OOPS! I ALMOST DIED AGAIN!

. . . only this time it was my fault. I accidentally ingested more than double the dosage of my medication and thus was overdosing. Immediately my vision blurred and darkened and I felt nauseous. I remembered I had an empty stomach and my blood sugar was low. When I got up to ask someone for help, I fell to the floor and could not walk properly. I had to lift myself up using a door handle and steady myself with the walls to find anyone who was on my floor. Upon rubbery legs I made my way to a nearby room and fortunately a dude was in there. Slurring my words, I asked him to go downstairs and let the staff know I had accidentally poisoned myself and was blacking out and probably needed an ambulance. He said, “Of course, man!” and bolted down the hall.

I managed to find a bench in the hallway and I sat down to steady myself and rest my heart rate. I had a massive headache and I felt my throat tightening . . . I almost passed out because of an extreme drowsiness I felt. Just then, the owner of the hostel came charging up the stairs and sat down next to me. He asked me what was wrong and I told him. He immediately called an emergency number and asked for my age, the medication I take, the dosage I had accidentally taken, if I were drunk, if I had eaten . . . and on and on. He spoke in complete paragraphs in Japanese as I closed my eyes and wondered if I was going to go into a coma or die. I was at peace with it . . . as long as it wasn’t a coma.

The hostel dude told me an ambulance was on the way and held my arm and helped me into the elevator. On the ground floor, in front of everyone at the cafe, he led me out the front door and had me sit down on a bench. I sat down. He waited beside as if standing guard until the cute little ambulance pulled up. The hostel dude patted me on the back and wished me luck. I thanked him and shook his hand.

Three EMTs hopped out of the van and helped me up and had me lie down on the stretcher in the back. A dude strapped me in as another dude checked my pulse, took my blood pressure, recorded my temperature, and so on. The driver got behind the wheel and we sped off towards the emergency room. One of guys spoke decent English so we were more or less able to understand each other. When there was a language barrier, we spoke into our phones to translate the words, then held the phone up to the other to read it.

As I lay there upon the stretcher covered by a bright orange blanket and experiencing major tunnel vision, and being kept awake by one of the EMTs so as not to pass out, I thought hazily: “Well, it’s been a nice run while it lasted. I did a lot with my life. I suppose it’s finally over. Nobody lives forever . . .” As when my plane to Japan almost seemed to go down over the Pacific Ocean last week, my mind accepted death but my body did not want to. In that moment in the ambulance I thought about how much I love my friends and how much I would miss them . . . wherever I was headed next. And if I’m being honest, I also wished I’d finished my novel.

We got to the hospital in about five minutes by blasting through the narrow residential streets with the lights and sirens at max volume. The guy in the passenger seat was shouting through a megaphone saying, I think, to clear the road because we were hauling major ass. Once we pulled up at the ER entrance, two of the EMTs who had sat in the back with me held either side of me with my arms over their shoulders and led me into the hospital. Unsurprisingly, given that it is Japan, the place was beautiful and immaculate. I thought: What a fine place to be treated for an accidental overdose . . .

The nurses were waiting for me when we got inside. They gave me a mask to put on, had me enter a nearby examination room, took my boots and leather jacket off, and lay me down on a bed. Beneath the hot fluorescent lights, the nurses quickly went to work on my body . . . one wrapped me in a thick blanket while another checked my vitals. They put my index finger into a plastic clamp and stuck EKG nodes on my chest. I heard my jacked heart rate beeping through the computer. I was so dizzy and nauseous I thought I was going to puke into my mask and black out. I wondered how they would revive me if that came to pass.

Like the EMTs in the ambulance, the nurses and I communicated with one another using our phones. They told me to relax and tried to comfort me in Japanese. It worked: I was comforted.

Eventually a doctor entered the room. He and the nurses encircled my bed and stood over me. The doctor asked how I was feeling and shined a little flashlight in my eyes to check my hugely dilated pupils. His English was decent. He asked how much I had taken and when, my usual dose, if I was intoxicated, when I had last eaten and drunk water, and on and on . . . I was severely dehydrated just then, but the doctor said I should not have any food or fluids.

After going through all my vitals, he told me bloodwork was not necessary unless I really wanted it. He said I had taken a very high dose and that I had poisoned myself, but it was not fatal, though it sure felt like it.

He recommended I lie upon the bed while the nurses monitored me for a few hours. He shook my hand and was gone. After an hour and a half, the drug had seemed to have passed through me and I had mostly regained my vision and ability to fully control my legs. I told them so and they removed all the wires from me and smiled and bowed and sent me to the counter where they would check my health insurance card and deal with the money aspect of the whole thing. I braced myself for an enormous bill, considering the ambulance ride, the ER visit, all the tests, and so on.

When I got to the counter, the dude had me take a seat and said they’d call my name when it was time. I told him I was going to use the restroom but would be right back. He smiled and nodded from behind a mask.

I still felt woozy and dehydrated, but I took this picture to let all my friends know I was still, at least for now, amongst the living:

Back in the waiting room, I sat down in a cute little chair. They called my name within seconds. I walked back to the counter and talked to the dude there. He apologized profusely in Japanese, typed four numbers on a calculator, and spun it around to show me. It said:

¥6,754

That translates to about $43 or €37. For everything. Lets hear it for socialized healthcare. I tapped my credit card and he handed me a receipt for me to submit it to my German healthcare company back home, who will reimburse me €37 within days.

I love that it says “Take care. Please be careful on your way home.” That’s so cute. All said, Japan is such a cozy country in that way . . .

I decided to follow the advice on the invoice and take care and be careful on my way home. After zigzagging through the (beautiful, modern, clean) labyrinthine hospital, I finally found the exit (with the help of a nice older lady) and stepped through the automatic doors and back into the city of Tokyo. I was alive. The sun was setting and it was a fine evening with a nice breeze blowing in from the south. People were walking down the sidewalks and riding their bicycles and enjoying what was left of the sunlight—all of them visibly happy to be alive as well. I pointed my body towards Sumida River and followed the path there for a mile and half as Tokyo Tower loomed overhead. My body felt badly broken and worn down and ancient just then . . . and yet I could not wait to get to the 7-11 across the street from my hostel and load up on rice balls and kimchi and mineral water and hot coffee, and then sit down someplace nice outside and eat and drink it all.

This had been yet another close call with death. The world has tried to kill me so many times I have lost count . . . perhaps it cannot kill me. I felt a sort of happiness to have survived what would have otherwise been an uneventful and slightly embarrassing death. There was no poetry to it . . . just my own idiocy as usual. As I walked past a freshly cut baseball field by the river, I wondered at my luck . . . wondered if I were truly unkillable. Somewhere in the Abyss where not even time exists, the Grim Reaper shook his head.