Missing Out On All The Joy

And other reflections from the ER.

photo credit: Todd Heisler, NY Times

I should have known I was tempting fate.

A week ago Saturday, Marjorie and I were in Washington, DC for the great DC/DOX Film Festival, but watching a film that night was the last thing on our minds. The NY Knicks were possibly clinching their first NBA championship in 53 years, and, like most New Yorkers I knew, I was in a tizzy.

Marj, too, despite a lifetime of being allergic to sports of any kind. That’s how I knew Knicks mania was truly out of control.

The sports bar we ultimately found was packed - notably, half with women - and when the final buzzer sounded I was delirious. I’m not even sure she heard me, but in the throes of my excitement I turned to Marj and blurted out that old chestnut.

“Now I can die happy!”

The crowd quickly filtered out, the DC streets were quiet, and I was left to imagine the mass outpourings of joy back in NYC. That’s ok, I consoled myself, I’ll have the victory parade on Thursday to experience all that.

Three days later, I was in the ER.

It all started innocently enough. On Tuesday I’m at my office eating a late lunch when I begin to feel chills, the kind you get when you have a fever. Soon my hands are shaking, to the point where the food keeps bouncing off my fork. It’s like a storm passing through - the whole episode lasts only a half hour or so, and then suddenly I feel fine. Wow, that was weird, I remember thinking.

Six hours later the fever chills return, only this time so intensely I’m left gasping for breath. When it subsides, similarly, after about a half hour, Marj takes my temperature and it’s 102.7. We hightail it to the nearest hospital, NYU-Langone.

Night one is spent in a hallway off the main ER that’s lined on both sides with beds. I’m told there are 60 people waiting for a room. I get maybe an hour of sleep all told but, hey, the Knicks are still freakin’ world champs, who needs sleep?

At first, the doctor on call thinks it might be my heart, so I go through a battery of tests — EKG, chest x-ray, ECCO cardiogram, the whole shebang — until they rule that out. Which is, I have to say, heartening.

Then come the blood tests. Another doctor speaks in foreign language sounding terms like 9% bandemia and elevated Troponin level, which she interprets as my having an infection but she doesn’t know what kind. Other than it’s probably viral rather than bacterial, and my heart has been working overtime to compensate.

In other words, I have a mystery virus.

Nevertheless, I’m in an upbeat mood. I’ve felt no more chills at all, and I’m still hopeful about being released in time for the big ticker-tape parade the next day. It’s not that I have any desire to buck the massive crowds for a view of the player floats passing by. It’s just, having missed out on being in NYC when the team clinched the championship, I desperately want to walk around the parade’s periphery, take a boatload of photos and soak in the atmosphere, the madness, the once-in-a-lifetime experience of New Yorkers of every possible stripe gathering in communal celebration and euphoria.

It was not to be.

My parade vantage point

Alas, hospital staff insists on having me be healthy, and for that they need more tests. I’m moved into a small alcove off another ER area the second night, which at least has curtains and a modicum of privacy. It’s from there I watch the parade streaming on my phone the following morning.

I do my best to accept missing it in-person. “Just be happy you’re alive, idiot!” I tell myself. Be grateful for your amazing family, who’ve been visiting at all hours. Be grateful the Knicks actually won it all (eat shit and die, Wemby!).¹

The troubling part for my doctors is that my blood test results show my platelets are at a disturbingly low level. And the test for platelets can only be done once a day (at 5:30am, of course). Until they go up significantly, or at least don’t plummet, they’re hesitant to release me.

The following day I’m moved to an actual room, which I share with three other inmates patients. A room with a view, no less, and a much more comfy bed.

I should feel elated, but the whole ordeal is starting to weigh me down. The disruption of routine. The uncertainty. The lack of exercise. The loss of control. The lukewarm coffee. I just want out.

It’s hard to feel sorry for myself, though. Of my three roomies, one is awaiting a bone marrow transfer, one considering radiation treatment and one has a leg amputated at the knee. Yeah, poor me.

I have my laptop with me and normally it would be a fine place to get work done. But work is the last thing I feel like doing.

I had it all planned out. As I promised last week, this Substack post would be all about how my DC/DOX talk with Nina Gilden Seavey — R/Evolution: New Paths for Documentary Storytelling — went down. It couldn’t be a more timely topic for doc filmmakers. Considering the paucity of funding and distribution opportunities for feature docs, how do we get our documentary stories out into the world, and what alternate platforms are available to us?

We were the first panel of the festival and the room was packed. For the first time publicly I explained the evolution of my decade-long film Betty & Henri (& Me) from a feature doc to a non-fiction book/film serialized in chapters (not that it precludes being a film, eventually). Nina and I both felt it went over really well, and we’re already plotting about doing a dog-and-pony show on the road. I couldn’t have come away more excited, or more eager to share the news.

Yet sitting there in my hospital bed, laptop at hand, I... just... can’t. Can’t summon the energy. Can’t summon the motivation. Can’t summon the words. Instead, I re-watch a reel of Zohran and KAT on their parade float jumping up and down like little kids; Jalen Brunson floating through air with the greatest of ease; and for maybe the hundredth time, a miraculous moment captured from every possible angle by everyone in the arena with a phone.

So much for plans.

There’s a memorable quote attributed to the fearsome boxer Mike Tyson that comes to mind: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”²

Hopefully, I’ll have a full report next week for my loyal readers once the swelling has gone down.

Saturday morning, my fourth day there, I’m woken at 5:30 for what should be my final blood test. I poke my nose out the window from behind the closed shades to find the sun rising over the 59th St Bridge. I’ve lived in Manhattan all my adult life, and it still has the ability to make my heart go pitty-pat.

Suddenly, I’m hit with a surge of optimism. I can feel my platelets stirring, eager to march into battle. Sure enough, the results show an incremental trend upwards. The nurses have been heroic, and smile patiently when I remind them once again that they’re in dire need of beds. The doctor team leader informs me I can leave, but be sure to get a follow-up blood test from my primary care physician within a week.

A half hour later I walk out of the hospital without fanfare of any kind. My body feels creaky from lack of exercise. I’m a little wobbly. But it’s a beautiful, sunny day, and I’m well enough to amble the mile or so to our home in Stuy Town.

From the faces I pass on the street, you’d never have known the Knicks had won the championship just one week earlier. I don’t even see any Knicks paraphernalia. Ah, well. I may have missed all the joy, but I’m happy.

And apparently not dead yet.

1. Ok, that’s mean, don’t die. Just have a long, tortured off-season.

2. “Man plans and God laughs” is a more well-known proverb, but this devoted atheist prefers the heavy-hitting philosopher, Mike Tyson.