Admittedly, this is a difficult post for me to write. Having just experienced it, I felt it necessary to put this down as a reminder and perhaps a cautionary tale.
The drama started officially on Sunday. I say officially because when I look back, the warning signs of something about to happen were there. I got the last ‘warning’ the day before, and if I had been paying attention I would have done something then. But I could excuse them all away. I was getting older, I was out of shape, and so forth. The last one I really couldn’t excuse away, but I told myself I would be okay, and besides I didn’t have time to stop and deal with health issues. Forces outside myself decided I didn’t get a vote in the matter.
Anyway, I woke up a 4 am to my chest hurting. As I said before, this wasn’t the first time it had done this. I could tell immediately the pain was different from previous times. I was up and down for almost three hours, trying to get it to go away. It wouldn’t. Not when changing position, not when taking an antacid, not by drinking water. I tried to deny what my fears were telling me, I was having a heart attack or some other cardiac issue. I then tried to get ready for the day (going to church) and trying to say to myself ‘if it doesn’t stop by this point, then I’ll go in to get checked out’. Finally, by 8:30 I couldn’t tolerate the discomfort or deny there was something significant going on. I told my wife about the pain. At that point I started having cold sweats and when she touched my hands they were cold and clammy. The only question in her mind was ‘ambulance or drive ourselves in’. We dropped our children off at church so they could be with friends afterwards and drove to the emergency room. I could have called for an ambulance, but I was still fighting some denial about what was truly going on.
Once we arrived at the ER, the drama was sidelined for a moment by a small comedy of errors. My given first name can be used for either gender, but for whatever reason, registration marked me down as ‘female’. After a few questions and reassurances that I was what I said I was, we got the registration straightened out and settled in. Then the tests and questions began. As they went through my symptoms, the doctors and nurses couldn’t say for sure what was going on. Cardiac issue? Possibly. There were other items to consider as well. We do the first EKG. Comes back ‘normal’. OK, let’s do blood tests to confirm, but it’s probably not as bad as we were thinking. So, in case it was stomach acid related, they gave me a strong antacid. The antacid did nothing for the pain, so the fears were starting to return. We started talking about whether this was angina and how I would go home that day and follow up with a cardiologist.
Then, the blood tests came back. Elevated enzymes showed I was having a heart attack. They immediately started me on heparin (a blood thinner) and gave me a large dose of nitroglycerin under the tongue. Almost as soon as it dissolved, my pain went away and I was relieved (at least the pain had stopped). But, I had to make life interesting. My blood pressure fell and I was starting to pass out. In comes the crash cart, and out go the visitors (a priest from my church was there by this time). Fortunately the cart was not needed, and my blood pressure returned to a somewhat normal number. Then they did EKG number two with some of the leads on the back. Still normal.
At this point, they moved me to the Cardiac ICU and wait there for the catheterization team to arrive. The doctors decided a heart catheterization was needed to determine the cause. I couldn’t tell you if it was a short or long session, since I’ve never been on this side of it before. I’ve been on the outside, waiting for the results to come through. I was also trying to focus on that moment, being on the table and trying to regain some sense of ‘normal’.
The results? Two of my coronary arteries are narrowed about 40%. The official diagnosis is ‘coronary artery disease’. The narrowing is not so significant as to require surgical intervention like a stent or bypass. At this point, we are going to try and deal with the situation through medication and see if that will ‘right the ship’. The good news in all of this? The current theory is I had a clot that partially blocked the coronary artery, the official term is ‘Non-ST segment Elevated Myocardial Infarction’ (NSTEMI). That, and the fact I came in fairly early on in the process meant the damage to my heart was minimal.
So, after a two-day hospital stay (needed primarily to ensure I wasn’t having issues with my new medications), I am now home to deal with this new time in my life. I have kidded with my wife for years that I was ‘indestructible’ and to a certain degree I think I believed it. Now I have had this happen and I know my life can end at any time. But with the right combination of diet, exercise, and medication, I can push that time off for quite a while.
No comments:
Post a Comment