Medical Adventures #1

For Mr. K, who never misses a beat.

October 2022: The Beginning of it All

My primary care nurse practitioner said she thought I had a heart murmur and recommended I see a cardiologist. Okay, heart murmurs usually are no big deal, right, and it doesn’t hurt to get it checked out. So I made an appointment with a cardio-man.

At the cardio-man place the first thing they did was hook me up to an EKG. In making small talk with the technician I learned she had been on the job six weeks. “Oh, did you come from another medical office?” I asked. “No, they taught me everything I need to know here,” she replied.

After a few minutes a physician assistant came in and told me my “ST level” was a little high. Ha, I’m such an over achiever! I thought the wave looked kind of pretty, like a water wave. But she was a spoil sport and asked the technician to run the EKG again. I thought that was a little weird. If you have a new person doing it and you don’t trust the results, wouldn’t you watch the second time? Or have someone else do it? Or do it yourself?

This was just the beginning of the weird. 

After the physician assistant read the second set of results she said something along the lines “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.”

Hm.

Next, there was all kinds of shuffling in the hallway and lots of murmuring, not all of it in my heart. Then the echo echocardio-man came to escort me to the echo echo machine. As he was looking at pictures of my heart (big and all-encompassing, I thought), I noticed the room filling up with very worried looking people wearing white coats. The echo echocardio-man nodded toward a tall one who was talking on the phone. “He’s calling a ride for you to the hospital,” he explained.

Who’s he calling? Lyft? Uber? Big Yellow Taxi?

A second later four hunky, tattooed emergency medical technicians strutted into the echo echo room carrying all sorts of serious looking gizmos and gadgets. The room was starting to look like a medical version of phone booth stuffing. Don’t let anyone say RunningBarb is not doing her part to keep the medical community employed!

I told them I felt perfectly fine and could not understand what all the fuss was about. No one explained anything, but from the way they were behaving it seemed like they thought that I was having a heart attack in that exact moment. What timing. Now I was starting to wonder if there really was something wrong with me.

“Do you have any chest pain?”

“No.”

“Any pain radiating down your arm?”

“No.”

“Any shortness of breath?”

“No.”

“Any lightheadedness or dizziness?

“No.”

“Any idea what tomorrow’s Powerball ticket numbers are?”

Okay, they didn’t really ask that one, but they did ask a lot of questions.

I tried to focus on something a little more positive, like the picture of health I thought I was. They were heavily focused on machines and read-outs, so I waved my hand to get their attention. I cheerily reported “Uh, I swam 2000 yards this morning!” “Oh, fit,” replied one of the hunky technicians.

The 911 posse did its own EKG and told me “We are not seeing what they are seeing,” leading me to believe that their EKG was not consistent with the EKG done by the brand spankin’ new office EKG technician. I was doubtful of the diagnosis by the physician assistant.* Oh, by the way, she told me I might die on the way to the hospital.** I was completely confused. Shouldn’t my life have been passing before my eyes? Shouldn’t I have felt some kind of discomfort? Something?

Nonetheless, I calmly strolled over to the stretcher and they strapped me on it and rolled me outside. That’s when I noticed a giant fire engine parked behind the ambulance. I looked around for smoke. Was that big, bad fire engine sitting there because of me? What next, I wondered.

They loaded me into the vehicle, then we were on our way.  

A few seconds later we leisurely rolled into the emergency room of the hospital. What a cool place! Total noise and chaos. When you close your eyes you hear all these beeps and buzzes and voices, but you can’t really understand anything. It’s a great environment to focus on sounds and try to empty your mind. Best meditation atmosphere ever! I intended to find calm, even if I was standing outside death’s door. Eventually a hunky, tattooed medical technician came over, asked me a bunch of questions, and drew some blood. Not gonna lie, he told me he was impressed with my veins. 

I was losing all track of time, as well as my grip on reality, but at some point somebody wheeled me over to an area with a bunch of beds so that I could wait some more. That’s when I noticed how thin the walls were. I could hear every word of the discussion the guy in the next room was having with the doctor. Wow, that wall just seems like a thin wisp of fabric, I thought. I looked at it. Oh, that’s because it is just a thin wisp of fabric!

They brought me a bunch of forms to sign. 

There was a permission form. “I permit you to do any kind of medical procedure you want, and I won’t mind.” Check.

There was a money form. “I promise to pay the bill no matter how much, and I won’t mind.” Check.

A privacy form. “I understand that I have none, and I won’t mind.” Check.

They invited me to spend the night.

A very nice aide wheeled my bed up to a room and stopped outside of it. “Are you able to walk over to that bed?” she asked kindly. I kindly rolled my eyes where she could not see them and replied that I could. I peered into the room. Then I drew close to her. “There’s a problem, though,” I whispered. “What?” she whispered back. “There’s someone in the room already.”

“Oh, all the rooms on this ward have two patients.”

“Everybody has to have a roommate?” 

“There are no private rooms here.”

