A Fateful Phone Call

A Gidget McFidget Story

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been sharing portions of my memoir that tell the story of Gidget McFidget and her role in my heart transplant journey. Today continues the story with the night I received the call to tell me that a donor heart had been found.

Excerpt from THREE HEARTED GIRL

The last two days of September fell on a weekend. I had not been feeling well all week, and when Saturday morning arrived, I became extremely sick. Although I did not register a fever, I shivered with chills and could not eat solid food without throwing up. This reminded me of my inability to eat prior to my first heart transplant, and I recalled how my weight had plummeted to eighty-three pounds.

Poor Gidget suffered with me. I fed her breakfast a little before noon on Saturday and took her down to the courtyard afterward, wearing my pajamas underneath my long raincoat on an unusually damp and chilly morning. The next twenty-four hours passed in a blur, and I cannot recall if I fed her dinner. I know she did not go outside for the rest of the weekend.

Being such a smart and well-mannered girl, she came up with her own solution. Instead of soiling the carpet, she hopped into the bathtub and squatted over the drain, effectively creating her own toilet for doggy use.

Gidget McFidget in my arms while I wore my bathrobe and sat in the overstuffed chair in the living room.

Saturday night came and went, and I slept through most of the night just like I slept through most of the day. I wanted to stay awake to watch Saturday Night Live, but I could not make it past nine o’clock when the alarm on my phone told me to take my evening meds. I took the anti-rejection medication only, swallowing each pill one at a time with a tiny sip of water to avoid vomiting if I took them all at once. Once my evening dose felt like it would stay down, I crawled back into bed and remained there until the morning.

Sunday morning crept into my bedroom with the light of the rising sun. I pulled the covers over my head and resisted beginning the day until my pill alarm chimed at nine. Finally rising from the bed, I kept to the routine I had for most of my adult life and brewed myself a cup of Red Rose tea. Nana began giving me the same tea every morning since I was a little girl. I amassed a vast collection of little ceramic figurines to attest to my copious tea consumption in the intervening years.

One sip of tea and I felt a tinge of nausea. Reaching into the refrigerator, I grabbed a bottle of water. The apartment complex used a water softener that made the tap water taste like dish soap, thus my Sunday venture to Kroger included a case of bottled water. This Sunday, I knew I would not be going to the store, so I needed to make my remaining bottles last.

I placed a single capsule on my tongue and washed it down with a sip of water from the bottle. Immediately, my stomach spasmed and I vomited the little yellow pill into the kitchen sink. I gave up on trying to swallow medication for the moment and carried my teacup back to the bedroom. Taking another sip of tea, I felt the same nausea return and stumbled to the bathroom with Gidget on my heels.

Throughout Sunday, I made many similar trips to the bathroom. I could not eat or even drink without a violent reaction. I found myself unable to keep down any of my pills or even a sip of water. When I was not actively getting sick, I lay in a half-conscious state in the bed. In my distress, I forgot poor Gidget might still want to eat.

Gidget cuddled up with me in the bed. Morning selfie from eight years ago. We were both so much younger.

That night, I lay on the bathroom floor, wearing only my pajama bottoms because I had thrown up on the top. Curled up on the padded bathmat, haphazardly covered with a bath towel, I faded in and out of consciousness. Recalling what Dr. S said about cardiogenic shock during my recent clinic visit, I realized I should probably call an ambulance or try to get to the ER across the street, but I feared what would happen to Gidget. She surely would try to bite any emergency personnel who came into the apartment. I decided I would wait until morning and call the transplant clinic when they opened.

I drifted back out of consciousness when Gidget awakened me by pawing furiously at the towel draped across my body. She frantically licked my face and pawed at my side. I sat up, disoriented and shivering.

“What is it, Pigeon,” I asked, using her nickname. Her eyes were wild with urgency. I recalled how Mallory had pawed at me when I stopped breathing many years ago, and I wondered if Gidget did the same. Of course, it was equally possible that she wanted me to feed her and take her outside.

