SERIOUS AS A HEART ATTACK

PART 3
“OVER THE RAINBOW”

For the first time in the night that seemed to go on forever, it finally began to look like somebody knew what they were doing. Once my EMT crew, the gang that couldn’t drive straight, got to Arcadia Methodist Hospital, it was as though they had awakened and had to get their act together.
            Once they thrust my gurney through the emergency room’s doors everyone involved seemed to be moving much quicker than the somnambulistic group at San Gabriel Valley Medical Center. At this point I was assuming that my initial apprehension at coming here was misplaced. Compared to the first hospital of the night, this was more what I  have come to imagine an ER was like, at least based on the fantasy world of television.
            It may have been my imagination, but I could have sworn that when we came bursting through those doors I heard the sound of a cash register go off. Maybe it was because all of their animated actions were causing my adrenaline to surge through the morphine induced dream state I had been in for the last three hours. Who knows for sure at this point, but I’m sure I will find out later.
            The flurry that followed was basically a repeat of the same questions that I had been asked multiple times during the course of the night. I remember thinking, after being asked the same couple of questions for what felt like the tenth time, isn’t somebody writing this crap down? And why do you keep asking the sick guy when he has family nearby? No wonder so many mistakes are made inside of hospital walls.
            Then a calm fell over me and my surroundings. The number of people dwindled as though there was a shift change happening. I was suddenly in the care of a couple of guys, I think one of them was named Marcus, but I can’t be sure. Sorry guys for forgetting your names. You were the one calming factor during this entire nightmare.

They were taking me to the surgical lair of one Douglas Yun M.D.  On this early morning he was in my eyes cardiologist wizard extraordinaire. He was about to make an addition to my heart and vocabulary with one fell swoop.

            That addition took the form of what is known as a stint or stent, depending on whom you ask or which web searches you use. To keep its description brief, it is a small wire that is inserted into your blocked artery to open it up and keep it open. If you are looking for a more definitive explanation consult your doctor or conduct your own web search.

Dr. Yun and his crew gave me the brief lowdown as to what was going to happen next. I was going to be given a local anesthetic and I would be aware of what was happening. Being the enormous baby that I am I did voice my concern about being awake, but I was gently assured that I wouldn’t feel a thing after the initial prick.

I got the distinct impression that the time for discussions and debates on my part were over. This crew was on the move and it was obvious this wasn’t their first time at the rodeo. All I could do was settle in, take the ride, and hope for the best.

The operating room was very sci-fi. To my left, if my memory is correct, there was a bank of six high tech video panels that were going to be displaying my blocked arterial highway for Dr. Yun. He would be inserting the stent through my groin and snake that little bad boy up to the blocked portion of my artery and let it do its thing.

Now, when I was told that I was going to be awake for this procedure, I assumed that this meant that I would be able to see and speak. I soon found out that this was incorrect. I could hear what was going on, but try as I might, I could not open my eyes or mouth.

Trust me, I did try. Especially when I heard Dr. Yun utter those words that no surgical patient wants to hear during a procedure, “Uh oh, I didn’t want to go there.” Despite how hard I tried to move my lips they wouldn’t budge. They were as frozen shut as the Tin Man’s after standing in the rain.

Luckily, shortly after he said “Ah, there we go” with an inflection denoting that whatever his correction was it was victorious, whatever his misstep had been.

A few moments later someone in the room was calling my name. Kind of like Auntie Em calling to Dorothy in an effort to bring her back from OZ. As my eyes opened I was staring at the bank of monitors that were displaying the road map to my chest cavity innards.

Dr. Yun pointed out two of the screens. One screen showed before the stent and the other one after. The primary difference being that the after shot of the area distinctly showed two arteries instead of just one.

My first words to the wizard should have been thank you. Instead they were “Can I get a picture of those?” We all like to have a little souvenir when we take a trip don’t we?

Unfortunately the trip wasn’t over. In fact it was about to take an ugly turn. That would be to the right and down the hall to the dreaded land of Intensive Care South.

I definitely was not in OZ any more.

