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march 2006 becoming becoming like me just a work in progress home about jump to navigation my own march madness part 5 march 31 2006 posted by becoming in becoming healthy add a comment my stay in intensive care was extended a day by the endrocrinologist while he continued to tinker with dosages trying to find a balance that suited him between two two kinds of insulin i was being given one fast acting the other a 24 hour type i gained a small personal victory in how i made the move upstairs to a regular room i walked no not up the stairs but to the elevator on and off there then to my new room the nursing staff on that third floor wing all knew where i was coming from and there were looks of genuine surprise on a few faces the next couple of days passed rather slowly my cardiologist and my surgeon were both ready to send me home but delayed my release until my endocrinologist could decide upon my discharge dose of insulin he finally agreed on sunday evening to set those the next morning at about 10 00 a m on monday march 20th i called lara at work and told her that she should probably be there in about an hour finally at around 12 30 that afternoon i was free i had been to the edge to the very brink i had been much closer to that precipice than i should have ever allowed myself to get much closer than i intended to be again until at least another fifty one years have passed now begins the long journey back back to health back to vitality back to not merely functioning back to living if ever there was a time for self examination introspection re evaluation and such it is now i know it s not going to be an easy road but it is a road that must be travelled i embark upon this with optimism reminiscent of what i felt before the surgery i m hopeful and curious it s going to be interesting to see what i ll be becoming my own march madness part 4 march 30 2006 posted by becoming in becoming healthy add a comment tuesday the 14th dragged along without further news finally about 2 00 p m i was told that it did not appear that they d be able to get to me that day so i was being scheduled for first thing wednesday morning i ate dinner in the room with lara that evening feeling a sense of guarded optimism i was absolutely glad that there was not going to be another day of waiting and uncertainty i had never undergone surgery before and tried my best not to allow my blank expectations to be colored by what i had seen during decades of television and movies feeling genuinely upbeat was nice there was no need to manufacture a brave facade to present to lara sleep came around midnight that night i was awakened at about 5 00 a m by early preparations for surgery eventually i was taken downstairs to a large green curtain partioned holding area where i met the doctor who would be my anesthesiologist i asked him a couple of questions about what to expect when regaining consciousness memories of his answers are fuzzy there is no memory between that and waking up in a room in the icu according to lara i evidently was evidently waking up too quickly and was given additional anesthesia my first real memory was the awareness that i was out of surgery and that she was there the first coherent thought i recall having was to try to demonstrate that i was capable of breathing on my own so that they d remove that cursed respirator tube from my throat i did and they obliged once that was out i lifted my head a bit to try and take a look at myself it was not a pretty sight there seemed to be a lot of blood on my gown multiple drainage tubes protruded here and there across the middle of my chest i felt covered with heart monitor electrodes and i was aware of big iv lines inserted on my upper chest near each shoulder and i hurt not a lot no the morphine and whatever else kept things manageable but the realization was present that all this was really going to be hurting soon more my own march madness part 3 march 29 2006 posted by becoming in becoming healthy add a comment the next few days are a bit of a blur i returned to work for a few hours that thursday and work a more or less full day on friday breaking the news to executive management at work was much easier than telling lara really though at that point there was not a lot to tell relate what little i knew about the results of the mps describe the cardiac cath procedure upcoming acknowledge the risks and emphasize the possibility that perhaps with balloons and stents whatever problems there were could perhaps be fixed while i was on the table lara held herself together pretty well i m fairly certain she just didn t want me to see how scared she was monday morning arrived much too soon i waited in an outpatient room for about an hour then was taken to the room where the procedure was to be done there was some pain initially but i had been pretty thoroughly medicated and by the time i was moved off the table i was mostly feeling veeeery drowwwsy i remember returning to the room where i d waited but then drifted off to sleep after a rather nice nap of perhaps an hour i gradually awoke as a nurse took my vitals minutes later a doctor i had not met previously entered cardiovascular surgeon dr james counce was the one who delivered the bad news the problems revealed by the cardiac catheterization were so severe that bypass surgery was the only option bypass o k how many we won t know for certain until we see things firsthand at least three possibly as many as five more my own march madness part 2 march 28 2006 posted by becoming in becoming healthy add a comment washington regional medical center tops a gentle hill that not so many years ago was graced by a sizeable walnut grove the hospital is a pleasant enough looking complex i m sure yet on march 9th as i followed the nurse to nuclear medicine it was as if a thin antiseptic veneer was barely obscuring images of ancient subterranean chambers of torture the procedure i was to undergo involves the injection of a small amount of radioisotope which circulates in the bloodstream and shows if ones heart muscle is receiving adequate blood supply under stress exercise and or rest conditions sounds innocuous enough from a distance but as i faced it that day visions danced in my head visions of being jabbed with pitchforks while running for my very life on a treadmill of evil as litres of radioactive waste struggled slowly through my veins it wasn t really too bad but when it was over the nuclear medicine staff requested an on call cardiologist to evaluate what appeared to be multiple abnormalities present in the yards of my ekg printouts their call brought cardiologist dr ted fish who i ve since learned is also chairman of medicine at wrmc i was allowed to dress and wait while he perused the acres of squiggly lines about an hour later a rather grim dr fish was telling me that he was virtually sure my ordeal 11 days earlier had in fact been a heart attack further he said i needed to undergo a cardiac catheterization and that it needed to happen now more my own march madness part 1 march 27 2006 posted by becoming in becoming healthy add a comment o k so it actually started in late february but i couldn t readily think of a clever title to accomdate that really it began long long before that that s digressing too much though the thread of my thoughts here should become evident directly on saturday february 25 2006 i had a heart attack i awoke at about 5 00 a m with the most severe chest pain i had ever experienced a squeezing crushing sensation centered in the middle of my rib cage yes i was frightened i ve been asked scores of times since then why i didn t call 911 there s no simple answer in part my symptoms were odd enough that i wasn t sure it was a heart attack in addition to the chest pain i had intense pain in both wrists it felt as if huge spikes had been driven through each of them also my forearms hurt ached were so sensitive to touch that i could hardly bear to let them rest on my lap as i sat on the couch oh yes the couch where i had fallen asleep late friday night while watching tv well after lara had gone to bed which meant that it took a while before my groaning and gasping awakened her at the opposite end of the apartment during those so very long minutes of solitary agony the inner debate continued it s bad but there are all these crazy other symptoms it s probably not a heart attack i ll just wait it out if it s not better in five no ten minutes i ll call for an ambulance i can t afford a trip to the er and days in the hospital unless it gets worse i just grit it out and so on ultimately lara did hear me and came to see what was wrong but i was not particularly communicative i was able to make her understand which parts of me were hurting but i don t think i really conveyed how excrutiating the pain was this may have been at least somewhat volitional on my part in spite of everything else i did not want her to be as frightened as i was more search admin controls log in march 2006 m t w t f s s 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 apr recent posts alive numbers back in the saddle again fingers uncrossing the needle and the damage done fingers crossed bad things can happen whining avoidance a foodie s lament my own march madness part 5 categories becoming healthy becoming productive becoming worse uncategorized archive january 2007 april 2006 march 2006 bookmarks wordpress com wordpress org meta create account log in feeds full comments create a free website or blog at wordpress com top subscribe subscribed becoming sign me up have a wordpress com account log in now privacy becoming view site in reader manage subscriptions sign up log in report this content collapse this bar design a site like this with wordpress com get started