I -25 Blues

I am back from my annual trip to New Mexico, where I exhibited at the 47th annual Whitehawk Ethnographic Show in Santa Fe and the 26th annual Great Southwestern Show in Albuquerque. 

I had excellent shows at both venues but the trip was not without its travails, pain and drama.

I guess I should start at the beginning which means I have to go back a ways. Five or six weeks ago I was in Santa Barbara doing a show when I got a little cold that turned into bronchitis. After a week slugging codeine and hitting the keflex, I went to Toronto for a family thing and then got the word upon my return that my kid brother had died in Pittsburgh. 

I came back, still sick and grieving and knew that making it alive to New Mexico would be a serious chore but I had to marshal on. Bronchitis and high elevation is a dangerous mix.

So I left on the 29th for Flagstaff when about four hours in on the Kingman grade I felt myself losing consciousness and passing out. I managed to right my ship and stay on the road. I called two doctor friends I know, Mike in Portland and Scott who was with his family in Portugal and they both tried to steer me straight.

One or both told me to get an oxygen sensor for my finger. I registered an 88 after a slight exertion, not good.

Mike told me to go to an emergency room, not to do the show. He was concerned that I could be having a pulmonary embolism, congestive heart failure or worse. I called the promoter. She told me that I would either live or die there but get my ass over, I was doing her show. She told me to buy some portable oxygen and suck it up.

I couldn't afford to leave this mortal coil without putting some money in the coffers and drove to the show the next day.

I set up the tiny 10 x 10 booth and gritted through the next four days, high elevation and bronchial crud  zapping all the energy I could muster.

As I said, I did really well, a lot of nice things went away, never to be seen again.

Forward to Sunday night. 

We pack out and I am staying in a very dicey part of town. 

I am worried about my stuff staying in my van all night in Albuquerque. I meet Shirley and Bill at Appleby's (their pick) and two men start hurling epithets at the bar, egged on by their respective wives. I am worried about getting caught in some stray bullet crossfire.

I have a CCW that works in California, Arizona, Texas and twenty six other states but not New Mexico so I left my gun at home.

I called the waitress over and asked her if she was aware of the brewing confrontation and she looked at me and said "Sir, get serious, you are in the ghetto."

The next morning I dropped a weaving off to get cleaned off University and First and got into an even seedier section. Tweakers, fentanyl and hot baking weather is a lethal combination. I managed to make it out alive, thankfully.

Now I had a decision to make. I needed to heed my doctors and hit an emergency room. But I have been there too many times before and know that you dip your toe into the medical system and you can be sucked in and not seen for weeks.

I could go to UNM or Presbyterian but would I still have a van when I got released?

I decided to go to Santa Fe and take my chances there. 

I called the urgent care on St. Micheals, bu they said that with my symptoms and advanced age I needed the E.R.

So I checked into St. Vincents.

I got every test known to man as well as a chest x ray. Covid, Dimex, RSV, the gamut. My oxygen dropped to 77 in the hospital. But I never saw an actual doctor and never got a satisfactory answer as to the nature of my medical condition.

I saw a physician's assistant and a nurse. Capable but I really wanted to see an actual doctor. Never happened. 

They gave me a respiratory treatment, a prednisone script and an albuteral inhaler and after about five hours, sent me on my merry way, really no wiser.

to be continued...