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And the Doctors said I was Insane
I had been getting headaches for a few weeks and I started to feel a little dizzy. I listened for my heartbeat and I couldn?t find it, then it started racing, only to disappear again.
I?ve been listening to my heartbeat since I was a child. I?d hear it at night before I went to sleep, and somehow began to think that it was the sound of marching feet, and I could hear them in my pillow. I thought that I could hear them because they were coming for me. Once in a while I?d dream that as I hid under a chair watching the TV I could see the boots marching. We moved a lot, and I would also stay with relatives at times. My parents divorced when I was three and I was shuffled around until my mother remarried when I was six. Since I was moving around so much I thought ?they? hadn?t caught up with me yet, and each move was a relief because it took me farther away from where they were. I kept listening and began to feel that as long as I could still hear them walking they hadn?t caught up with me yet. What would happen when they did was still a mystery, but if I couldn?t hear them anymore I thought it would be the end for me.
I didn?t realize for a long time that I was listening to my heart beating and it was years after that before I recognized the irony of the situation. If the marching stopped it really would be the end of me.
I was working at Gould Simulation Systems when I started getting the headaches. It was my first big job. I was supervising the building of a one-of, a large training station that was going to Fort Rees to teach Signal Corps personnel how to use of all of their mobile equipment on simulated versions. There were ten case and cabinets for each of the four quadrants with a central monitoring station. When completed it would be able to instruct 240 troops at once.
I wasn?t over my head, I was just working too hard and taking the job much too seriously. The alcoholic assemblers that my supervisor brought from his last job weren?t making things any easier. I had to keep them busy with work they wouldn?t fuck up.
It was on a Friday that the heart stuff concerned me enough to ask my girlfriend Dottie to drive me back home. On the way home I dedceided to go to the emergency room at the Long Beach Hospital, where I collapsed more from exhaustion than anything else.
I woke up on Monday in the cardiac ward. I found out I spent the weekend in ICU before being transferred there, and a heart specialist had been called in because of what he described to me as an arrhythmia. He explained that my heart rate was fluctuating between 20 and 150 beats a minute, with no regulation. Normally, he said, they would implant a pacemaker, but I was still in my mid-twenties and strong enough that they were going to try giving me electroshock treatment and nerve suppressant drugs. The course of nerve suppressants would last a year, with the side effect of making me nauseous. He explained that the electroshock would ?trip all the circuit breakers in my body? and when they reset the problem might go away. There was always the option of the pacemaker if nothing else worked. I was carrying around a heart monitor tape machine with electrodes glued to various parts of my chest while I recovered from the exhaustion and they figured out what to do. By Wednesday I was starting to stare at the ceiling from my bed, trying to understand what had happened.
I remembered that I hadn?t been able to straighten out my neck for a few weeks, my head was bent over and a little to the left. I?m 6?8?, and tend to bend my neck to listen to people and walk through doorways. I started to think my neck bones were out of line. I knew enough about electronics to know that if you pressed on signal wires too hard they would cross talk, and if my spinal bones had shifted they would press on my nervesand the same thing could happen.
I explaining my idea of the spinal bones pressing on my nerves to my heart specialist and asked if I could see a chiropractor before he started anything else. He told me that they would not allow a chiropractor into the hospital and I asked for an osteopath.
He told me that the idea was ridiculous, and that there were no nerves between my heart and my brain. I didn?t bother to argue with him. I told him I was going to check myself out of the hospital and all hell broke loose. My mother had flown out and the doctor had told her and all of my friends that I was insane. He informed them that if they helped me and I fell down dead on the street anyone with me would be responsible for my death. By Friday I had pretty much told everyone to go fuck themselves and I signed myself out.
I had never seen a chiropractor in my life, but I knew of one through my roommate, Frank. He had to have some of his lower vertebrae fused and had told me about the chiropractor he used to relieve the pain. Frank was just as afraid as anyone else of the my doctor?s threats, but I remembered the chiropractor?s name and contacted him.
When I called him I explained my situation he agreed to see me and on Saturday morning. I took a series of buses to get to where he practiced out of his house. He examined me with a stethoscope and confirmed that my heartbeat had no regulation, and the x-rays he took showed that the bones in my neck were miss-aligned. He told me that there were indeed nerves that traveled from my brain to my heart, duh, and that the bones that were out of line were the ones at that junction. Dr. Schwartz was a tough old guy. He had gotten a medical degree and began studying chiropractics when the practice was still illegal. It still wasn?t widely accepted, but it was a long way from the time when he had to resort to subterfuge to treat his patients. He was also the President of the New York Chiropractics Association
He laid me out on the table and snapped my neck into line. He sat me up and checked again with the stethoscope and told me that my heart was now beating regularly. I could feel the difference immediately. I went back to him on Sunday and then again on Monday to make sure things didn?t slip back out.
On Monday afternoon I went back to the hospital for a check-up. I didn?t want problems with my friends or the insurance company. I thought it was important that I be given an official OK.
The heart specialist was there and gave me a clean bill of health. He asked me what I did and I told him that I spent the weekend in bed with my girlfriend. He and the GP that was involved shook each other?s hands and smiled like monkeys at a job well done. When the nurses that had been watching over me asked me what happened I told them that I had gone to see a chiropractor. He told me not to bother telling the doctors what really happened because they wouldn?t take it well. It?s possible that electroshock treatments might have realigned my neck, but they would never have understood where the problem originated. Flip all the circuit breakers in my body? That was Medical Science dabbling in witchcraft as far as I was concerned.
I thought the reaction of my friends and family was strange. I was still treated like a pariah. My Dottie accepted what I had done but everyone else resented me.
When I submitted the insurance forms I wrote a note explaining what had happened, pointing out that my hospital bill was over $5,000 and I was more than willing to pay the chiropractor $95 out of my pocket. I just wanted to be well. They sent me the $400 check for the specialist?s fee in my name, giving me the option of paying him or not. I didn?t, and his office started to threaten me. I wrote them a note, telling them that I hadn?t asked for his services in the first place, and I wasn?t going to pay him. You want to come after me, fine. I don't have anything so you won't get anything
For years my mother would send me articles on the latest pacemakers and kept urging me to get one. We never had a good relationship, and we?d get into arguments about it all the time.
Almost twenty years later, during a big blow-up she told me that she knew what my secret was. I didn?t know what she was talking about and asked what the ?Big Secret? was. She told me that she had spoken with my heart specialist after he had given me the last check-up at the hospital and released me. She called him and wanted to know what had happened. He told her that I was obviously a drug addict and I had gone home that weekend and gotten my ?fix,? and that straightened out my heart.
All I could do was laugh and suppress a desire to find him and beat the crap out of him. Fortunately I didn?t remember his name after twenty years .