Entries this day: Ryan_Phillips

Ryan Phillips

11:18am CDT Saturday 21 September 2002

I just heard from Tanner, who I was going to meet in Stillwater today that his brother is in the hospital now (in apparently stable condition) after his heartrate jumped to three hundred (!) beats per minute last night. A shock to jumpstart his heart at the hospital got him back on human rate instead of humming bird rate.

So I'm going straight through to Tulsa today and will probably hook up with them in the hospital.

2:30pm

Okay I'm in the hospital, and here's the story as I rememeber it from Tanner:

Ryan was at a friend's house and ran downstairs to get a pizza coupon from the car. When he ran back up he started feeling weird and started super sweating but felt crazy cold.

He wanted to take a shower before going to the hospital, so he did. They got him to the hospital emergency room and they were all, "um, we don't have a room, we're going to put him in the hallway here."

In the hall on a stretcher and they put an EKG on his finger.

"Oh shit!" and then zoom everyone was all around Ryan. His heart was fluttering and had been for like an hour and a half. They zapped him and it went basically back to normal.

("Oh shit!" is doctor-speak for "this is bad.")

No concern about brain damage; they think his head got enough blood, though the rest of his body did not. His extremeties were 70% oxygenated (if that's the correct term) while 95% and lower is bad news.

2:57pm

Ryan adds to the story: he had been playing football earlier that day and his heart rate never returned to normal after that. He went to work and then to his friend's house.

His friends carried him upstairs and downstairs in a chair.

At the hospital, he was conscious for the defibrulator. He said it felt "pretty weird." It lasted only an instant, but he could feel it all over his body. He could immediately feel his heart go back to normal (from 300 to 75 beats per minute).

7:05pm

I took a big ol' phat nap on the chair that lays out into a bed while a couple troops of visitors came through.

Tanner and I just dropped off my car at their house and picked up some taco thing for Ryan to chow. Visiting hours are over until 8:30 so we're chillin' in the waiting room with the parents and Brent, all on beds converted from couches.

Hey all..its tanner, rob is letting me give my spin on things, man its been crazy. my mom left a message on the machine in my dorm room around 1:30 am, but i didn't get in till like 3:30, and i started freaking out, i'd never felt such intense panic before, if i'd listened to the whole message, i would have learned everything, but all i heard was "ryan is in icu" so i flipped out and thought he was in a car wreck or something.

noah and kara drove me up to tulsa this morning, we slept in a bit, we got to bed superlate

we found out some crazy stuff about ryan and his wacked out heart, besides that it was going 300 beats a minute (thats 5 beats a second!), when he got to the hospital, his blood pressure was 30/0..thats crazy bad

well i'm trying to set up ryan's playstation 2 in his room so he can have some fun, and i rented a bunch of movies and games for him. well my parents are about to crash, and rob is playing with some toys that look fun, i think i'm going to go play too

7:25pm

I'm so funny. I just wrote on the dry erase board designed for people to leave messages for loved ones:

mom & dad
I got out of
the ICU and
I'm running
awaaaayyy!

I got that from way back in the day when Astroworld had a similar board. Someone had apparently written that to his brother.

7:29pm

Okay, I am typing in dvorak layout. I haven't practiced this for some weeks. The only stinky thing is that this is supposed to be dvorak - qwerty, which it is except the qwerty part is used with the apple key instead of the control key. Maybe I can download a dvorak - qwerty (control) layout.

7:37pm

8:28pm

Now we just played disc in the parking garage. We were doing some tricky throws including skips around posts and under flag lines and skipping off the ceiling. Then we did a distance competition, and each got the disc pretty far down the length of the garage. Didn't really measure it, but over a hundred feet, which of course was excellent considering the low ceiling.

9:33pm

Playing Stuntman on Playstation 2. I pretty much suck at it, but Tanner and Ryan are relatively good. The "director"'s voice is pretty funny at times. When we drive the wrong direction, he says "where are you going?" and when we fall off the dock into the Thames, he says, "where are you going?" in the exact same way. Not, "look out for the water!" or "hey you're not a boat!" And when flipping up onto two wheels he just says, "cut, new take" instead of, "hey jack, cool two wheel drivin' there, mate!"

10:21pm

Ha. Tanner just got chinese food for himself and me. My fortune cookie says, "you will attend an unusual party." Postcognition?

- - - -

9:21am Sunday 22 September 2002

Saw Blade 2 last night, or the last half of it. That movie seemed to go on and on forever. Slept on the fold out couch and have a sore neck now, I think because the top of the couch-bed raises up like a pillow would, which caused my head to compress into my neck. I usually don't use a pillow under my head, but only under my knees.

I wonder if I could conceivably sleep for a night in the intensive care unit waiting room of any hospital around my journey... If I arrive late enough at night, no one seems to be awake enough to care who's here or not. Interesting...