize. She interrupts, “Oh, you did nothing wrong.” I know that tone and I know she just loves me unconditionally, unlike my conditional “love”. I am ashamed and humbled. I almost cry.
After many hospital visits and friends bringing me food and treats, and neighbors whom I hardly know, cleaning my kitchen, and walks to friends’ homes who live near me, I have learned many lessons. Sometimes, I experience ten lessons or challenges per day. My friend, Becky, a brilliant, spiritual woman, who has had health issues her entire life, says, “This is a crash course.” So true.
Mars April 12, 2020 Covid mask.jpg
Lessons Learned:
My blending in with everyone else having to stay home has benefitted me. I took sick leave at both campuses and did not apply for Disability Benefits, because I can teach at home, like everyone else is doing.
Having never been sick for more than two days, this has been one of the tallest mountains I have had to climb, besides my broken childhood.
I have had to reassess my ego and allow people to just be themselves, like Janet and Frankie. Just because someone doesn’t do things the way we would, does not make her incomplete in any way. Janet is way more forgiving than I am, and that’s a sterling quality. Frankie flashed back on his terribly painful childhood and all the accompanying fears and the stranglehold of being helpless. Was I being manipulative in sending her that letter and demanding what she cannot give? I did not know, at the time, about Covid’s effect on the country while I was in the hospital.
I realize that there are different kinds of fear. For me, it is lack of total control of my life. I always park in places where I can easily escape. I fear people’s needs and that could overwhelm me. I leave meetings early. I need my alone time and more. Other people’s fears might not coincide with my wishes and requirements. The spiritual books I read talk about “my brothers and sisters” and that they are perfect in their evolvement.
Being witty in Saint Francis Hospital was a survival instinct. When I got home and let my guard down, I could mourn for an afternoon in my cocoon and begin my healing.
Invoking one’s authority does work. When I was working with Doctor Withers, the nurses and office people would speak to me cordially, but not really respectfully. One day, I decided to called the office, “It’s Professor Brandler calling.” Suddenly, the lady on the line treated me much better than she had before. People really do respond to status, whether it’s right or not. While teaching at LA City College for thirty years, full timers treated me, and “Adjunct” (disrespectful word), barely cordially, “Hello,” until they saw me teach during a “peer” review. Then suddenly I am a goddess. “Oh, hiiiii, Marcielle!” One assistant department chair yelped with joy during my lesson. They realized how good I was.
We can be charged twice for the same service. I sent my Medicare and Scan info to a certain city for payment. I don’t want to say the name of the city, for fear of being sued for libel. Then, they sent me a bill, charging me, personally, and saying that Medicare or other personal insurance does not pay it. I paid it. Frankie told me that I should not have paid and that I should call my insurance people, who agreed with Frankie. Some cities double bill to get more money. Wow. That’s fraud.
I often record and interpret my dreams in a journal. I awoke from a dream and actually knew when I hit my head to cause the injury. I was at Mount San Antonio College (where I teach) after class and packing up my car to go home. I hit the top of my head on the trunk lid of my Honda CRV. I said loudly, “Ow!”, and a female student looked me in the eye. That was Thursday, March 5, 2020.” My catastrophic accident occurred on March 6, Friday, when I was supposed to be teaching at Pierce College. On the previous Thursday, I went home at about 12 noon, had a lovely day, ate dinner, watched tv, etc., and went to bed. The next morning I awoke, did all my morning things and started driving to Woodland Hills to teach at Pierce College, but I ended up in Whittier area, and in a Santa Fe Springs Hospital. Thank God, I went off road, before I blacked out and crashed.
I have had many lessons about being coerced and pressured against my better judgment. Sometimes I have given in, but this was survival, so I persisted. I know those people who wanted me to stay in the hospital have my best interests at heart, but they are not in my exact situation. Only I know what I suffer and how to really heal. When I got hurt, as a child, no one knew or cared. I had to just heal on my own. I never asked for help.
Frankie has his own fears, which he was flashing back on. He told me that our mother would faint and be ill, yet refused to go to the hospital. He felt helpless, as a nine-year-old boy.
My mother was afraid of hospitals, because in the Catholic hospital, she suffered and almost died having Frankie and later, me. They refused to give her a pain killer.
Bruce always says, “I worry about you.” For him, that means love. I convinced him to focus only on my wellness, not illness.
I am doing much better, going for walks in my town, meeting socially-distant with friends, and teaching online. I focus only on wellness.
Some of my writer friends say I should write a book on this. I shall continue this story, go deeper into lessons and explanations, with more photos and publish it on Amazon with the same title.
