It’s four a.m. Monday morning. I wake up with an extreme burning in my throat, one like I have never felt before in my life. I feel it from my breast bone to the top of my throat. I touch the area with the tip of my tongue and I can feel the heat. I’ve had heartburn before, and even though I’ve never felt such severe burning, I get out of bed and take a Pepcid Complete.I breath through the burning, get dressed, and pad downstairs for a bottle of water to cool my throat. I sit on the sofa reading Paramahansa Yoganada’s “Autobiography of a Yogi” to divert my mind from the sensation. Neither the Pepcid nor the water cools the burning.I finish reading two pages before my right arm begins to tingle, similar to my arm falling asleep as it has in the past, but as I sit, dizziness overtakes me. I have the strength to stand and walk up the stairs, holding onto the railing to reach the bedroom where my husband is sleeping.I touch his leg to wake him. “Jim, I don’t feel good.”He asks me what’s wrong as he wakes up out of his stupor. I relay my symptoms.“I need to go to the doctor. Something’s not right. I’ve never felt like this before.”I thank God for the wonderful husband he as given me as I sit and remain calm on the edge of the bed. The burning, tingling, and dizziness continues. Now I feel pressure on my heart, like a heavy weight resting on my chest. He hands me two 325 mg. aspirin and a bottle of water, then helps me down the stairs and into our Honda. We head for Scripps Urgent Care.Within ten minutes we park the car. Jim comes around to the passenger side and helps me out of the car. In those few short minutes, I become weak. He holds my arm as I shuffle to the door and rest in a nearby chair. My world is spinning, I can’t think, but surprisingly, I remain calm.Short minutes later, I’m helped into a bed and the nurse takes over. Jim sits at my side and holds my hand while she takes my blood pressure. It’s high. High to the point that they roll in the EKG machine and cover me with sticky electrodes and hook me up to wire leads. The entire staff springs into action when the nurse see the EKG results. “Fax this to the Cardiologist.” They slip a nitroglycerin tablet under my tongue.“On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you describe your pain,” the nurse asks as she hovers over me.”“I’m not in pain,” I say. “My throat burns, I feel weak and a heaviness in my chest.”She inserts a heparin lock into my arm in case I need an IV then walks away with a puzzled looked.As time ticks by, the burning in my throat subsides, the weight on my chest lightens, but I get a headache from the nitroglycerin tablet. The nurse gives me Tylenol.A short time passes, three more cardiac patients arrive in Urgent Care. The place is buzzing as one of the nurses tell me it’s the end of her shift. A different nurse arrives. A lab tech draws blood. I lay on the gurney and wait.The Cardiologist arrives and asks me the usual questions about my health and lifestyle.I walk almost daily and practice yoga several times a week. I’m a semi-vegetarian - I don’t eat red meat. I don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t take drugs. I’m surprised by his next comment.“If I met you on the street and you told me your symptoms, I’d think you were having a bad case of heartburn and tell you to take a Pepcid, but your EKG looks strange, so I faxed it to my boss.”What? You faxed it to your boss? What’s going on? I remember hearing that July is the worse time to be in the hospital because the new interns arrive. This doctor looks young. I wonder how long he’s been on the job.“We’ll wait and see what your enzymes look like when we get your blood test results. In the meantime, just lay here and relax.” He pats my hand and leaves without another word.I close my eyes and rest. I feel more like my normal self although I’m still tired. Jim and I sit and wait for the blood test results.The young Cardiologist walks in an hour later. “Good news. Your enzyme levels are normal, but in cases like this, we always take a second blood test six hours later, so we are going to move you to an observation room in the hospital. If your blood test comes back normal, which I suspect it will, we’ll give you a stress test and send you home.”Oh goody. Normal enzyme levels. I haven’t a clue what that means, but laying in the hospital for six hours – just to be sure – isn’t that bad.“Do you think I should call Connie?” I ask Jim. Connie, my sister, is a nurse in Illinois and I always call her when I have a medical question.