Alone in the ER: CAN We Do This Life Alone?

In a crisis, are you prepared?

I never expected this. Things went crazy enough on Friday when a friend drove me to Lincoln City for toe surgery that did not happen.

It seems the doctor failed to communicate that I’d need to spend the next five days with my foot elevated except for trips to the bathroom, and I failed to communicate that I planned to play the piano at church all weekend and had a busy schedule that week. Could anybody cover for me? Nope. Since my toe didn’t hurt anymore anyway, he recommended we not do it.

Ironically, I have spent the last five days on my sofa or a bed in the Newport ER anyway.

Sunday morning, I woke up with a big pain in my upper chest, centered around my collarbone and esophagus. I thought it was gas, BAD gas. I had eaten a meatball sandwich for lunch and too much shrimp with cilantro and rice for dinner. But it didn’t go away.

After many hours lying awake, I dragged myself to church to play the 10 o’clock Mass, sang the psalm from the altar while hoping not to faint, and scurried home. No Cafe Chill open mic. I needed to rest. Why didn’t I stay home and let others at church deal with having no music? How could I sing with this going on? I don’t know. I suffer from the fallacy of indispensability.

Sunday afternoon I developed a fever. Should I go to the hospital? Kathy, my neighbor and emergency contact, had a concert that afternoon. The ER is a zoo, especially on weekends. If I could just wait until Monday and see my primary care person . . .

Sunday night, I thought, “I need an advice nurse.” I Googled it and wound up talking to a “Dr. Li” in San Francisco. Dial-a-doc. Crazy, I know. But she sounded real and concerned. She recommended probiotics, ginger tea, and a hot pad. I wasn’t up to driving to a store for probiotics and ginger tea, but it was something. Dr. Li didn’t think I needed to go to the hospital. And no, she was not a bot.

Sunday night, I slept in my clothes on the sofa for ten hours straight, then woke up and called my doctor’s office. She had no openings until next week.

I put clean clothes on my dirty body and drove myself to the ER. Wait, what? Yes, I drove myself. I considered calling a neighbor, but I didn’t. My pain wasn’t bad enough to call an ambulance. We don’t have Uber rides around here.

I can hear y’all yelling at me and I haven’t even finished writing this yet, but I could drive. I had pain and a low fever, but I could handle the car, and I knew I would need a ride home when it was over.

I was imprisoned in a beige ER cubicle with a hard little bed for nine hours. Between tests and visits from nurses and nurse practitioners (no docs in this rural ER), I dozed and semi-meditated, startling every time a door slammed or a machine beeped.

I had nothing to eat during all that time and drank only the water from the bottle I carried in my purse. I knew I needed Tylenol for the fever, but no one offered. I needed a pillow and a blanket. No one offered until a nurse named Chris came to my rescue mid-afternoon.

EKG, X-ray, CT, blood and urine tests, strep test, “GI cocktail,” needles in both arms, and long periods of sitting there alone and scared. Suddenly I didn’t care about 99 percent of the stuff I cared about the day before. Was I going to die at 75 like my mother or maybe not even get to 75?

I thought about the many times I accompanied my parents or my husband to the ER. While they were in bed, I was busy making phone calls, getting whatever they needed, managing things at home, and keeping them company. I’d be the one going to the nurses’ station, saying, “Hey, we’ve been here for hours. What’s the holdup?” or “I think they’re getting worse. Can you send the doctor in?” or “Could she maybe get something to eat?”

As the unaccompanied patient, I had no one to do that stuff. I wouldn’t want to make anyone sit there the whole time with me, but boy, I could have used an advocate.

At the end of the day, the nurse practitioner in charge leaned wearily against the counter and told me a) I was not going to die, b) she still didn’t know what was going on, and c) she was being so thorough because she had had a previous patient with similar symptoms for whom things had gone very badly. I don’t remember now whether the patient died or had a burst aorta, but it wasn’t pretty.

The tests showed: bacteria in my urine, elevated white blood cells, and some fluid around my lungs and pericardium, but my heart was basically okay and most parts “unremarkable,” which is a good thing in medical terms.

Discharged at 6:10 p.m., I walked out into the sunshine on rubbery legs and drove myself home.

I have been alternating between screen time and sleeping ever since. I’m up to 57 days in my current Spider Solitaire winning streak. I finished the last episodes of “Hacks” on HBO. It’s one of the best shows I have ever seen. I’m caught up on NPR’s “Fresh Air” and episodes of CBS’s “Elsbeth” and halfway through the Josh Johnson comedy special, also on HBO.

I have discovered that daytime broadcast TV is even more awful than it used to be and not worth staying awake for, especially with all those commercials for drugs that sound more likely to kill you than cure you.

I have been daydreaming about owning a robot I could order around. Go get my pills. Bring me some water. Scramble me a couple of eggs. Turn off the light. Charge my phone. I could be rude to a robot without hurting its feelings.

It takes a huge effort to prepare food or get dressed. I can do it. But it took me an hour and a half this morning to convince myself to get up and go to the bathroom. Breakfast was marionberry pie eaten out of the pan. Last night after an omelet dinner, I craved something cold and sweet. I ate a lime popsicle that expired in January 2025. It tasted good.

There are so many lessons here that it’s going to take several posts.

I don’t know how many of you watched or even received the live video post I recorded on Tuesday. If I looked bad then, I look twice as bad now, so I will spare you photos of my face.

I lost enough dignity when the CT guy, one of the most attractive young men I have ever seen, had to fasten my hospital gown over my chubby old body when I just could not figure it out.

I have an appointment with my regular doc coming up and probably more tests. Has this been brewing for a while or did it happen suddenly? How much fun would this have been if I HAD had the toe surgery and was dealing with all that pain, too? God was looking out for me there.

In spite of all my blathering, I was NOT prepared for this. As I sat with my pain, I questioned my entire lifestyle. Can I live alone in this big house when any minute an illness or injury could render me unable to do ANYTHING? What if I couldn’t speak and nobody knew?

Clearly, I have work to do. The writing and music that occupy most of my time are important, but I need to get all my emergency systems in order. In view of the near-weekly funerals I have been playing for, I also need to do all the end-of-life stuff. Maybe I won’t live to 97 like my father. For sure, I won’t have kids to handle everything. Operation Figure It All Out is on.

I’m also considering gathering my church friends when I’m feeling better to make a mutual help-each-other plan, not just for those who are alone but also for those who are taking care of partners who cannot be left alone. Stay tuned.

Dear friends, if you get hurt or suddenly have a fierce and terrifying pain, are you prepared? If you can’t speak for yourself, who will? Who/what is your backup plan in an emergency?

When we’re well, freedom and independence are great. We can deal with leaky pipes, awkward holidays, and even loneliness. But what if it all turns upside down—and at some point, it will. THIS is the thing that determines whether or not we can live alone.

Together, we’re going to figure it out.

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How did I end up alone? My first marriage ended in divorce. My second husband died of Alzheimer’s after we had moved to the Oregon coast, far from family. I never had any kids, only dogs and cats. Now I live by myself in a big house in the woods. You can read our story in my memoir, No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s, available at your favorite bookseller.