As serious as a….

“Heart Attack.” I heard the doc say the dreaded words from under the morphine haze.

Last Thursday morning, after work, I went to bed, and couldn’t get comfortable. Not really in pain, just a gentle pressure on my chest and strange sensations in my upper arms. Lying there, I sort of shifted around trying to get comfy, when I noticed, all off a sudden my jaw was starting to hurt.

Hmm.

Pressure on the chest: Check.

Discomfort in arms: Check.

Pain radiating to jaw: Check.

I got up and sort of stumbled into the living room. Gwen (who’s all of 5 years old) took one look at me and said “What’s wrong, Bampy?” with a look of concern on her little face. I told her to go get her mommy.

Saundra walked into the living room and asked me what was happening- I told her “I’m not sure that I’m not having a heart attack.” She called 911 immediately and gave me an aspirin. The ambulance was at the door in 3 or 4 minutes, tops.

Sitting up had relieved most of the discomfort, and the oxygen felt pretty good, so that by the time the paras got me on the gurney and out the door I was feeling faintly embarrassed by all the hoopla. In the ambulance, it took the gal (who I think was a paramedic intern or trainee; she was taking instructions from the more senior person) about 10 minutes to get a line started in my arm. I asked why we weren’t moving, and they told me that “We can’t move until we get this line in you; that’s the rules.”

A couple of sprays of nitroglycerin in the ambulance, and I felt actually pretty OK by the time we arrived at Community Hospital East.

It didn’t take long for me to get into an emergency bed, and doped up pretty good with morphine. Most of the rest of the time in the ER is pretty darn fuzzy to me; I’ve pieced some of it together with the help of people who came to visit.

I don’t remember the trip up to my room after I was admitted. I do remember that the TV operated very strangely with some weird combination of remote controls, and the constant stream of nurses every few minutes taking some sample or checking some IV line or giving me a pill.

Day 2 in the hospital featured a stint in the Cardiac Cath Lab for me. I guess I was spared the full experience, because I was doped to the gills again: all I really remember was that it was fairly cold in there, the nurse shaving the cath site on my groin, and me making a wisecrack about my nipples standing up due to the cold.

The head nurse told me to “lie still” … I couldn’t have moved voluntarily if I had wanted to: the drugs they gave me were some really good ones, apparently. I do remember the lights going on and off, on and off, on and off. I think I said something about it, because I remember someone saying something about needing to see the screens with the lights off.

Another magical transition later, and I sort of came to back in my room again.

Day 2 and 3. Well, all I can say is this; hospital food sucks, no matter how they dress it up, serve it on nice plates with folks dressed like waiters, and let you order it like room service from a leather bound menu: It’s still hospital food. Institutional, blah. Dressing up a turd doesn’t change the smell.

So, the long and the short of it is that I had 2 blockages, they did some angioplasty and put in 3 stents.

I’m home now, feeling better, and will be starting rehab next week as well as returning to work. I got a statement from the hospital: the charges to the insurance company looks to be around 60 grand.