Home from Hospital

OK, here’s a short update:

The bottom line is that after being honest with Nana Pam about some chest pains, I was cajoled into going to the emergency room, was subjected to countless prodding and probing, forced to submit to an angiogram procedure (and if you can’t appreciate just what THAT entails, google it), and ALL FOR NAUGHT. They didn’t find any heart problems that needed to be fixed.

So, in spite of my best efforts to delay the home renovation, the hospital DID NOT find any additional blockage in the coronary arteries. Thus, after a three-day “visit”, I was summarily kicked out of the hospital after being verbally abused by Mizz Burley (RN) and the entire Critical Care Unit staff for being a malingering slacker, a freeloader, and a faking scam artist accused of trying to get some hospital food and other goodies.

As far as I’m concerned, the only thing I got out of this whole deal is a couple of days off work – which I have to make up, by the way – and the realization that I still have to go the doctor to find out just why I have these chest pains – or “chest discomfort” or “angina” or “heart burn”, or whatever the heck it might be.

And to top it all off, when I got home I found a “birthday package” from the in-laws. I want to be gracious about the effort they made to send me a “gift” – after all, they do drive a hybrid car. But take a look at this thing:



Nana Pam thought it was cute and promptly named it “The Birthday Bear” (not very original, but appropriate). I initially thought it was a nice effort on the part of the in-laws to get on my good side, but soon realized that this was some devious joke designed to just piss me off. Soon, the little monster began taking over the entire house.



First, it demanded some breakfast.



Then it took over my easy chair AND the TV.



And then, as if that weren’t enough, it dipped into my wine supply and began playing show tunes on the piano – all the while incessantly singing “Happy Birthday” with those silly little hat-lights flashing on and off.



So, here I am, recuperating from a near-death experience, not able to drive or even go to Danger Lane Workshop, confined to my own house ON MY BIRTHDAY, and my only “companion” is this little alcoholic.



At least the goofy thing knows how to celebrate – I just wish he had brought his own booze.

In the Hospital

OK, here I am lying in this hospital bed in the Critical Care Unit of Midwest City Regional Hospital with a plastic urinal beside my head delivered with instructions from Mizz Burley (RN) to fill it up. It all started a few weeks ago. I’ve been fatigued and have been experiencing some tightness in the chest and some pain. And while on a walk with Jackson Danger this past weekend, I felt a distinct pain in my carotid arteries. I knew from past experience what was happening to me, i.e. I had some blockage in one or more coronary arteries. No big deal, I’ve been there before, and this time I was ready for it. Not like last time when I spent months thinking I just needed more exercise and almost exercised myself into the morgue.

This time is different. I monitored myself for a few days and decided I needed to start the ball rolling by making a doctor’s appointment for a checkup with my cardiologist.

But, apparently, merely making a doctor’s appointment was not enough for either the doctor or for Nana Pam. Those two conspired to make me go to the emergency room. This didn’t sit too well with me – after all, I wasn’t ignoring the situation and I was willing to do the unpleasantness of going to the doctor and facing another angioplasty. Nana Pam apparently just wanted to be in control of the situation.

So, I was at work yesterday, and Nana Pam called my cell phone and told me I had to immediately go to the emergency room upon doctor’s orders. I thumbed my nose at her (through the phone, of course) and told her to “come and get me, copper.” I felt smug in the knowledge that I was in a secure building only accessible with a key card, which Nana Pam did not have.

But, I didn’t realize Nana Pam had the number to the base security K-9 unit, and the next thing I knew I was being herded to the parking lot by a couple of burly SPs with a dog nipping at my butt every time I tried to get away. Nana Pam got me safely to the emergency room where upon I was immediately told to get into a wheel chair and was taken to a room where an EKG was administered. I told the technician that the EKG would be normal, along with a normal blood pressure, normal pulse rate, normal temperature, normal, normal, normal, everything NORMAL.

Tired of being normal, but feeling so bad. So, while in the emergency room, I experimented with the blood pressure machine and found out I could manipulate my blood pressure through force of will to make it appear abnormal. This I did on occasion, just to irritate Nana Pam, who was closely watching my monitor. Once I got my blood pressure to go from 120/80 all the way down to 103/59. Nana Pam demanded that I stop playing around – just as the doctor came in to chit-chat. He took one look at the last recorded blood pressure then signed an order to admit me to the hospital’s critical care unit - - STAT.

At one point, during all the poking and prodding and “prep-to-move” work, one of the lines on my chest monitor came unhooked and the pulse rate on my monitor stopped working, displaying only a flat line. Nana Pam, who was monitoring the monitor, saw that and said to me, “Your heart line thingy stopped working. I’ll go tell the nurse.” She left the room and I heard her tell the nurse, “Excuse me, but my husband’s heart has stopped.” The next thing I knew there were red lights flashing, alarm bells ringing, medics rushing into the room and loudspeakers blaring “CODE RED, CODE RED!!” Before the situation got all straightened out, I had been zapped three times, had been CPR’ed by a former-NFL linebacker-turned-medic, and had been given the “kiss-of-life” by an UGLY male nurse who was still eating a lunch of garlic-laced seafood pasta.

