Beautiful Interruptions

An Ambulance Ride, VA Appeals, and Three Months of Rent

Earlier this week I was sitting in the doctor’s office waiting room with my dad getting ready to meet his new doctor. Medical trivia was on the screen. One of the multiple choice questions was: What is singultus? The correct answer was hiccups. I’d never heard the term before, so I wrote it down in my notebook to look up later.

That night I learned that singultus is the medical term for hiccups. The word itself comes from Latin and originally was defined as catching your breath while sobbing. I’ve been thinking and talking about that definition ever since. There is something strangely precise and poetic about it. Reading the definition, we all know that experience. The moment your breath catches. The moment you have to stop and pull yourself together before you can continue.

I’m writing this from Bad Rabbit coffee shop. I was supposed to be doing laundry, but when I got there I had to toss that plan out. Several of the large washers were out of order while the others were occupied. I stood there for a minute staring at the machines before deciding screw it. Laundry could wait until tomorrow. I grabbed my notebook and came here instead.

On my way to the laundromat I stopped at the post office to mail 3 months of rent for the summer!

Last week I wrote about preparing to give up the apartment. At the time I thought I knew how that story was going to end and had surrendered to letting it go. Then people started subscribing. Messages started showing up. Someone reached out privately. One thing led to another and I found myself standing in the post office this morning with enough money to pay rent for June, July, and August.

After I dropped off the rent checks, I walked back to my car, shut the door, and before I could put the key in the ignition I completely lost it. I sat there in the parking lot of the Perryopolis post office trying to catch my breath while sobbing. A few weeks ago I was preparing to let the apartment go. This morning I was mailing rent checks for the entire summer. Every once in a while grace barges into the middle of your life and completely rearranges the story.

We were seeing my dad’s new doctor because in the VA appeals process the doctor needs to establish that his dementia is “at least as likely as not” connected to the severe hearing loss he developed during his years as an Army engineer working around heavy machinery. I spent weeks digging through research papers before the appointment and was surprised by how strong the evidence actually is. Hearing loss is now considered one of the major risk factors associated with dementia. The plan was simple. Meet the new doctor. Explain the situation. Get the paperwork moving.

Instead, my dad ended up in an ambulance.

The nurse checked his vitals and everything seemed mostly fine until suddenly it wasn’t. His blood pressure dropped. His heart rate dropped. He turned pale, started sweating, started vomiting, and nearly passed out. We barely made it to the bathroom. One minute we were waiting for the doctor to come in and the next minute nurses were rushing into the room and Dr. Faith was calling an ambulance. I called Speedway to let them know I wasn’t going to make it to work. Six hours later we were still sitting in the emergency room waiting for answers.

The final diagnosis was that he had a vasovagal episode, which is basically when the nervous system overreacts and causes blood pressure and heart rate to plummet. They were also concerned about dehydration and nearly kept him because of it. That part didn’t surprise me at all. As you know, my dad drinks coffee from sunrise to sunset. Getting him to drink water has become one of the recurring arguments of our lives. The ER doctor looked at him and told him he needed to drink more fluids. “Well, coffee has water in it.” Oy.

I remember sitting there thinking that if medical degrees carried any real authority, maybe this would finally be the thing that convinced him. But of course by the time we got home he had no recollection of even being in the ER, let alone what the doctor said about hydration.

Cue Wile E. Coyote gif.

The more I’ve thought about that word this week, the more I’ve found myself wondering if interruptions are just an uncomfortable and unpredictable form of grace. Most of us spend a lot of our lives trying to avoid them. We make plans. We build schedules. We try to keep things moving. An interruption is usually something that throws us off course. But some of the most meaningful moments in my life have arrived that way, rudely uninvited and not of my own volition. The older I get, the more I find myself wondering if not every interruption is something to overcome. Some of them are beautiful interruptions.

I’ve also developed a new anxiety about working at Speedway wondering what happens if something like this occurs while I’m gone. My dad may not have the cognitive ability to call for help if things go sideways. I’ve been looking at Ring cameras for inside the house so I can check on him while I’m at work. I was joking with my brother the other day that maybe we should just lean into it and create our own version of The Truman Show. Let people tune in and watch Dad wandering around in his natural habitat.

Honestly, if you watched long enough you’d mostly see him drinking coffee, forgetting where he put something, and wandering from room to room looking for it.

PS: All the paperwork for the VA appeals process has been turned in. Now we wait.

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