I Almost Bleed to Death
From James Donahue’s Journal
As busy as I was, I was still taking time out when possible to do some fun things with Jennifer on sunny summer days. We were surrounded by a state game area that had grown up to a forest of trees. All of the property that had been the Babcock land, now divided among the children, also was grown into trees, with streams running through. Jennifer and I came up with the idea of building trails through the woods for hiking. I thought that if we did a good enough job of it, she would enjoy riding her bike through the trails as well. I even had the thought of getting myself a trail bike.
One day while cutting our way through one section of the woods I ran into poison ivy. I knew right away what I had done and went home to scrub down and shower in hopes of heading off the inevitable. By the next day, however, I was breaking out with a rash and I was sure I was in trouble. My earlier bout with poison oak hospitalized me for a week. I went to our old doctor in Marlette and he prescribed some medicine that I should not have been given.
The next morning was a Saturday and I had plans to work on the house. I needed material from the lumber yard and drove into town to get these things. While making my purchases I broke out in a sweat and began feeling weak. By the time I got home I was getting quite ill. Thinking I was coming down with the flu I went to bed. I was sweating and my bedding was soon saturated. I thought I was going to be sick and stumbled into our little bathroom. It was there that I passed out and fell face down through the sheet we were using as a temporary door.
Doris was away at work that morning but Jennifer was in the house. She called for help. Before I knew it I was being picked up by ambulance workers loaded on a gurney and getting a ride with lights and a siren to Caro Hospital. They checked me over and the doctor on call sent me down to get an X-ray. Before the X-ray was taken, however, I began vomiting blood. It seems that the medicine the doctor in Marlette gave me for my poison ivy burned a hole in my stomach and I was experiencing a bleed-out.
Thus began one of the most intense near-death experiences of my life. I spent the rest of that day and the following night in the intensive care unit with Doris, a nurse and a doctor who both remaining at my side until the crisis was over. They tried ice and standard medications but nothing stopped the hemorrhaging. I was vomiting and passing blood, sometimes at the same time. They had three IVs attached at the same time putting blood transfusions into me. I am a rare O-negative blood type, so they were using up all of the available blood in the area in a hurry. People with O-negative can only receive O-negative blood. We are universal donors. That means we can give our blood to everybody else. I think they put six or seven pints of blood in my veins that day and night.
I knew that I was close to dying. In those days I was still in the Christian mode and you can bet I was getting my affairs in order. I knew that there was a very good chance that I was bleeding to death.
My condition deteriorated that night and the doctor decided to make a last-ditch effort to try a new drug to stop the bleeding. But the closest place to get this drug was Bay City, some sixty miles away. The State Police were dispatched on an emergency run to bring that drug and more O-negative blood to Caro under lights and siren. When it arrived I was immediately given the drug and then it was time to wait and see how I responded. It worked. The bleeding stopped. Slowly they could remove all of the tubes and devices connected to my body. By the time the sun was up I was rolled into a nearby room . . . still in intensive care but a hospital room. And I was surprised to find that Wayne was in a bed right beside mine. He had apparently had a mild heart attack that night and was admitted for observation.
We had what was almost a good time together that day. Wayne was always cheery and lots of fun to be around and he helped make my ordeal less painful. The only problem was that the doctor wanted to run a gastro-scope down my esophagus to burn the ulcer and assure that I would not break open and bleed again. That Marlette doctor had tried something like that some years earlier when I was diagnosed with an ulcer. It must have been one of the original gastro-scopes developed in the 1930s. It was pretty big and I was not sedated, so I not only couldn’t swallow it. That doctor tore up my throat trying to get it in. That little episode wrecked my singing voice and scarred my throat. Consequently I fought letting the Caro doctor try it again. Eventually Doris, Wayne and the doctor persuaded me that it was necessary. They promised to put me out so it would be an easy procedure. Without it, the doctor said he could not assure me that I would not start bleeding like that again. So I finally submitted.
As promised, the procedure went smoothly. The device they used at Caro was so small it went down with one swallow. I was so numbed by medicine I didn’t feel anything after I got it past my throat. The tiny instrument contained a television camera on the end of a long thin tube through which they were able to look at the walls of my stomach and find the places where I had been bleeding. Then they used another device on the instrument to “burn” the damaged areas. I was sent home a few hours later and prescribed bed rest.
There is one side note to this story. The ambulance crew noticed the little house we were living in, and the fact that the room was divided only by sheets. They concluded that we were poor and down-and-out. One of them asked Doris if I had a social worker that should be notified. It made us realize just how bad our situation appeared to the outside world. As soon as I was fully recovered, I got busy putting up the walls and doors and getting that little house finished into what became a comfortable little home.