“Maybe we should wait and get the results of the second blood test before calling anyone. We don’t want to worry anyone needlessly,” he says.I agree. I’ve been caring for my mother, who has Alzheimer Disease. Also, two weeks ago, I returned from Pittsburgh where my mother-in-law was put on hospice with congestive heart failure and respiratory failure. Neither side of the family needed to worry about me right now. I’m holding my own.Transport arrives and wheels me to the Cardiac floor of Green Hospital. I’m in a private room with a TV. I’m too tired to read, so I click on HGTV and watch one makeover show after another while we wait. Jim isn’t in to makeover shows, but he sits there and keeps me company.It’s lunchtime. I haven’t eaten since yesterday evening and I’m getting hungry. At 1 p.m. a nurse comes in ready to take me for my stress test and asks for my blood test results. There’s some mix up. I didn’t have my blood drawn at noon.“I’m sorry,” the nurse apologizes. “Since they didn’t draw your blood on time, we will have to reschedule your stress test for tomorrow. We can’t go ahead with a stress test without the second blood test results.” She leaves disgruntled.Oh man. I’m feeling better and now I have to spend the night in the hospital just because the lab didn’t draw my blood on time. Jim and I wait patiently and watch another room makeover show.The lab tech comes and draws more blood. An hour later, the nurse informs me that my enzyme level is 11.1 and the doctor cancelled the stress test and ordered an angiogram instead. She doesn’t really explain what the high enzyme level means, but they did say that the angiogram is more invasive than the stress test and the elevated enzymes means that they need to take a closer look. In comes the EKG machine again, and then another blood draw.I hear the nurses talking outside my room. They’re puzzled by my enzyme level and lack of pain. Clueless, I go along with the doctor’s orders. I’m not worried or upset about my condition. In fact, I’m amazingly calm. I attribute my serenity to my yoga practice, meditation, and breathing exercises I’ve faithfully practiced these past months. Deep down, my spirit reminds me that I will be fine. I rest and wait some more.The next enzyme reading is 10.4. It’s going down. The nurse lets me know the lower reading is a good sign. It also confirms that the previous test results were correct. My heart experienced some traumatic event that caused enzymes to release into my bloodstream. What kind of trauma? I’m feeling tired, but pretty normal overall.The head of Cardiology comes to visit a few hours later followed by an entourage of nurses and a sonographer. The nurse asks Jim and my friends to wait outside for a few minutes so they can bring in an echocardiogram.“How are you feeling?” Dr. Curtis asks.“Pretty good,” I reply.The sonographer rolls in the echocardiogram monitor and hooks me up as the doctor stays in the room. I’m surprised by such attention. My husband and friends return. I ask the doctor to explain the angiogram procedure while Jim is in the room.“We insert a catheter with a camera into your coronary artery and see if you have a blood clot.”I must have shown concern on my face.“I encourage you to sign the release forms, so if we find a blockage, we can fix it immediately.”“I already signed the form,” I tell him.The sonographer smears me with ultrasound gel and my heart appears on the monitor. The doctor watches the screen as he instructs her to reposition the transducer wand on my chest for a different view of my heart. My eyes drift toward the screen along with everyone else’s in the room. I have no idea what I’m looking at and turn my head away.“Looks good,” Dr. Curtis says. “Don’t worry. I don’t expect to find anything in the angiogram. It looks as though whatever happened, your body fixed itself.”Yeah body. The hospital staff shuffles out of the room and I return to my visitors. My angiogram is scheduled for 3 p.m. the next day.I’m calm and happy to have my friends around me. An hour or so later, my arm starts to tingle again. I stay calm and press the call button for the nurse.“I don’t want to alarm anyone,” I interrupt the conversation between two of my friends, “but I want you to know I called for the nurse.”My friends look alarmed. I can’t see Jim’s face while he’s sitting next to my bed. A short time passes with no response from the nurse. A friend walks outside my room to the nurse’s station. I hear her telling the nurse my symptoms. I don’t hear the nurse’s response, but my friend returns.Shortly, the nurse comes in and slips another nitroglycerin tablet under my tongue then rolls in the EKG for another look.