platelets

Something has gone wrong. I'm in a hospital a little outside Gwangju. I've been here since Sunday night. How did I get here?

It started on my last night in China. I stayed in our room despite a party downstairs. I'd decided on not drinking and only had a few bites to eat. A little later I felt a couple of bumps inside my left cheek. I looked in the mirror to see two 2mm blood blisters. It freaked me out because I'd never seen anything like that before, but figured I must have bitten my cheek, and so went to bed.

A few hours later I woke up and the two blisters had morphed into one massive chunk that took up half the inside of my cheek. I now noticed other blisters had sprung up on my tongue and lips. I was now paranoid. Some of them were even bleeding, so I crammed my mouth full of toilet paper and tried for more sleep.

The next morning I took out lump after lump of blood soaked tissue from my mouth and found a morbid sight. Mouth, tongue and lips full of tiny dark blisters, plus the behemoth on my left cheek that continued to bleed. It was around this time I noticed the red spots popping up on my arms and legs. I needed a doctor.

However, I wouldn't be in Gwangju for another 13 hours. So, I had to deal with it. "Dealing with it" turned out to mean walking around all day spitting out mouthfuls of blood and jamming my mouth full of tissue. That's what I did while we walked around a frigid Qingdao beach. That's what I did for the 45 minute taxi ride to the airport. That's what I did for the hour plane ride to Seoul and 4.5 hour bus ride to Gwangju.

My friend, Adam, had been telling me to see a doctor as soon as we arrived. I was more keen on sleeping first and going early the next morning. After going to the bathroom at the bus station I adopted his opinion.

I pissed blood. I don't mean I noticed a streak of red in my piss, I mean I only pissed blood. Lots of it. Thick, dark red blood pouring out of me. I've never been so scared. It was so odd and obviously not right that it convinced me I was dreaming. I was sure I was dreaming. I mean, I live in Korea? I just got back from China? I'm pissing insane amounts of blood and have a silver dollar sized blister in my mouth? C'mon Sim, wake up!

The hospital was now clearly my next stop. A taxi took me to one nearby, and after pausing to piss another pint of blood I spoke to reception and began to notice a pain in my gut. I saw a doctor quickly and when he looked in my mouth he gasped. "Not good," I thought. Nobody spoke very much English, so it was hard for me to convey what was wrong with me other than the blisters and red spots on my arms and legs. Part of the trouble was that in Korean the word for "blood" is "pee" and I don't know the word for urine. So in saying, "There is pee in my pee," I was perhaps only baffling them further.

At first it seemed they wanted to get rid of me quickly. They had a dentist poke around my mouth who claimed she had stopped the bleeding (a claim I soon disproved). She told me the problem was "mucus" and gave me directions to an oral health clinic.

At this point I think they were about done with me, but I persisted because of the whole blood-piss thing. Eventually they had me type into a computer what my symptoms were. When they got to "blood in urine" things got serious. For the next 5 hours I alternated between having tests/xrays done, and sleeping on a gurney in a large room of sick Koreans. They drew blood from me 5 times in 4 hours and put me on an IV drip.

In time they figured why I had blood spots all over my mouth and body, why I was pissing blood- spontaneous bleeding due to a low platelet level in my blood. A quick rundown of platelets is in order: there are 3 kinds of blood cells- red for moving oxygen, white for killing bad things, and platelets for clotting wounds and stopping bleeding. Their diagnosis made sense to me. Certainly explained why my mouth had been leaking blood for 24 hours.

The doc says, "Your platelet count is 3,000." I think to myself, "Okay, 3,000. Normal is probably 5 or 7,000. Surely nothing over 10,000--". "A normal count is between 130,000 and 450,000. You are severe."

I was instantly terrified. I had him write it down just to make sure he hadn't pronounced the numbers wrong in English. But no, my platelet level was critically low. He explained that my biggest worry now was brain and internal bleeding- and for the first time in my life I had to say these words in total seriousness: "Doctor, am I going to die?"

He said no, but that they had to move me to another hospital, one with a hematology clinic. I got a ride in an ambulance, though I was mainly out of it by this point. Upon arrival at the new hospital my platelets were under 1,000.

That's how I got here. My condition has improved, but I'm gonna pick this story up another time because I've typed this whole thing using my iPod. My iPod automatically capitalizes the P in iPod. That's kinda creepy. Anyway, I'll leave you for now with this, a brief poem I composed in honor of my platelets. I call it "Ode to My Platelets":

Unknown soldiers of my body.
All these years have been there to clot me.
And who said thank you? Not me.

Platelets, platelets don't ignore me,
Return again and restore me.

Had I known of you before now
Perhaps appreciation could've been shown somehow.
How's no bumps or scrapes for a week sound?

Platelets, platelets don't ignore me,
Return again and restore me.

Quite a balance, these bodies we're given
That must be run with such precision
Which when in error feel like a prison.

Platelets, platelets don't ignore me,
Return again and restore me.

I look into my weary eyes
And see that all which lives, dies
Whether from disease or phlebotomize.

Platelets, platelets don't ignore me,
Return again and restore me.

I was never one for biology,
But didn't live so foolishly
As to not know the importance of what I cannot see.

Platelets, platelets don't ignore me,
Return again and restore me.

I'm sending up my last flare.
God or platelets if you want or care:
There's a life here for you to spare.

Platelets, platelets don't ignore me,
Return again and restore me.