I mentioned last week that I might have a story to open the MMP with soon, well, this ain’t it!
This is a much more serious story, and is in no way an attempt at levity.
I hope you will find it interesting and possibly instructive anyway.
I wasn’t feeling really spiffy when I crawled into bed Monday night, but I put it down to the fact that I had eaten almost half of a chocolate orange that afternoon, a real stupid thing to do for someone who’s borderline diabetic. Anyway, about 1:30 I woke up with a serious need to get to the bathroom. What followed was almost an hour of sitting on the pot in a cold sweat with my head down, thinking I was about to throw up and alternating fearing that I was gonna die, and that I wasn’t. I remember thinking “Crap! I’m getting the flu!” and “It couldn’t ha’ waited until after Christmas?” Eventually I decided I was out of ammunition and staggered back to bed and more-or-less passed out.
About 2:30 or so I was awakened by a searing pain in my chest. I was also very light-headed and nauseous. I lay there for a few minutes trying to make sense of this new development. The flu doesn’t usually include chest pains, and heartburn doesn’t usually include nausea. Finally I woke Wife up and panted “Very sick! Scared!” She asked me if I wanted to go to the emergency room (we don’t have any insurance) and I decided that yes, I did, and right then! So she put some sweats on me and got me moving towards the car.
**Digression: I did not ask her to call the ambulance because some of the local EMTs and I do not see eye-to-eye on their primary role. I say their job is to stabilize and transport soonest. But some of them seem to think they should play doctor first.
Anyway, I wanted to see a real doctor ASAP, so we drove.
In the ER:
Our ER Docs are great. They poked me and listened to my chest and even took an X-ray with a portable unit, and decided I had had an inferior MI (myocardial infarction). Despite the name, if your gonna have a heart attack, this is the kind to have, or so I’ve been told. Apparently one of the arteries feeding the bottom of my heart had collected quite a bit of plaque, and then a blood clot came along and plugged the thing up pretty good. The docs hung some Heparin and nitroglycerin (they’d given me a coupler of sublingual tabs earlier, plus something else I don’t remember). I think I had some saline too, I don’t remember everything.
Then they decided they needed to send me into Portland to a hospital with a cardiac unit. Providence St. Vincent’s didn’t have any room, but they were able to book me into The Providence hospital on Glisan (Providence Portland), so they bundled me into an ambulance and sent me off.
** Another digression: We live about 5 blocks from the fire station and I always thought that they ran their sirens non-stop when they went anywhere, but I found out they only use them in traffic, which was interesting, and made me like them a little more than before. It took them about 30 minutes to make the trip and pretty quickly I was in a bed in the CICU (cardiac intensive care unit)
In the CICU:
ICU gets the best beds. The regular rooms get the older beds, but the ICU beds are new, with air mattresses and all. Very comfy. (If we didn’t already have an expensive mattress I’d be lobbying for one of those sleep number beds.)
I liked my bed in CICU. I’d also got a more permanent set of heart monitor pads stuck to my body. I’d had temporary pads stuck to me and yanked off about 5 times already and was getting a little tired of that routine. Also, I had 2 IV taps into my right arm and a heart pressure sleeve on my left arm. The sleeve would pump up all by itself every half hour to take my pressure. The monitor I was attached to would display my heart rate, twice, (not sure why that was) and my respiration, plus my latest blood pressure reading at the bottom.
Anyway, after a while the pain subsided. I guess the stuff they were giving me dissolved the blood clot.
The Doctor assigned to me, Dr. Evans, came in about 7 or 8 and explained things to me and said they could leave things as they were or put in a stent at the blockage site. While he was explaining what a balloon angioplasty (?) was I asked him if stretching the artery like that was hard on it., and he said “It’s pretty much hosed already.”
I told him we didn’t have insurance, but Wifey piped up and said “Don’t concern yourself about that right now, what would you do if we did?” I said “Fix it!” So he said* “Good”* and went off to make the arrangements. At around 10:30 that morning they wheeled me down to the Cath Lab.
Funny thing, when you say “hi” to people you pass while you’re on a gurney, it seems to scare them. Like you’re asking them to share your pain or something.
In the Cath Lab:
The Cath Lab is big and cold. At least most people consider it cold. I was perfectly comfortable, which seemed to confuse some of the nurses.* “Aren’t you cold? “ “Let me put this blanket over you.”* One sweet little nurse tried to cover me with a warmed blanket 3 times. Anyway, they moved me onto a long, narrow and very hard table flat on my back. Overhead there was a suitcase-sized box attached to a curved arm that I found out later was a type of X-ray machine, or something like. Mounted on the base of the apparatus were 3 flat panel display screens.
