CHAPTER TENHURRY UP AND WAIT
My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death have fallen on me.
—Psalm 55:4
JOSH
I sat in my chair glaring at Paige as she watched the nurse take my vitals. Lieutenant Rollins, the nurse at the desk, was caught in a battle of glares and sighs between my wife and me. That hot August night, we had gotten up to the fourth floor around 11:00 p.m. even though we were scheduled to spend the night in Building 62. We had already passed our trial run with flying colors, and tonight we were supposed to be checking out the room we might actually move into. Instead, Paige was strongly suggesting that I come back to the fourth floor. I was tired from a long night of speaking to my church on a livestream from the Fisher House, but I went upstairs anyway. As we came out of the elevator, Rollins asked why we had come back. Knowing I would sound more than just a little annoyed but deciding not to care, I retorted, “Paige wants me to get my vitals checked, but I know I’m fine.” They got a vitals machine and went through the routine I had become used to twice daily on the fourth floor: thermometer under the tongue, blood pressure cuff on the right biceps, stethoscope on the chest. I sat there and waited the forty-five seconds calmly. In fact, I was hardly sweating, even though we had just been outside in my wheelchair in the middle of August. The machine beeped and the nurse recorded my temperature at 100.2 and my heart rate at 145. Looking concerned, Rollins said, “Your heart is racing! Are you sure you feel okay?” I nodded encouragingly and asked for her to test me on another machine. On the second machine, my temperature was 101 and my heart rate was 149. What was going on?
I just wanted them to hurry up with these vitals so we could leave. Then Rollins said, “Josh, listen, I can’t let you guys go to Building 62 tonight. You’re going to have to stay here.” What? This is not a big deal! Surely I could just get some Tylenol or something. Paige just ruined our perfect evening at Building 62.
I couldn’t believe I was checking back in to my inpatient room for the night. It was just a little fever. There’s no telling how much longer they will make me stay here after this little flare-up. I’m never going to get off this floor, I thought as they were hooking me up to heart monitors and IVs and taking my temperature. Suddenly, I couldn’t see Paige because of all the people in the room. Paige shuffled to my bedside, and as soon as I was getting ready to tell her I was upset, she looked at me with that very fearful face that I had not seen in a long time.
PAIGE
The rapid response team doctor ordered cultures of Josh’s blood and urine as well as an EKG. The EKG showed a heart rate around 150 with a dropping blood pressure. The team bolused fluids and Tylenol into Josh’s PICC line, and around 1:00 a.m. everything seemed to even out. We were both exhausted, but Josh had to be awake to answer the same puzzling question: “Are you sure you feel okay?” The nurses were stunned that Josh showed no signs of stress. Shortness of breath, sweating, anything would have helped point the medical staff to what was going on. But he just sat there, even though the monitors said his heart was pounding out of his chest. As an extra precaution, they put Josh back on the heart rate monitor so they would be alerted if his vitals spiked again. I updated the immediate family that we were spending the night on the fourth floor instead of Building 62 but the meds seemed to be working. Everyone thanked me for making him go, and I assured them that we were fine. Exhausted, I wanted so badly to just close my eyes and wake up and everything be okay. But the anxiety washed over me repeatedly. I honestly didn’t know what to pray, because I knew Josh wasn’t okay. I knew he was too “well” to be feeling this bad again. If there was one thing Walter Reed taught me, it’s that sometimes pain medication actually just masks the symptoms; it doesn’t cure the ailment. We couldn’t place any hope in the fact that a few IV medications made his body calm down. Whatever this was would surface again, and it would be even stronger. Our process in all of Josh’s recovery was to hurry up and wait. We’d rush toward progress, only to wait on Josh’s body to catch up with his desire to move forward in life. With a hollow feeling in my stomach, I closed my eyes and listened to the beeping.
I racked my brain trying to think of why Josh might be getting sick. As I thought about the previous week, I realized the steps I’d likely missed as his caregiver. A week ago, we had completed a three-day trial run at Building 62. Josh was meeting his required benchmarks in physical therapy, and his doctors believed he could handle outpatient living. The building was actually an old Navy barracks before Walter Reed moved from Washington, DC, to Bethesda, so the rooms were like a typical two-bedroom dorm room, complete with a mini kitchen and mini living room setup, except these rooms were adapted with roll-in showers and lower countertops for wheelchairs. This was a much-anticipated privilege because we could finally, after three months of
