Last Wednesday morning I woke up at 2:00 am with what felt like someone standing on my chest. It hurt to take anything but short shallow breaths, making it very uncomfortable to breathe. I got up assuming my discomfort was simply a case of bad heartburn from our dinner at a restaurant the night before. I drank a bottle of water, and then brewed a cup of peppermint tea. When that tea proved ineffective I made a cup of licorice tea, but that didn’t help either. In fact, my discomfort only seemed to be getting worse.
It hurt to lie down, and it hurt to sit down, but I did feel better when I stood up, and even when I walked around a bit, so I did that. All along my wife kept telling me that we should go to the emergency. Of course, being a male, I argued. “It is just heartburn from dinner last night,” I said, “and I don’t want to spend the whole morning at the hospital for nothing.”
My wife remained insistent to the point of demanded that we go. I finally gave in around 5:00 am, but refused to call for a cab and drove us to the hospital instead. I had never gone to the Penticton hospital so early in the morning before, so I was surprised to find only one other person in the waiting area, besides the staff intake nurse. Within ten minutes the nurse had taken my blood pressure, checked me out with an ECG machine, and then to my great surprise, told me I was going to be admitted.
I followed the nurse to a large room filled with lots of equipment. There I disrobed and put on a standard backless hospital gown. I was still chewing the two aspirins the nurse gave me when other staff began to arrive. From my point of view, it seemed their main purpose was to turn me into either a human pin cushion or the newest member of the Borg. “It looks like you may have had a heart attack,” one of them said, as they handed me a small paper cup with more pills. At that point I accepted that fact this was a life altering situation. Strangely enough, all I could think of was that I might have to finally stop eating cheese, due to its high cholesterol and salt content, when a doctor showed up to start asking me questions.
There seemed to be some confusion regarding my diagnosis. This was because my symptoms were somewhat contradictory, especially when I informed the doctor I did not experience any sharp pains, or dizziness, and actually felt better when I stood up, as apposed to lying down. That was when the doctor told me my condition was the result of either a blood clot in the heart or Pericarditis, which is an inflamation of the protective sack that surrounds the heart. Because it is usually caused by an infection, the treatment for Pericarditis is completely different than it would be for a blood clot. Since the more dangerous possibility needed to be addressed right away, they gave me a clot-buster shot in the arm and a blood-thinner shot in my abdomen.
To deal with a possible blockage in my heart, I had to be transported by ambulance to the Kelowna Hospital. Currently it is the only hospital in BC’s southern interior that has both the specialist, and the equipment, for doing an Angiogram, and I have to say I found the procedure truly fascinating. I was laid out on a table with an X-Ray screen positioned about eight inches above my heart, a fifty inch big screen to my left and the doctor on my right side. I was given a local anesthetic and then the doctor inserted a small tube into my right wrist. On the big screen I could see the tube going up the blood vessel in my right arm as it headed toward my heart. Once in position, a dye was released to make the blood vessels around my heart visible to the X-Ray machine and therefore on the screen to my left.
Before the doctor started the procedure, he told me that if he did find a blockage he would expand the blocked section with a tiny balloon and then insert a stent to permanently repair the damage. When the doctor was done, however, he announced there was nothing to fix because he had found no blockages. It is strange how the mind works, because my first thought after hearing this great news was that I could keep eating cheese.
Before leaving Kelowna I was provided with a copy of a report created by the Angiogram equipment, which I thought was really cool. This report showed that the blood vessels around my heart required no corrective action. As they were loading me back into the ambulance I was pleased, relieved, and in good spirits. It was only a one hour trip back to the Penticton hospital, even with the rock removal delays between Summerland and Peachland, so I was back in the Penticton ICU well before 3:00 pm. The only unknown now was how to deal with my inflamed pericardium.
Inflammation of the pericardium is typically caused by a viral or bacterial infection, so once in the ICU they started me on a three month regiment of pills. Less than 24 hours later I was feeling much better. Before I could return home the next day, however, they had to take eight small vials of blood for the lab, and use ultrasound equipment to ensure my heart had suffered no lasting internal damage. I was able to watch my heart valves working on a small screen during the ultrasound, which was also kind of cool. Watching a muscle in your own body that has to work non-stop for your entire life, hopefully without ever missing a beat, at least until the very end, can be a very humbling experience when you are watching it from a bed in the ICU. Once the ultrasound was done, I was given a prescription and then discharged.
Now the moral of my story is very simple; when a wife tells her husband that he should go the hospital, a smart husband says, “Yes dear,” instead of, “It’s nothing. I’ll be fine.”
ADDENDUM – May 21.2024: Life is really crazy sometimes. Just when I thought I was out of the woods, I was back in emergency four days later with a severe allergic reaction to shrimp. Within minutes my face had turned beet red and my tongue was so swollen I could hardly talk. I have eaten shellfish all my life, but now I am suddenly allergic to all seafood and have to carry an epinephrine shot. It could be because of the medicine I am taking for my inflamed pericardium, but the doctor told me to avoid eating anything from the sea for at least three months. I still get to eat cheese though, so I guess its not all bad. (Fingers crossed, knock on wood, etc.)