Tag Archives: hospital stuff

Season of Epiphany

07 Saturday Jan 2017

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I had a small heart attack a week ago, probably some little clot, and it led to the surprising discovery that my right coronary artery (that’s one of the big ones) was 95% blocked. They squooshed the clot with a balloon, and put in a teeny titanium tube to hold the artery open.

Yikes. Had to process this.

Confession:

Truth to tell, I was so ready to go, except for my being the material support of my kids. What was up with that? Feeling ready to quit. To be beaten. Life always wins, but it shouldn’t cheat that hard, and my Life seemed to hold mostly bad cards.

I wouldn’t say I was depressed, but I’d had no perceived purpose in life. Evolution was done with me, so that made the rest of it up to me. Problem was, I had no answers, just a vision of a blank wall coming closer and closer.

Now that I’ve seen the Precipice, I am ever so excited and joyous that I have been given another chance at life.

Another chance. Another life. Washed clean. My sins have been forgiven.

I feel different now. Every beat of the gelatinous sack of vibrating goo is special, sacred, valued, thanked. I love my heart now. This must mean something.

I think part of why I’m so happy is the sense that I mattered to some non-coincidental angel. I have realized that I am, actually, pretty damn cool, and that losing me would have been a Bad Thing.

Yeah, I need to get my books out, but in terms of purpose: If there’s a shortage of something on this Earth, it’s people who maximize their coolness. So why don’t I try to do that? Spread it as far and wide as I can. Try to make the world a better place, one smile at a time.

In return, I am prepared to be delighted with Life, having been shown with a tube of titanium where to look.

 

Season of the New Year

07 Saturday Jan 2017

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The day before New Year’s Eve, I got up from an indulgent post-breakfast nap with my throat on swollen fire. I had a column of nasty pain running up from about where the esophagus hits the stomach, all the way up to my jaw, and it was even going into my left arm a tad.

“GERD,” thought I. But it seemed unfair. It had been a small breakfast. And sitting up wasn’t relieving the pressure in my neck. It had never made it to my jaw before. Tried TUMS, tried milk, and sent the kid to the store for Mylanta. By the time he got home, I was feeling some better, but it was still bad. Mylanta did jack. That was when I . . .

. . . started Googling. Heaven forfend I act on impulse and call 911 or something. For GERD? It was most assuredly bad GERD. I’d had most of those symptoms before. But . . .

. . . women and chest pain, we’re weird. Both in the way it hits us, and in the way we handle it. That is to say, our cardiac symptoms are not classic, and ever since menarche, we are conditioned to shrug off pain. Tell you a secret, guys? We think you’re big, wussy babies; we tell jokes behind your backs about how tough you’d be with period cramps. Having a baby, ma’am? Walk it off!

SO there I was, fully dressed and ready to go–and not ready to go. My son, however, snarled at me, which is unlike him, so we . . . called a cab. No fuss here, just GERD.

They let us sit for ten minutes in the ER, which told me the admissions clerk must be just as impressed as I was with my chest pain, especially since I only got about a C+ on the little test she gave me, consisting of male-normed symptoms of The Big One. But they took me in, gave me an EKG–which I aced–and took some blood. I didn’t even ask them why, because that’s what they do: collect samples just-in-case, and send in some brave soul to put in an IV.

Welp, I failed the blood test. The resident was freakin’ perky as he told me that one of my heart enzymes was 50 times normal: My heart muscle had been damaged, and I had had a heart attack. Small, but undeniable.

“Oh, shit,” I said, and started to giggle. I mean, a heart attack? I’m 54. True, I have every other major risk factor except being a smoker (let’s not be excessive here), but it just seemed so surreal.

Because it was a three-day New Year’s weekend, I spent it in the hospital, waiting for the slightly fancier hospital’s center for angioplasty to open on Tuesday. I had many sticky things placed under my left boob and a heparin drip in my inevitably screechy IV. As holidays, despite visits and a good view of the fireworks, it sort of sucked.

Tuesday came, however, and I started off with an echocardiogram, which is a sonogram of the heart. I was a little appalled to learn that the heart doesn’t politely and sedately tap out a simple one-two; it dances sort of gelatinously, and the Doppler picked up several different rhythms, including “du-wacky-du-wacky-du.” What was this thing in my chest, anyway?  Then I had the angiogram.

