On My Blindness (Part 5)

(This is the fifth installation of an ongoing series of posts describing the events surrounding an accident I had at the Bunker Hill Zinc Plant in July, 1973. You can read the other installations, here, here, here, and here.)

***********

I entered Kootenai Memorial Hospital on Tuesday, after a night in Kellogg's hospital. I was released on Saturday. The doctors' primary concern had been my eyes. They sent me home, confident that the surgery that removed the burnt layers of cornea from my eyes had been successful and that once the cornea regenerated I'd have full sight again. That turned out to be true.

Once back in Kellogg, at home, I started to get sick. I began to vomit. Before long I had vomited out the contents of my stomach and I was in the grip of dry heaves. A fever set in. It was spiking. I started having fever dreams, most of them accompanied by the "Live and Let Die" by the Wings; it was in my head all night long.

By morning, Mom called the hospital to say we were returning. Mom became an ambulance driver as she listened to me wretch and hack in the back seat.

My temperature was about 104 degrees. Sweat poured from my whole body. We learned at the hospital, eventually, that I was suffering from toxic pneumonia. I don't know why, but my body's reaction to being exposed to the sulfur dioxide and hard metal dust was not immediate. Had my body been in shock? Does it just take a while for sulfur dioxide and zinc and cadmium and the other metals to turn the respiratory system toward pneumonia? I don't know.

What I do know is that I was in more trouble six days after my accident than I had been in its immediate aftermath. I know that I was on the cusp of being sent to the University of Washington. I know that my case was unique because it's rare for a person to have as long of an exposure to sulfur dioxide as I did: usually people get right out of it because it is so repugnant and if they don't, they are killed. Rarely does a person fall in the middle of escape and death.

In consultation with the University of Washington, my doctor in Coeur d'Alene treated me with respiratory therapy. I could barely handle sucking in the medicine from the machine. My bronchial tubes were so irritated that I couldn't fill my lungs with air.

I couldn't sneeze. I had the sensation of needing to sneeze several times. I couldn't pull it off. Finally, after several days in the hospital, I sneezed. What a great feeling! What a relief!

My illness ravaged my frame. I entered the hospital weighing around 170 pounds. I left weighing about 140. I could barely walk. Just a few steps left me doubled over, winded, fighting for air.

My doctor recommended that I not return to Kellogg immediately. He didn't think the Silver Valley air would be good for me. In addition, the streets around our house were being torn up in a dusty mess while natural gas lines were being installed.

We went to Spokane to stay with my Grandmother. Fields were being burned on the Rathdrum Prairie. I just couldn't seem to find good air! But things were better in Spokane and my out of hospital recovery began.

It was awful. Grandma's house was tiny. I couldn't walk without doubling over from her living room to the kitchen. Grandma fixed me my favorite dinner: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, garden grown green beans cooked with bacon, cucumbers and tomatoes in vinegar and oil. It all looked so good and I ate heartily and threw it all up.

My eyesight was still dim. My sister, Carol, was only ten years old and I asked her to read me the baseball box scores. She read me scores. Then I would say, well how did Bobby Bonds do and she would read across the Bobby Bonds line and answer me. I asked about the other Giants and the dreaded Dodgers and other teams.

Carol was so patient. I wanted to walk outside. Carol went with me. I made a snail seem like a hare. I could barely move, but I wanted to build my strength. She patiently walked at my side. My goal was to make it around the block. Eventually, I did and Carol was my chaperone.

After a few days, we went back to Kellogg and I continued to recover and my eyesight strengthened.

But, I had only begun my internal exploration set in motion by being blind. This exploration kicked into a higher gear in the fall when classes started at North Idaho College.

(Stay tuned.)