Cardiac Infarction

“911 what is your emergency?” “Ah, what does a Heart Attack feel like?”

No, this is not Downton Abbey and I am not Lady Mary or Lord Crawley but boy are they making me feel like royalty. “May I change your sheets Lord Larson?” “May I get you some water?” “May I help you on with your clean gown?” Yes, folks I am in the cardiac word at Dominican Hospital. It all started 3 nights ago on a cold rainy Friday morning, when I woke up at 2am feeling like I went three rounds with Rocky Balboa. Guys, if you ever wake up and feel like your jaw is being ripped off your face and your arms go numb, along with the sensation that someone is sitting on your chest, then you are! Having a Heart Attack!  Welcome to my 50s! As I am trying to figure out how to dial 911, I realize I have no clue…Hu? When I finally figure it out I asked the 911 operator, “Do you know what it feels like to have a heart attack? She said, “Are you having a heart attack?” I said, “I do not know, I thought you would know” She said, “Let me transfer you to an emergency operator. I said, “I thought you WERE the emergency operator.” As she clicked me over…I thought to myself, “They will probably find me in the morning clutching the phone while listening to hold music”.

A guy came on and asked me if I was having a heart attack. I said, “I do not know, I thought you would know.” He said, “What are you experiencing?” When I was finished explaining how Rocky Balboa was winning this round, He said, “We will send someone right over.” “Do you want to stay on the phone?” I said, “Do I have a choice?” He said, “No", and that he was just being polite and that I needed to stay on the phone until they got there. It was pouring rain and I thought of all the nights I have a heart attack it has to be on a storm watch night up here in the Felton Mountains. I kept feeling sorry for them!  That’s not codependency is it? Well, they finally arrived and got me into the ambulance and put a nitro glycerin pill under my tongue. And Rocky slowly melted away. Ah HA! I win!

They pulled out of my driveway and off we went down the Daytona 500. No kidding!!  I told the Medic he did not need to drive so fast, that I felt better. But NO! It felt like a roller coaster ride down Highway 9. We kept rolling back and forth as the other medic tried to put the IV in my hand but he kept missing. Every time he poked I pocked back. He was a young kid and was very apologetic that my hand had become a pin cushion. He finally gave up and said we’d wait until we got to the emergency room. I think he was eventually able to get an IV into my arm. I was just grateful that the pain went away and I was in good hands. Then the light went out. “AH, is that me or is that the ambulance?” He mumbled something and they came back on. Just a side note from cardiac patients in Ambulances to medics. “You never want to see the lights go out!” I was then asked a battery of questions, one of them being, “Do I have a family history of heart disease? “Which I replied, “Not any more they all died of heart attacks.” As Chelsey Handler would say, “Ooopsi”.

After we arrived in the ER and they secured that my infarction had subsided, I love that word, Infarction, infarction, infarction! I whipped out the magic insurance card and off I went up to my own room in the cardiac ward. Gee, I have a view of the cemetery how thoughtful of them. A few hours later after the meeting with the most wonderful doctor of all time, Dr. Ochoa and his Nurse Beth, I was tied down on a bed and whisked off to this wonderful looking laboratory with whirling monitors, lights from all directions and movable tables, and an amazing staff. If I did not know better I felt like I was playing out a scene of an alien abduction scenario. Except I could see they were humans with big eyes, wearing masks and caps and gowns, gee I think they were human. Yes, of course they were, yet, do you know we now have the technology to insert a hair like tube up someone’s artery system and insert a stint the size of a paper clip which allows the blood to flow through a clogged artery? I think that is Alien Technology. They then told me they were going to shoot me up with morphine, YAHOO! To be honest I am not sure of these chain of events but all of sudden I heard a buzzing sound, like hair clippers, and then a sudden tickling sensation in my nether regions. After they told me what they wanted to do, I said, “You want to insert a tube up where!? In my groin? Do you know what’s down there?!  Yes, Sire we do, but it’s the best method of fixing your Cardiac Infarction, did I say I love that word? Oops there goes the royalty pun again. But really that’s how they made me feel.

Many more wonderful things happened that night but I will write more about them later. Suffice it to say, I am now one week living after a Mild Heart Attack, Infarction. Ha ha.  The Doc said, that he got me just in time and that it was the right thing to do, to dial 911, even though it was pouring rain and I was not sure if it was a heart attack or if it was just the pizza I ate a few hours before. Between you and me, I do not think Pizza fights back like that in real life like it does in the commercials. I want to profusely thank the men and women who saved my life. To the ambulance medic who reassured me that I would be fine, to the ER doctors, who convinced me to stay put in the ER when I wanted to bolt. (That’s another story). I want to thank Beth and Barbara and the many other nurses whose name escapes me. I want to thank Doctor Ochoa most of all. He not only helped save my life but he treated me with dignity and human compassion. If anyone out there is having a Cardiac Infarction, then he is the one to see.