Dead man walking!

Yesterday, I took the longest walk since my recent heart attack. I went about two miles (round trip) to re-fill one of my prescriptions. It was quite pleasant even if most of the way my nostrils were filled with car exhaust and for a short stretch the fumes of some solvent from a homeowner who was painting or something. The worst part of the trip was paying the almost $100 for a one-month supply of Lipitor. If the heart attack doesn't kill and you survive the hospital food, the cost of medication should do the trick. I hope I die soon--I can't afford the meds that are keeping me alive! Did I mention the side effects of taking five different drugs each day? I'm not sure if I mentioned it because one of the effects is being in a stupor. I think I used to be a fairly smart guy. Now, when there's a knock on my door, I open the refrigerator door. It wouldn't be so bad, but now I'm 20 pounds overweight and I need to go on diet pills I can't afford.

The Horror Part II

I forgot to mention in Part I that they also gave me a couple of injections in the abdomen, just for fun. I also forgot to mention the joy of not being able to wash/clean/shave/shampoo very well if at all while you have an IV stuck in your wrist or the inside of your elbow.

Before you have time to get over "Angiogram Day", it's "Angioplasty Day". I've never been in an ambulance, but I imagine the ride is much smoother than the transport vehicle used to shuttle me to and from the hospital specializing in performing angioplasty procedures. It didn't bother me very much on the way there, but coming back was a pain in the...back. I'll explain in a bit.

An angioplasty is a procedure to repair damage that shows up on an angiogram. It is done in two possible ways:

a) A balloon is inflated (and subsequently deflated) at a site where an artery is restricted in order to allow better blood flow.

b) A stent (tube/sleeve) is positioned at a restricted site to prevent it from future blockage.

I had one of each. You may be awake (as I was) during the procedure and the pain in the chest is very similar to a heart attack. I felt it for about the next 24 hours.

As soon as they finished, a nurse came by and said "Oops" and proceeded to describe the egg-sized balloon in my groin that had formed because of some problem with removal of the catheter. She managed to resolve this not uncommon occurrence by pressing on it with all her weight for about the next twenty minutes. Do I need to mention that it wasn't pleasant? Ouch.

Now, began the four hours of lying perfectly still on your back. As they rolled me out to the transport vehicle, my back was already starting to hurt. The bumpy ride back to the original hospital through rush hour traffic wasn't pleasant or scenic as all I could see in my position were light standards. As we neared (I asked) our destination, I was silently praying that the pain in my back that was now slowly gathering at my kidney just like the day before, did not reach Level 10 before they got me to my room.

I was in bed with only minutes to spare before I had to ask for a shot of morphine for the pain. Two more days of misery were endured before I was discharged.

You do not want to go through such an experience. It doesn't help, either that I now must take five different medications daily at a cost of about $450 per month for the rest of my life.

While going between hospitals, I spoke to the attendants about the falling average age of heart attack victims. They confirmed that large numbers of people in their thirties and even some in their twenties are falling victim to coronary disease and heart attacks. Obesity is one contributing factor. Today's sedentary lifestyles that keep people glued to TV and or a PC instead of getting out and exercising is another.

Heed my advice. You don't need to make a wholesale change today. Take small steps. Reduce your fat intake. Take more frequent walks. Eat more fruit and veggies. If you think it'll put a crimp in your lifestyle, you might want to consider that a heart attack will put a much bigger crimp in it...if you're lucky.

I just realized that I left out one of the best parts of my ordeal. The morning I was to check out, for no apparent reason, my nose started bleeding. I may have blown it--not sure, but there certainly was no picking involved. Anyway, I used a few kleenex, tried the old plug up the nose trick, but to no avail. I finally call the nurse and she gives me more and more kleenex, and then a cloth with cold water, advised me to tilt my head back, etc. Still, it won't stop. They wheel me down to emerg, a doctor comes in and proceeds to shove some kind of thick wadding so deep inside my nasal cavity that it feels like it's half way down my throat. I've never been so uncomfortable in my life. I couldn't breath well, speak well, swallow well--it almost felt like I was choking. I didn't even bother to tell you how it hurt when he unexpectedly shoved it in in one fell swoop. I imagine it to be comparable to having a large penis shoved all at once into a virgin. Unfortunately, for me, I didn't get an orgasm out of the deal. Hell, I didn't get dinner or a movie.

