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?”