So now I am part of a demented summer camp cum medical experiment on how to heal from a near death experience while sleeping alongside a stranger. 

I managed to walk all the way across the tiny room, where they gave me a gown that was so big the neck opening reached halfway down my shoulder. This must be on purpose, right? Surely in a major metropolitan area in the year 2022 they are aware that people come in different shapes and sizes. They must know about XS, S, M, L, and XL. This is not a secret and has not been one for years.

Soon a hunky, tattooed nurse came over to explain to me why I was there. Because I had a funny EKG they thought I had a blockage in my heart and were going to do something called a heart catheterization. But before that they had to give me all kinds of drugs, my favorite being Lovenox. I don’t know what it does, but is that name irresistible or what? “Hey, come get your Lovenox!” “How’s the Lovenox today?” “Need any more Lovenox?” It’s so endearing. 

When you are in the hospital there is a steady stream of personnel that comes by to check on you, oh, every five minutes or so. There are nurses, nurse practitioners, hospitalists, pharmacists, and phlebotomists (look it up). There are administrators, physician’s assistants, lab technicians, and radiologists. There are M.D.s, R.N.s, L.P.N.s, C.N.A.s, and I.P.A.s. Who are all these people? What do they do?

Also, you can’t do anything by yourself. If you have to go to the bathroom you have to call the nurse, because they hook up an alarm to your bed, and if you get up without telling anyone they come in and yell at you. Or something. Really, I don’t know what they do, I just held it in the whole time. Who could be bothered. 

I was scheduled for the heart catheterization the next day. I was not supposed to eat or drink anything from 10:00 p.m. that night. It was easy not to eat, because nobody brought me any dinner! So glad I had some training in self-denial on good ol’ Yom Kippor. However, the next day one of the aides came in with a plastic cup full of orange juice and told me I needed to drink it because my blood sugar was low. I didn’t want it. I never drink orange juice. After it raises your blood sugar doesn’t it just go back down again? I argued with her for a while and finally gave up. I have better things to do with my low blood sugar than to argue with a stranger in a hospital room.

Five minutes later another medical person came in and yelled at her for giving it to me. I “was not supposed to have anything to eat or drink!” Heh, heh, I thought. 

Later that day I was wheeled down to a room for my big event. Dr. Catheter Cardio explained all about the procedure. He told me it was safe, that there were hardly ever any complications, and there was only a one in one thousand chance of dying. Better than my chances yesterday, I guess. They glued a couple of defibrillator paddles to my front and back just in case.  

Dr. Catheter Cardio said they would be checking to see if there was any blockage in my heart, and if they found any I might end up with one or more stents placed into my arteries, or even bypass surgery. Whoa!

I hope you never have to have this procedure, but guess what, it’s really cool. They thread a tiny tube up through your wrist, across your chest, and into your heart. Yes, your heart! Then they let go with this dye, which feels really hot throughout your upper body. You can watch on a screen as the dye goes shooting through your heart vessels. So much better than Netflix! I craned my neck to view the monitor. Zoom! Into the right corionic arterial stream! Zoom! Into the left multi atrial ventricle! Zoom! Into the sideways convex carotid! Yes, I did make those names up, but they sounded real, didn’t they!

It was a unique experience, and I am tempted to give it five stars, but upon thinking about it some more, I’m going to give it four. Reason is because the image was black and white, not color. They really should let you choose something that matches your personality. Or, say, a holiday. Red and blue for the Fourth of July, or Election Day (mostly blue there), a fall palette for Thanksgiving, purple and gold for Prince’s birthday. Go crazy!

I had expected a party that fun to take a long time, but it was done in six and a half minutes. Bet they bill by the hour though! Good news, RunningBarb didn’t need a nasty stent or a yucky bypass. And she didn’t need to be shocked back to life. Her arteries are fine! Her heart is fine! Her atrial this and that and so and so is a-okay!

Back to the room where they invited me to stay yet a second night. They actually fed me this time, which was the least they could do.

And they fed me in the morning, too! Sort of. They brought me a plate with a paper that listed what was on it that included “scrambled eggs.” But the thing on my dish resembled something that was trying to become eggs but not succeeding. Fake eggs, maybe? Also, the list identified the coffee as “decaf.” Lemme tell ya folks, two words that should never be used in the same sentence are “decaf” and “coffee.” Luckily Mr. K smuggled me in a homemade breakfast burrito and some real joe, so I survived.

After that everyone in the medical parade informed me I was ready to go home, I just had to wait for the Very Important Discharge Paper. I sat on my bed for hours in the gown that didn’t fit, staring out the window and wondering if the rainy world noticed I was missing. 

The VIDP arrived around noon, and I was free. 

Later I found out this unexpected escapade cost me a bundle.

Never heard a peep about the murmur. 

*When I later read the medical report of this incident it said I was being sent to the hospital because of a “myocardial infraction” (not “infarction,” haha, love that typo!). 

**Not her exact words.

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