I told Nana Pam she needs to work on her communication skills.

I’ve been in the hospital two days now. Today was a bunch of tests and monitoring to ensure that the angioplasty needed to happen. And it was determined that since everything else is NORMAL, the only recourse is to do an angiogram to take a look.

And that is what is on tomorrow’s day planner. Although I have been through this procedure before, the doctor insisted I watch an instructional video of the procedure to “prepare myself” in case there have been some changes.

There have been no changes – I will have a conduit shoved into my femoral artery to allow access for the doctor to snake a wire through the artery into my heart to poke around and do his thing – kind of the same thing a plumber would do at your house to unclog a sewer line.

There are some hazards with this procedure. I mean, after all, the doctor causes an intentional breach of a major artery with the inevitable possibility of massive loss of blood, and then inserts a wire through the artery and into your heart with the potential of knocking loose a bunch of arterial plaque that could go like an express train up to your brain causing a stroke – or getting lodged in your heart somewhere causing a heart attack. Not to mention the possibility of the wire breaking or becoming lodged some where (this is one time you don’t want to hear your doctor say “oops”). This definitely isn’t something you would try at home. Maybe, if you’re adventurous, you would do this as an experiment on a stray cat, but if you ever see kids attempting this while playing “doctor” you may want to stop them.

While I was worrying about all the possible hazards, Nana Pam tried to reassure me: “Don’t worry, if something goes wrong at least you’ll already be in the hospital. By the way, is your insurance paid up?”

Had an Earthquake the Other Day . . .

And the event was so exciting that the only thing I can say about it is . . . we had an earthquake the other day.

However, it has been interesting listening to the news. Oklahoma being Oklahoma, where news items generally begin with the word “football” or “wheat” or “gunshots”, an earthquake that can be even slightly felt is enough to provoke comments from retired ex-reporters and former football coaches who I thought had recently died.

The latest reports have been about the magnitude. You wouldn’t believe the amount of news chatter discussing and debating just how strong the earthquake actually was. The official USGS earthquake website shows the temblor at 4.3 on the Richter scale. But, every hour since the quake, reporters have “revised” the measurements ranging from 4.1 to 5.6 to the unofficial OMG scale of “pants-crappin’ strong”.

I was at work on the base when the earthquake hit, but me being me, I was busy and not paying too much attention to my surroundings, not even noticing a rather large nearby cabinet falling over. I just thought someone had slammed a door a bit too hard. I’m so obtuse when I get busy that I probably wouldn’t even notice an active shooter alert, vaguely thinking that the background noise (i.e. gunfire) penetrating my consciousness was just some Islamic religious fanatics celebrating a birthday or something.

Of course, there was some damage in the local area. Some windows were broken in Midwest City, some walls were cracked, and one building on the O.U. campus was damaged, bringing whoops of delight from some O.S.U. aggies. A few minutes after the quake (and after my co-workers convinced me that the ceiling tiles on my desk were not there as a result of some office prank), I called Nana Pam at Buddha Belly Farm to see if the Danger Lane Workshop was OK. She told me she felt the whole house move, and thought that a truck had hit the house. And she knows what she’s talking about – a truck did hit our previous house when we lived in Moore. Funny thing – I remember her initial thought then was that an earthquake had occurred. I guess if an aircraft ever hits the place her first thought would be that a truck hit the house during an earthquake.

One of the first responses from the state officials was to check for any major damage on the most important infrastructures in the state, namely the O.U. and O.S.U. football fields. At O.U., it was noticed that the temblor had set up a harmonic resonance in one of the goal posts, driving moles and gophers from the all-natural turf and into the visitor’s locker room. After extensive analysis, it was determined that the presence of the moles and gophers had actually improved the condition of the visitor’s locker room, so the moles and gophers will have to be removed.

Some bright junior high-school kid suggested that bridges could be adversely affected by an earthquake. After berating the kid for adolescent fear-mongering, the state engineer announced that all the bridges in the state would be inspected immediately after he ensured the safety of all the buildings in the Valley Brooke area. (Note to people not familiar with the OKC area: Valley Brooke is the “racey” side of town – I’ve never been there.)

Aunt Linda called me from Tulsa to say that the 20 story building in which she worked swayed back and forth for quite a few seconds right after the quake, alarming her and her co-workers. I wanted to reassure them with my expertise in the matter, so she put me on speaker phone and I addressed her co-workers with the following: “Don’t worry, your building is sufficiently tall so if a major earthquake does cause a collapse, you would be killed quickly enough so as not to notice your bodies being ripped apart by the falling debris.”

It gives me such a warm feeling inside to use my technical education to reassure others.