Hearts in Hawai'i
A Sudden Unpleasant Surprise
5/11/2011
The pain didn't seem like much when it first started. Sort of like a cramping in the left side of my chest, like I had pulled a muscle. It made a little sense, since I had just returned from a 18.7 mile bike ride in the Munger Trail and had yanked my bicycle off the bike rack on the back of my car at the end of the ride. I had certainly pulled and strained muscles doing less in the past.
When the pain increased in intensity over the next few minutes, and I started sweating heavily, I knew something was wrong. The sweating was an obvious tip, if you know anything about heart attack symptoms. I wasn't certain I was having a heart attack--it's just that nothing else made sense based on how I felt.
I struggled to pull my socks, shorts and pants back on and walked downstairs to the living room where the phone was. Patty was due home any minute from a wedding shower dinner she was attending. Initially I thought I would just wait until she got home and then have her drive me to the hospital, but the increasing pain (and the surfacing of more than a little fear) overrode that stupid idea. I knew I had to get to the hospital and quickly. Just as I was reaching for the phone to call 911, I heard the garage door opening, followed by her entering the house.
"You gotta call 911"
"Huh?"
"YOU GOTTA CALL 911!"
"Why?" 
"I think I'm having a heart attack!"
One look at my face and she knew this was serious--very serious.
Paramedics made it to our house quickly, in only about five or six minutes, but at the time it felt like five or six hours. At one point I found myself slumping sideways onto the couch; not that I felt like I was passing out, it was just another position I was trying to see if the pain could be alleviated. There was still this bit of denial, that it wasn't a heart attack and if I could just find a comfortable position to rest, everything would eventually be fine.
Obviously, it wasn't fine. The EMT guys hooked me up to a readout and it showed there was almost certainly something going on with my heart. Whether it was a full-blown heart attack or not wouldn't be known for certain for a little while.
Gold Cross arrived a few minutes later--or so I was told, as I had no real track of time at this point. They wheeled the stretcher into our living room, got me loaded up and we were on our way to the hospital. When they asked me which hospital I wanted to go to, it was an easy decision; SMDC. My family doctor was associated with SMDC, my sports medicine doc, my urologist. I had a membership at their fitness center on 2nd Street.
Along the way, I remember being fed nitro tabs (two or three, can't exactly remember) and four chewable Bayer baby aspirin. The pain remained untouched.
The next hour or two was more or less a blur. We rolled into the emergency room at St. Mary's, they asked me some questions. Patty had gone off and called Bruce and Karen, and they were on their way. They wheeled me out of Emergency and through what seemed like a labyrinth of corridors, up an elevator, onto another floor and then the room where they tend to heart attack victims. I was cold and shivering and they covered me with warm blankets. They had put an IV in my right hand on the ambulance ride to SMDC, and now they inserted another one in my left arm. They said they were going to give me something to knock me down but not out. I'd be awake but would not feel much of anything. Indeed, when they made the incision in my groin into the femoral artery, it felt like a little pin prick. I sort of understood what they were doing, but the pain killers made me not really care. There was still a bit of pain, and then the warm flush as the dye entered my blood stream, dye which would pinpoint if there was a blockage which had caused the heart attack.
There was a blockage. Two, actually. One had a clot involved which had blocked the blood flow 100%. Another one lower in the left descending artery was 75% blocked. They cleared the clot and inserted two stents. I suddenly realized there was no longer any pain.
After that, I don't remember much of the next hour. They wheeled me from the OR and off to the Cardiac ICU unit where I would have a "room" to myself for the next 18 hours. Well, myself and the army of doctors and nurses who were constantly coming by to talk, take my vitals, clear this one damn machine which kept beeping, take my blood and basically prevent me from getting any sleep (I got maybe an hour of sleep the first night).
To the guy who sat out in the nurses station talking ad nauseum with his co-worker at 3 in the freaking morning about pay raises, people who he didn't like, blah blah blah; "SHUT THE HELL UP!! You're working on a unit with people who are trying to sleep, to recover, to get better. Nobody cares!!!"
Damn, he was irritating.
I had to keep my right leg straight for six hours after the procedure, which was a royal pain. There was no getting up, even no sitting up. If I had to pee (and by the time I did, it had been 14 hours since I had last peed), I'd be doing it laying on my back. Interesting.
At 4 a.m., I was allowed to sit up. A couple hours later, they let me stand up. There was still no moving about, since both arms still had IV's running into them hooked up to machines on either side of the bed. I spent a lot of time that first night looking behind my left shoulder and checking out my pulse and blood pressure. Why? I don't know. I'm always curious about that stuff. And what else was there to do while on my back? Think?
Doing this constant monitoring of my vitals also kept me from thinking about things, things such as how badly this could have gone. What if I'd had this heart attack while on the Munger Trail? Why were there no real warning signs prior to the attack (as it turned out, there were but they were subtle and I attributed those signs to some other cause)? What if this happens again? Those questions will drive you batty very quickly, because they can't be answered. All those questions do is lead to a lot of mind-fornicating.
It was a very scary evening which led to a positive outcome.
Previous: 4/29/2011--Our Caribbean Cruise (2011)--Day 13
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