Then they draped my groin, (like it mattered to me at this point) and shaved my pubes on the right side. They had told me that there were 2 ways they could get the stent into position, threaded up through a artery in my body, starting at my groin, or up through an artery in my arm. I was pulling for the arm route, ‘cause if they use the groin I would have to lie perfectly flat on my back for 8 hours after, which, with my bad back, would be pure agony for me. Fortunately the doctor decided he could get into my arm at the wrist just fine, so they went that way. They swung a flat wing thingee out from under the table I was on and taped my hand down to the end of it. They gave me a local at the entry incision and the doctor started threading a very thin tube into my arm. I thought I’d feel it a lot but I didn’t except during his more vigorous maneuvers.
The Doctor doing the procedure sat on a little stool at my wrist, and apparently could control a lot of stuff from there. The lights would go on and off periodically, and the transmitter head moved around without anything being said. There seemed to be a lot of other people wandering or standing around in the part of the room I could see, bringing the Doc stuff he would ask for, asking me how I was doing and if I needed anything, or just watching. When the machine wasn’t in my way I could see the screens and watch the dye and the catheter moving around in my arteries. That was pretty cool. Occasionally the Doc would tell me to take a deep breath, or hold my breath, and twice told me I was gonna feel warmth in my hand. I think that was when he shot the dye into me. It felt quite hot for a few seconds. There wasn’t really any pain, and besides, they’d given me something like valium and I had a hard time staying awake most of the time. The whole thing took less than an hour and then they put a major plastic clamp on my wrist at the entrance site and wheeled me back to my room. The clamp was because I was full of blood thinners and couldn’t clot and would have bled out if they hadn’t. More about that later.
Back at CICU:
Back into my bed and hooked up to the monitor again. They gave me some pajama bottoms that matched my ‘gown’ and explained that the clamp had to stay on for 4 hours and then they could start to loosen it. The band ran right over one of the bones in my wrist and hurt like Hell unless I held my wrist just right so I was anxious to get it off. They finally decided to take it off that afternoon and put a pressure bandage on and also that I could get up and sit on the commode. My one attempt at peeing into a bottle while lying on my back hadn’t gone so well. The commode was built into this little cabinet in the corner and when you opened the cabinet door, the pot swung out into sight along with the door. So I maneuvered onto the pot, which was a major hassle with all the wires and tubes attached to various parts of my body, and I was sitting there when I feltl something hot on my leg. I looked down and saw blood spurting out from under my new bandage all over my leg, pajama bottoms, and the floor. I reached over and pressed the call button and then tried to apply pressure with my other hand. Let me tell you, those ICU nurses were on me like white on rice in a heartbeat, and had a new clamp on my wrist toot sweet. And they pretended not to notice that I had my pajama bottoms down around my ankles the whole time. Them’s some mighty fine nurses!
During my time in CICU I got a visit from their financial aide person, (no insurance remember), a dietician, and finally my assigned Doctor, who told me everything went very well and they were gonna watch me for 3 to 5 days to make sure and then send me home. I spent the rest of that day dozing off and on.
Oh, one thing about the monitor I mentioned earlier, if my respiration dropped, like when I was asleep and didn’t breathe vigorously enough to suit it, it would start this electronic Ding Ding Ding noise and wake me up. Most annoying. My nurse finally came in and said ”Yeah, it does that.” and repositioned the sensors so they got more movement. It still did it a couple of times, but I was able to get some sleep. She also took off my blood pressure cuff from about midnight until about 4:00 am when she said she’d check my vitals again, so I got about 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep, which did me a world of good.
The next morning (Wednesday), they moved me out to ‘the floor’.
I could write another page or two about my adventures on ‘the floor’, but you’re probably tired of this by now anyway, so I’ll wrap up, except to relate a kinda funny thing; while the dietician was talking to me I mentioned that I was lactose intolerant and that if I had milk with anything, like cereal for instance, I usually had Lactaid (lactose free) milk. She said the hospital had that and dutifully wrote it down. From then on, at every meal, I got a glass of Lactaid milk, even though I never once asked for it.
One more thing. The ICU is quiet, peaceful, sheltering even. The ‘floor’ isn’t. It’s raucous. There are people coming and going and carrying on conversations in the halls at full roar at all hours of the day and night. I even got awakened at 4 one morning so that they could weigh me! I had to convince Dr. Evans to let me come home Thursday night to get some uninterrupted sleep!
So if you gets a chance; kiss a nurse, or a doctor if that’s your preference. I loves ‘em!
(blue from the cold)