 

I ask how long I must endure this misery and he thinks for a second and then says "Come back Monday". It was Friday. That was the longest long weekend I ever spent. It was driving me crazy. Imagine having a partial birth and then going home for three days before coming back to deliver the thing stuck between your legs.

 

Monday finally comes and I'm in the hospital waiting to have the demon exorcised from my face. How was I to know that the evil lodged in my head would hurt five times more exiting than it did entering? Yowsa! I guess the batting had secured itself in there to the blood and the walls of my nasal cavity and as the wicked snake was slowly pulled out, it did not want to let go. The relief I felt when it was finally out was similar to that spent feeling after a rigorous lovemaking session. But again, without the pleasure.

The horror...the horror

First, I want to apologize for sporadic postings. And further apologies for the lack of lighthearted material. There's not too much humour in serious medical problems. Well, maybe if you dislike the victim. And if that's the case, here, I'm glad to have provided a few grins.

A lot of people totally disregard the information about healthy living generally and heart health specifically. I was one of them--even if I was doing well in recent years. As boring as this subject may be, I beseech you to read on. I won't tell you how painful a heart attack is. There's nothing new there. What I want to explain is that the aftermath, at least in my case, was far, far worse than the symptoms that took me to the emergency room in the first place.

You may be tough enough to withstand a mild or medium heart attack standing on your head. In fact, I endured mine for a second day before heading to the hospital, as I wasn't sure the pain was heart related at first. But everything that comes after arriving at the hospital is enough to make a grown man cry.

So, I'm having chest pains that keep coming in waves, going from discomfort to fairly substantial pain. Soon after arriving at the hospital, they take my vitals (BP and ECG), and my BP was very high (186 over 120) but I guess the ECG did not show conclusive evidence of a coronary problem. That would explain why they made me wait three full hours before I saw a doctor. Another round of vitals and a blood test shows that my BP was now a ridiculous 205 over 141. If you're unfamiliar with the scale, normal readings are about 120 over 80.

I won't go into the ugly details of the hellish week that followed, but I do want to give you a small taste:

Every 8 hours they poked me to take blood, anywhere from 2 to 6 vials each time. Sometimes, it took as many as 3 tries to get a good insertion. 3 or 4 times they moved the IV lead to a different vein. For the first 2-3 days, I was on an IV drip. They maintained an IV lead until minutes before I was discharged "just in case".

I was on a heart monitor the entire time. For a couple of days, I had to pee into a urinal on my bed. The rest of the time I had to get disconnected before I could drag my tired ass to the bathroom.

Sleeping was almost impossible.

Constipation was yet another discomfort.

Honestly, on about the second day, I was ready to die and came close to signing myself out. Of course, a doctor heard of my request and came by to tell me that he has the power to hold me if he had reason to believe I would do harm to myself. I guess leaving the hospital without treatment for a heart attack is tantamount to doing yourself harm.

The food wasn't of great quality to begin with, but when my appetite returned, the coronary care unit menu was enough to starve you. Breakfast alternated between a single piece of whole wheat toast and a muffin.

Now, we're getting to the fun part. I was shaved in the groin area by a nurse. If that's not your idea of fun, maybe having a catheter stuck into an artery in your groin and pushed all the way up to your heart and spraying basically a poison dye so that they can take x-rays of your major heart arteries is. They give you some vile-tasting stuff that I feel is the worst tasting crud I have ever had the displeasure to swallow, that is supposed to protect your kidneys from the dye. The best part is yet to come.

You need to lay flat on your back without making the slightest movement, especially to the leg they used for the angiogram, for a full four hours. That would be difficult enough under the best conditions, but the pain in my lower back slowly increased and then went to my kidney. I asked the nurse for some pain reliever which she brought and I took, but the pain increased faster than the pills could take effect and about 2-3 minutes later, I literally whimpered that I couldn't stand the pain. She came and administered morphine into my IV drip. While there was a slight improvement almost immediately, the full pain did not subside until about 15 minutes later at which time, gratefully, precious sleep came.

I didn't mean for this post to be so long. I'll give a few more highlights probably tomorrow and then explain the reason for posting all this.