SERIOUS AS A HEART ATTACK

                                                   PART 4
                                 “ROCK & ROLL HOSPITAL”

            Limp and drugged, I was being wheeled from Doctor Yun’s surgical lair to points unknown. At that moment in time, I can honestly say I could have cared less where I was going. I was just wishing we would get there and get there soon. This night and morning had gone on far too long and I just wanted it to end. Well, like the old saying goes, be careful of what you wish for.

             Just in case you missed the last chapter in this little saga, the “hospital” I ended up at was Arcadia Methodist and to put it as diplomatically as I can, it was not my first choice. Not that my first choice of the evening, San Gabriel Valley Medical Center, was any better.

Then again, I only went there because of insurance issues and it was geographically closest, but I have covered all this so let’s move on. Let’s just say next time I’m going to Huntington Memorial if I have any choice in the matter and hope that they are not as inept as these two turned out to be.

            Where I ended up was one of the Intensive Care Units. When I woke up…. let me rephrase that. When I was awakened for the first time after the surgery, I was in the ICU, or at least that’s what I was told. It certainly wasn’t the same ICU my sister Sue was in a couple of years ago. While she was in the “A” unit, I was in one somewhere a little further down the alphabet. It was a throwback to another time referred to as ICU South.

            I remember going to see Sue when she was in her ICU, and where I was didn’t appear to be built in the same decade. Change that, the same century. The beds, TV’s, and the buzzers were so antiquated that they didn’t work properly. As a matter of fact, the air conditioning didn’t function properly, before and after the repairman decided to show up.

I was rousted from my slumber because it was time for me to make the first of what would be many blood donations. I don’t know if you have ever been unfortunate enough to be an overnight guest at a “health care facility”, but if you have you will understand what I am about to say.

            I don’t know who puts together the schedules for the nurses, but they should be forced to spend a week at the mercy of the mandatory schedule the patients are subjected to. It might give them a new perspective when putting together their next nurses schedule.

            It is one of those twisted little annoyances that make you crazy at a time when you are supposed to be relaxed and stress free. It is almost like they have it planned. As soon as you are lucky enough to drift off to sleep, that is the time they decide that you need to have your temperature taken or your blood drawn.

If it isn’t sleep that is being interrupted, then it is when you are about to choke down the pitiful excuse of what they call food. You would think if they can come up with the miraculous procedure that Dr. Yun performed on my heart, that they could come up with food that doesn’t taste like plastic and won’t redamage your heart. The bland food that they force you to consume makes the cardboard they serve at McDonalds seem like a culinary wonderland.

Luckily my time being ignored in the ICU came to an end and I was moved upstairs in the Tower of Terror. At first I was a little surprised that I was going to have a roommate, but it had to be better than the dilapidated version of an ICU I was just in. Well you know what they say about assuming?

My roommate was there for elective surgery. He was having some stent work done in his legs, something that I believe is going to be coming up in my future, but that’s another column for another day. Aside from his nonstop need to have a conversation with me, he suffered from one other malady. He was under the delusion that a hospital was the same as a restaurant and that the nurses were his waitresses.

This fruitcake was hitting his nurse call button every 15 minutes asking for food, sodas, coffee, and pain killers. It was as though he thought he was the only patient on our floor and the nurses were there for his amusement. His actions were not only annoying to me, but the expression on the nurses' faces spoke volumes as to how frustrated they were. If I was supposed to be resting, as I was told I should be, they definitely had me in the wrong room.

The one calming influence during my time there was the presence and consultation given to me by Dr. Alisa Rock. She was the yin to Dr. Yun’s yang. She was the one who came in to consult with me on which drugs I would be taking while I was there and in the future. She also explained, in terms I could understand, what I needed to do once I left. It was nice to have someone who honestly seemed to be concerned with my well being and my feelings. She was also a little mystified that they had put me in a semi private room, especially after she got a load of my roommate.

There were a couple of other nurses who did a good job while I was there, but for the most part I felt as though I was just another room number on the floor. Just another faceless name on the white plastic rotation board at the nurse’s station. I was hopefully that the next round of tests would give me the green light to go home in the next day or two as I had been told. So I figured all I needed to do was rest and bide my time until then.

That was until mid morning the next day when my phone rang. It was Victoria from the hospital financial office. She was calling me to discuss my insurance and the terms of my payment. At first I thought I was being punked, but I don't know anyone sick enough to try and give me another heart attack so soon after just having one.