I thought I’d known what it was and what it was up to.Wrong. Right coronary artery was 95% blocked. In the words of the OR nurse, I was “one cheeseburger away.”

This is having your guardian angel scruff you seconds before you go over a precipice, only it’s THE Precipice, and why not have gone there in the Sooner rather than Later?

Kinda leaves you with a question that wants answering, that does.

Now with Extra Titanium!

12 Tuesday Apr 2016

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So, for those of you who missed it, here’s the update/explanation for my absence: On February 8, I had my right knee replaced. Even to me, this still sounds like a “meh” in the world of bodily modification–it’s not even as if knees are interesting gooshy bits: They’re dry and chewy and we don’t even notice what they do unless they stop doing it. Well, wrongo, Mary Lou. Total knee replacement is a Big Fat Hairy Deal, considered to be one of the most painful surgeries out there with one of the longest recoveries. Everybody told me this beforehand, with the result that I was terrified out of my tiny brain.

It’s exactly 9 weeks later, and despite having told myself beforehand that the several months of recovery would be GREAT for my writing, I have only now re-surfaced to tell y’all about it. Writing is hard when you’re distracted by pain and the need to move it/ice it/be gracious to all the medical professionals in your face.

Where to begin? Well, for those of you who are sciencey, this link from my orthopods will give you pictures of the anatomy in detail. For the rest of you, they basically sawed off the cartilage-bearing parts of my knee joint off (what cartilage I had left, this being The Problem) and replaced it with this shiny titanium baby:

fake knee

(Only I think my spacer is ceramic. I’ll have to remember to ask.) This did indeed hurt quite a lot, I’m not going to lie, but it also was NOT the-most-horrible-pain-I-have-ever-had. (That trophy is shared between kidney stones and my worst menstrual cramps: I am a pain professional!) I had both local injections (to help with the immediate pain post-surgery) and a spinal with so much sedation that I didn’t know a thing until it was over–I was as much a non-participant as if I’d had a general, with less recovery yuckies.

The physical therapy team at the hospital showed up on schedule that very afternoon to get my slacker butt out of bed so I could stand on the new knee starting immediately. (I don’t know why they do this. I will ask my real PT when I see her this Friday at my first outpatient visit. Bean counters should note that yes, outpatient PT only starts at the two month point.) This standing thing is made challenging because pain, and also because those numbing injections make you super wobbly. PT don’t care; PT don’t play. There is a fairly brief window where it’s mobility v. scar tissue formation.

This did lead to one of the most painful medical things I’ve ever had done (up there with endometrial biopsies), which was the main PT forcing my knee back on Day 3. This produced a level of screaming and crying that embarrassed me a bit but was totes called for–and I am NOT a wussy. (In fact, I once got sent home from critical care during one kidney stone because I was too controlled about it–they didn’t figure on it being my umpteenth stone. I had an infection, btw.) This range-of-motion thing isn’t quiiiiite the emergency they claim, as the surgeon bends the knee (duh, to make sure it works) before closing. No other PT person did this to me (and none will again, bwah ha ha).

However, it did put the fear ah Gawd inta me bigtime, and I hustled my butt into all those knee bending exercises out of fear that I would once again fail to please. (Bear in mind that I was out of my gourd on pain meds, etc., so was not my usual spunky Advocacy Lass self for quite a while.) As of now I am at 110 degrees of flexion (my heel almost touches my butt), and can straighten the thing out almost completely! (This translates to “rock star.”)

The four and a half days in the original hospital were the worst part of the whole thing. Not so much pain, but I have a well-behaved cat’s reaction to Things Not My Usual Litter Pan, and the food was atrocious beyond belief. The room was claustrophobic, and in the middle of this whole adventure, despite support socks that cut into my fat little legs and annoying booties that auto-inflated, I got blood clots in my lungs. (Maybe not from the surgery. Hematological workup pending next month.) Not too seriously, but I’ll be on anti-coagulant meds for a while to come. Sigh. I miss you, Vitamin K rich veggies.

And this was one of the best hospitals in Boston. Sigh again. But, seeing as I had 37 stairs awaiting me at home, my next stop was rehab, about which more later.