From James Donahue’s Journal
As busy as I was, I was still taking time out when possible to do some fun things with Jennifer on sunny summer days. We were surrounded by a state game area that had grown up to a forest of trees. All of the property that had been the Babcock land, now divided among the children, also was grown into trees, with streams running through. Jennifer and I came up with the idea of building trails through the woods for hiking. I thought that if we did a good enough job of it, she would enjoy riding her bike through the trails as well. I even had the thought of getting myself a trail bike.
One day while cutting our way through one section of the woods I ran into poison ivy. I knew right away what I had done and went home to scrub down and shower in hopes of heading off the inevitable. By the next day, however, I was breaking out with a rash and I was sure I was in trouble. My earlier bout with poison oak hospitalized me for a week. I went to our old doctor in Marlette and he prescribed some medicine that I should not have been given.
The next morning was a Saturday and I had plans to work on the house. I needed material from the lumber yard and drove into town to get these things. While making my purchases I broke out in a sweat and began feeling weak. By the time I got home I was getting quite ill. Thinking I was coming down with the flu I went to bed. I was sweating and my bedding was soon saturated. I thought I was going to be sick and stumbled into our little bathroom. It was there that I passed out and fell face down through the sheet we were using as a temporary door.
Doris was away at work that morning but Jennifer was in the house. She called for help. Before I knew it I was being picked up by ambulance workers loaded on a gurney and getting a ride with lights and a siren to Caro Hospital. They checked me over and the doctor on call sent me down to get an X-ray. Before the X-ray was taken, however, I began vomiting blood. It seems that the medicine the doctor in Marlette gave me for my poison ivy burned a hole in my stomach and I was experiencing a bleed-out.
Thus began one of the most intense near-death experiences of my life. I spent the rest of that day and the following night in the intensive care unit with Doris, a nurse and a doctor who both remaining at my side until the crisis was over. They tried ice and standard medications but nothing stopped the hemorrhaging. I was vomiting and passing blood, sometimes at the same time. They had three IVs attached at the same time putting blood transfusions into me. I am a rare O-negative blood type, so they were using up all of the available blood in the area in a hurry. People with O-negative can only receive O-negative blood. We are universal donors. That means we can give our blood to everybody else. I think they put six or seven pints of blood in my veins that day and night.
I knew that I was close to dying. In those days I was still in the Christian mode and you can bet I was getting my affairs in order. I knew that there was a very good chance that I was bleeding to death.
My condition deteriorated that night and the doctor decided to make a last-ditch effort to try a new drug to stop the bleeding. But the closest place to get this drug was Bay City, some sixty miles away. The State Police were dispatched on an emergency run to bring that drug and more O-negative blood to Caro under lights and siren. When it arrived I was immediately given the drug and then it was time to wait and see how I responded. It worked. The bleeding stopped. Slowly they could remove all of the tubes and devices connected to my body. By the time the sun was up I was rolled into a nearby room . . . still in intensive care but a hospital room. And I was surprised to find that Wayne was in a bed right beside mine. He had apparently had a mild heart attack that night and was admitted for observation.
We had what was almost a good time together that day. Wayne was always cheery and lots of fun to be around and he helped make my ordeal less painful. The only problem was that the doctor wanted to run a gastro-scope down my esophagus to burn the ulcer and assure that I would not break open and bleed again. That Marlette doctor had tried something like that some years earlier when I was diagnosed with an ulcer. It must have been one of the original gastro-scopes developed in the 1930s. It was pretty big and I was not sedated, so I not only couldn’t swallow it. That doctor tore up my throat trying to get it in. That little episode wrecked my singing voice and scarred my throat. Consequently I fought letting the Caro doctor try it again. Eventually Doris, Wayne and the doctor persuaded me that it was necessary. They promised to put me out so it would be an easy procedure. Without it, the doctor said he could not assure me that I would not start bleeding like that again. So I finally submitted.
As promised, the procedure went smoothly. The device they used at Caro was so small it went down with one swallow. I was so numbed by medicine I didn’t feel anything after I got it past my throat. The tiny instrument contained a television camera on the end of a long thin tube through which they were able to look at the walls of my stomach and find the places where I had been bleeding. Then they used another device on the instrument to “burn” the damaged areas. I was sent home a few hours later and prescribed bed rest.
There is one side note to this story. The ambulance crew noticed the little house we were living in, and the fact that the room was divided only by sheets. They concluded that we were poor and down-and-out. One of them asked Doris if I had a social worker that should be notified. It made us realize just how bad our situation appeared to the outside world. As soon as I was fully recovered, I got busy putting up the walls and doors and getting that little house finished into what became a comfortable little home.