“Dr. Curtis is still on the floor. I’ll have him compare the results of this EKG with the previous one. How are you feeling now?”The nitro tablet has dissolved and my arm isn’t tingling anymore. “I’m okay,” I say.Later, Dr. Curtis stops by. “Your EKG is normal. The tingling in your arm must have been caused by something else.”I thank him and he leaves. Okay, so maybe my arm fell asleep lying in bed. It felt just like it did at home. How am I suppose to tell the difference?My friends leave so I can rest. They remind me they’ll call or stop by the next day. Jim sits at my side until evening then kisses me good night. I’m in the hospital, alone in my room with the oxygen tube up my nostrils, a heparin lock in my arm, and a heart monitor resting in the pocket of my hospital gown connected to electrodes pasted all over my chest. Nurses, aids, and lab technicians stop in throughout the night to check my blood pressure, pulse, and temperature or to draw even more blood. I already feel like a vampire’s prey with all the vials they’ve drawn. At 3 a.m. they fill five tubes. No wonder I’m so tired and weak. I doze off and on throughout the night.Tuesday morning, 6:30 a.m., I get prepped for my angiogram and ask about the results of my blood tests: enzyme levels down to five – still decreasing, total cholesterol under 200 – normal. Things are looking up. I breath a sigh of relief even though I’m not looking forward to a liquid breakfast and nothing to eat or drink afterwards until my angiogram.At 7:30 a.m. the cardiologist’s assistant stops by with good news.“Have you eaten breakfast yet?”I shake my head no.“Good. It looks like we can move your angiogram up to this morning.”My stomach gurgles. Thank you, God. The assistant leaves and I call Jim to give him the news. He rushes to the hospital to see me before I go in for the procedure, my iPod in tow. I want to zone out during the angiogram since the assistant mentioned that I’ll be awake the entire time.By this time, I’m hooked up to an IV. Minutes later, I’m transferred to a gurney and rolled into the cath lab, short for catheter laboratory, where the cardiologist will make a tiny incision into my groin artery and insert an even tinier tube with a miniature camera on the end so the doctor can examine me from the inside. I’m surrounded by cath lab personnel, getting hooked up to more monitors, clutching my iPod.“You may not want to use that in the lab,” a nurse points to my iPod. “We have lots of magnets in these X-ray machines. I’d hate for something to happen to it.”I think about the new album my husband downloaded for me, especially for this procedure, then hand the iPod over. A nurse bags and labels it, like an investigator gathering evidence from a crime scene and sets it aside. Seconds later, someone taps into my IV and starts the “happy juice.” The nurse tells me the names of the sedatives, but I don’t care what it is as long as I don’t feel a thing.Relaxed, I lay on the table and breathe deeply. I feel a stinging prick when the skin breaks, but not much after that. I look at the monitor and see a thin black line snaking up my artery. Amazing. I close my eyes, not wanting to look more. I’m the kind of person who can’t look at a needle when I get a shot.The doctor’s talking to me in my “happy juice” state. “You’re arteries look good. I don’t find any evidence of a blood clot. You’ve had a spasm in your coronary artery. I’ll prescribe some medication. You’ll be fine.”Under the influence of the “happy juice”, it doesn’t occur to me to ask him questions. The procedure is over. Someone rolls me into an observation room and stays at my side. I get strapped into a belt contraption with metal that puts pressure on the artery. It’s about as tight as a girdle. When they are satisfied that my bleeding has stopped, they remove the belt and roll me back to my room. I’m still feeling my “happy juice.” My friends joke about wanting to know where they can get some.Now that I’m back in my room, the nurse orders a food tray and informs me I need to spend another night in the hospital for observation. I’m happy to know I didn’t need a stint to open an artery or need major heart surgery. Another day in the hospital doesn’t bother me. I’m alive. Life is good!
Posted: June 22nd, 2007 under heart disease.
Comments: 3