As I sat on the cold bathroom floor, I heard my cell phone ringing from the bedroom. Darkness filled the apartment outside of the glow of the bathroom light, and I did not know the time. Crawling on all fours across the carpet, I made my way to the nightstand where my phone sat on the charger.

This was the "nightstand" where I kept my CPAP and phone charger. I didn't want to buy a lot of furniture for a temporary apartment, so the boxes did the job.

The screen displayed RESTRICTED as the caller ID, and the time showed 1:08 a.m. on Monday, October first.

“Hello?” I answered the phone with a mixture of fear and hope.

“Hi there, Sunshine!” A perky female voice with a slight Southern drawl greeted me. “Is this Miss Dawn?”

“Yes, yes, this is she,” I replied, briefly thinking back to the call from Dr. D that launched this whole quest for a heart barely eight months earlier.

“Well, I’m calling to tell you we have a heart that’s a possible match for you. Can you get to the hospital within four hours?”

“Yes, I’m right across the street from the hospital, in an apartment. I could be there in four minutes if necessary.” I paused for a moment, considering my sickness over the weekend. “But I’m sick. I’ve been throwing up all day. Will they still accept me if I’m sick?”

“Well, I’m no doctor,” she replied, “so you should still go to the hospital and let the doctors decide. Don’t let a tummy ache mess with your chance at a heart.”

Fueled by a surge of adrenaline, I suddenly felt better than I had all weekend. “I haven’t eaten in about forty-eight hours. Do you think I could eat something small, like a cereal bar?”

“That should be fine. By the time they admit you and prep you, it will be more than four hours since you ate. Just don’t go eating a big meal. A little bite like a cereal bar should be fine. Go ahead and take a shower and wash your hair. It’s going to be a while before you get a chance to do that again. I will let the team know you’re on your way and they should see you in an hour or two.”

My hands were shaking when I got off the phone. My mind raced with the plans that would now be put into action. One o’clock in the morning – too early to start calling people.

Once we enacted the plan, my father and stepmother would travel to Nashville and stay at the apartment, caring for Gidget until Jay could fly in from Michigan. The old man usually started his day at four in the morning, and Jay got up at six Eastern Time - five Nashville time. I decided to wait until I arrived at the hospital before I started making phone calls and waking people up.

The first, and most urgent, order of business – feeding poor neglected Gidget. With sudden lucidity from the adrenaline rush, I realized she had not been fed or taken outside since noon on Saturday. I filled her dish with kibble topped with wet dog food, and she did not hesitate to gobble every bite. Since she became the only dog at the apartment, she rarely finished her bowl in one sitting, preferring to nibble at it over the course of a few hours. Not this time. She was hungry. Once she finished her food, I threw on some sweatpants and a hoodie and took her down to the courtyard where she wasted no time sniffing for the perfect spot. As soon as her feet hit the grass, she squatted down.

Back inside, I took a moment to eat a cereal bar with a cup of tea, and I kept down every bite. With the aid of a shower chair, I showered and washed my hair thoroughly. Recalling my previous long hospital stays and how impossible I found it to care for long hair, I had asked my stylist to crop my thick hair into a pixie cut before I moved to Nashville. This made the task of haircare easy to manage even in my weakened state.

After I showered and dressed, I filled the water dish and put a scoop of kibble in Gidget’s food bowl, then put both bowls in the bathroom, planning to close Gidget in the bedroom/bathroom area when I left. This way, she could have access to food and water and use the “bathtub toilet” if necessary since I did not know how long it would be until my father and stepmother arrived.

Standing in the hallway, holding the door open, I took one last look at the apartment, knowing I might not see it again for a long while, or possibly never again. I could hear Gidget whining through the closed bedroom door while the low murmur of the TV droned in the background. I swallowed hard, closed the door, and turned toward the promise of a new heart and new life.