the muse concert came and went last week. it was the concert i'd been more amped about than any i'd ever seen. yet, i wasn't there. why? well, on monday night after the gym, my medicine coated stent decided to give way, creating a full blockage in a cardiac artery. some in the medical field may refer to this as a heart attack. yeah, another one. ugh.
the signs were all the same (the pain, trouble breathing, etc.), but this time was much, much different than the first time around. for one, i was actually conscious when this one hit fully. i also wasn't schlepped to the ER by an ex, rather i called the ambulance...after hopping in the shower and walking over to my neighbor's door to hand her my keys so she could take care of my dogs.
truth be told, i wasn't scared a bit. naturally, the EKGs didn't show anything, which seemed (somehow) to convince the EMT that there really wasn't much going on, except that i knew exactly what was going on, and when you know what's happening, fear isn't really part of the emotional spectrum.
(note: i took a shower 'cause i'd just gotten home from a 1 hour cardio class--ironic--and knew i'd be in the hospital for a few days. who wants to be lying in a hospital bed reeking like funk?)
i get to the ER, calm as can be, joke with the staff, take all the medicines they can feed me (i love you, morphine and nitro) and waited patiently for them to wheel me to the heart cath lab. what was weird about this whole experience is that i knew exactly what was going to happen and how everything would feel afterwards. perhaps that's why i felt a tinge of resentment every step of the way.
mr. heart cath lab cardiologist told me they'd give me something to make me feel good. i insisted on just being put completely out. who won that battle is purely a matter of perception. i woke up at some point (i had no idea what time it was for 3 days. apparently i sent text messages to people at 4:30am. sorry.) with that very familiar pain in my groin... the femoral artery is the preferred route to the heart.
i stayed in ICU for 2 days, since all the private rooms were occupied and i'm very high maintenance. it wasn't too bad. the RNs were cool, i had some visitors, and the bed was simply kick ass--it was some kind of auto-adjust bed that miraculously knew the position i'd just been in and adjusted to fill the void i'd left when i moved. pretty rockin'.
i got moved to my private suite, with an amazing view of the hospital roof (how romantic!). it reminded me, actually, of my freshman dorm room, minus the beer bottle caps tapped into the ceiling. this room is where the friction began.
"room service" called me incessantly, apparently not understanding that i'm not hungry at 7am the day after i'd been loaded up with every anesthesia, painkiller and bloodthinner known to man. then they called every half hour until lunch. finally, i caved and ordered my bland-ass low cholesterol, low fat, low sodium lunch. and after all this, they give me fucking regular greasy ass potato chips?! "sure, the care at this hospital is great, but the food will kill you!" unreal.
the hours ticked by and i finally get a visit from the resident cardiologist who told me i needed to start working out. uh, dude, did you even READ the admission report? what the hell did you think i was doing before i got here? did they not teach you basic english in russian medical school? after a snarky response, he told me i'd be discharged shortly and then left.
i got dressed and was just waiting on my paperwork to be completed, when the only thing that could send me immediately back into cardiac trauma occurred...the cardiac RN came in to "counsel" me on cardiac rehab, a joke of a program put on by the hospital to take more money from my pocket and cost me more time at work.
she handed me the very same paperwork i'd seen before, which i knew nearly from rote memory no less, and proceeded to read it to me, as if i were an illiterate bum. i signed the paper acknowledging that i'd received it, figuring this was the last hurdle to me leaving. no. instead, she proceeds with a 10 minute lecture about how i'm gambling with my health if i go back to work and if i don't take advantage of the cardiac rehab. (note: at this point, everyone realized i could benefit from their stress relieving classes, since this broad was pissing me off to noticeable proportions).
to put an end to this charade, i asked for one compelling reason that cardiac rehab was better than the exercising i'd been doing on my own for the past year and half (including, but not limited to: cycling, mountain biking, hiking 14,000 mountains and shorter ones, walking, soccer, basketball, core step classes, and spin classes). her response? "in cardiac rehab, you'll be working out while we monitor you with machines you don't have access to at a gym."
i was fucking floored. that's the benefit of taking more time off work to go to these classes? to workout while i'm hooked up to machines that failed to detect even a hint of not one, but TWO HEART ATTACKS?! and that was my response. defeated, she shrunk away and i was on my way home.
as you can see, i'm plainly bitter about this recurrence. i'm bitter that no one i encountered in the medical field wanted to consider for a second that, for once, it wasn't the patient that fucked up, but that their shitty rushed-to-market-to-make-huge-bucks stent actually didn't work. add to that speaking to me as if i were an ignorant dolt that knew nothing of how to care for himself after a cardiac episode and you've got yourself one helluva blood-boiling good time.
the physical pain of a heart attack is bad enough, but the carelessness, condescension, and utter unwillingness to work with the patient rather than directing him is what made this experience so awful.
monday i have another battle, this time with my normal cardiologist, over when i'll be "allowed" to go back to work. presumably, he'll tell me a week more is in order. i'm armed with the argument that being home alone with nothing to do and losing valuable PTO is far more stressful than actually being at work. we'll see if he wants to work with me or direct me, too.
JY: 2
Death: 0
still gettin' shut out, reaper.
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5 comments:
WOW!!! That was one hell of a week. So glad you are okay, with the wit still intact. what besides the cardio rehab did they recommend? any different meds, new surgery to replace the stent you have? do you have to take warfarin or coumadin regularly? I think I had a patient who was part of porters or swedish's cardio rehab program. It was one with yoga, nutrition, exercise, etc. keep up the updates.
Holy, man. That's some heavy stuff right there. Is this a genetic thing? You're my age, makes me nervous. Glad you pulled through.
viva: what would i be without my wit? nothing different than first time, except a higher dose of daily aspirin. same meds otherwise (plavix, altace, metropolol, and zocor). they told me not to work for at least a week, which is more stressful to me than actually working. they can't actually replace a stent, since it embeds in the artery walls. so they implanted a new one either inside the old one, or at a different spot in the artery.
j: yeah, it sucks. but, no, no family history at all. just some flukish bullshit that i have to deal with the rest of my life. be careful of what you eat and go see a doctor; my new advice to everyone under age 30 (note: cholesterol actually starts forming around age 17, but no one actually bothers to check till it's too late).
My philosophy is that you only live once. So eat all the high-fat, high-cholestrol, high-sodium food you want, and abuse your body to the fullest extent.
Who cares if you leave a fucked up looking corpse? At least you had a good fucking time.
That's clearly sarcasm...kinda. But I am glad you pulled through.
GPG: if i were 50, that'd be a great philosophy. but at this point, the goal may be just to make it to 50 and then fuck around. at least by that time, life is more than half over anyway and you can say you had some fun. but at 28? that's not quite long enough for my liking.
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