When I was a kid I was fascinated by ambulances; I'd peek in the window and look at the person inside, wondering what they were thinking and what was wrong with them. Now here I was in the back of one feeling very self conscious but also strangely calm. If I hadn't had a million electrodes on my chest, and tubes in my nose and an IV in my arm I might have enjoyed the ride and the view of Mt Rainier. There was something in the IV that was making me a little mellow and feeling like I was sort of watching everything from a distance so the first couple of hours were a blur.
The ER was a swirl of activity and people giving me that odd smile reserved for people that might fade away at any minute. My biggest memory of that part of it is virtually everyone commenting on my record high blood pressure. Most everyone was pretty polite about my stupidity in not having been to a doctor in 10 years except for one intern who didn't quite call me a moron but rolled her eyes every time she came into the room.
You spend a lot of time in the hospital on your little wheelie bed being rolled from place to place. I rolled from the CT Scan, to X Ray back to the ER and finally to my home for the night in the ICU. The ICU is kind of nice in some ways. You get a private room with a comfy bed and a dedicated nurse and tech who dote over you. There was a lot of adjusting of IVs and shaving of body hair to add electrodes. My advice is if you're going to go to the hospital and you're a hairy guy, shave in advance because they're not exactly doing manscaping and you wind up with big bare strips in your chest hair.
My night on-call doctor was a tall lanky guy in his early forties who had a southern drawl that sounded like honey. He managed to tell me that my heart was enlarged, my kidneys were messed up and he was afraid I was about to have a stroke while making it sound like he was offering me a Mint Julep.
There's just no way to fall asleep in the CCU. I was certain that I'd broken myself and I wasn't sure how I was going to fix it and I couldn't relax. But also there's always some noise in the hall, or someone coming in to someting buzz or ring a bell or to take some blood. At one point I opened my eyes to see my doctor just staring at me with a warm smile. He asked if I had chest pain, or numbness and I answered no. He kept smiling and said "Jeff. You are a puzzle to us. From the way your heart looks you should be a man who is having a heart attack. But you're cool as a cucumber and your other tests say you're not having one." I guess that was comforting.
The next morning I had a new set of doctors. The resident was a spunky friendly woman who did a nice job of keeping me calm. The on-call was fine but not especially friendly. At this point I was pretty scared and it didn't help that my room was the one next to the room where the doctors had all their conversations and made calls. It was only separated by a window and a curtain and I could hear everything. I kind of reminded me of the Wizard of Oz hiding behind his curtain. I heard a half dozen conversations about me. Most of them started with "No that's right 300. That's not a mistake."
The resident came in in what I thought was mid morning; I didn't have my a watch or phone so I wasn't sure. She told me they were doing Grand Rounds with the student doctors and she'd like to include me. She wanted to warn me that I was very unusual so there might be a lot of scary questions, but I shouldn't worry. She was probably afraid that in my condition I'd get freaked out and have a heart attack.
A few minutes later my two doctors came in surrounded by a gaggle of Doogie Howser aged doctors and a pharmacist. The resident started by giving a long, embarrassing explanation of my medical neglect, my vitals etc. Then she explained the mystery of the "not a heart attack". I didn't fully understand it but it had something to with my blood pressure being so high that it had enlarged some portion of my heart which caused it to look like I was having a heart attack.
I kind of knew how my dog felt at that point with a long conversation going on around me and not understanding most of it. Occasionally I'd hear my name and I'd smile or nod my head. There was an argument between the on-call and the pharmacist about what kind of blood pressure medicine to give me. The pharmacist wanted to follow protocol and the annoyed on-call said there's nothing protocol about this case. They ultimately went out in the hall and argued.
Finally I started hearing phone calls from the OZ room about finding me a bed and me being relatively stable. I kept hearing Telm which I knew meant telemetry which his essentially where hear patients go. They put what's essentially a little radio on you so they can check your vitals continuously. A few minutes later two transport guys put me on another wheelie bed ready to take me to the Telm unit.
(To be continued)
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