After listening to her for a couple minutes, the words of one of our great maritime leaders came to mind, “That’s all I can stands and I can’t stands no more!” I told her to mail me a bill like every other patient and hung up. Thank you Popeye for the strength.

I picked up my nurse call buzzer for the first time since I’d been there. When the nurse arrived I told her two things. First, that I would be checking out that day and second I wanted to see Dr. Rock immediately.

Next I called my wife Stacey and told her what was going on and that I would keep her posted. Dr. Rock came in and could see how upset I was. As soon as she heard why, there is no way to describe the look of horror that crept across her face. Apparently this isn't the first time the finance department committed this egregious error.

I guess doctors frown on the finance department calling their convalescing heart patients and upsetting them. Dr. Rock shot out of my room to, well, go rock somebody's world. The nurse returned and said that Dr. Yun would have to approve my leaving and that they would let me know as soon as they spoke to him.

Things started moving rather quickly from this point forward. Dr. Rock had been busy shaking up the people in the administration and finance offices. I know this because within the next hour I had representatives from both of those departments in my room apologizing and asking questions to make sure this error never happens again. Unfortunately too little, too late.

Dr. Rock returned to tell me I would be home to see the Lakers playoff game and that they were putting my paperwork in order. Dr. Yun would be coming by to give me some final instructions soon. I called Stacey to tell her to come and get me and I packed up my belongings. As soon as these things came to pass, this part of the party was over and I was ready to roll.

Soon Stacey and I were leaving the hospital in our dust. I was heading back home where it all began and where the changes in my life were truly about to begin.

SERIOUS AS A HEART ATTACK

                                                        PART 5
                               "THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD"

Since my escape from the Tower of Terror, aka Arcadia Methodist Hospital, the battle raging in and pertaining to my heart has not seen a dull moment. I have been on a medical roller coaster ride for the last three months and I am more than ready to get off.

            After trying to get things back to normal since what I have been referring to as “The Incident” my cardiologist extraordinaire, Dr. Douglas Yun, had other ideas. Apparently in his exploration of my heart and arteries he found that there was much more blockage and it needed to be addressed.

            And address it he did. By the end of August, I was back in the hospital to unblock the demon artery in question and add some reinforcement to the one that was opened up during “The Incident.” This time I was the guest of a different medical venue, Huntington Memorial in Pasadena. I have to say, my interaction with their staff was great, and the best of the three hospitals I have had to deal with in as many months.

            Huntington was far more organized and caring than San Gabriel Valley Medical Center or Arcadia Methodist. Both of those, while claiming to be nonprofit organizations, seem to only be in it for the money, as Frank Zappa used to say.

The staff at Huntington, both surgical and nursing, seemed to genuinely care that (a) I was there and (b) that I was comfortable from the time I checked in until the second I checked out. No mention of money was ever discussed other than to confirm my insurance upon entry.

I have to say the stent surgery this time around was even more surreal even though it was done sans the morphine. There is just something completely bizarre about being completely awake for the entire procedure. Watching what Dr. Yun and his crack heart staff were doing inside my chest on the big video screens to my left was like some kind of weird out of body experience.  For those of you who are keeping score, I now have four stents in my heart collection.

Since “The Incident” I have had time to reflect on the entire situation and what led me to it. To those of you who know me, you can immediately point to my smoking and diet as two of the culprits that got me there. But they weren’t alone.

You see, like many of you, I avoided going to the doctor and having checkups. I was eventually motivated to go see a doctor after experiencing pain in my legs about five years ago. While my doctor focused on everything but my legs, he didn’t detect the problem with my heart despite numerous EKG’s and prescribing me a ton of different medications that made me feel like crap. After three years of that nonsense, I stopped going. The pain in my legs was still there.

Then about a year ago I had some pain in my chest and it motivated me to make a return visit to the same doctor, not wanting to seek out a new one. Over the next few months I was again given numerous EKG’s, and because I continued to complain about my legs, I was given what I was told was a full ultrasound of my legs. This doctor said that all my tests had come back clear and he told that nothing showed up that was unusual.

Well, given that “The Incident” happened within a couple of months after these tests, you can guess that I am not going to that doctor anymore.

The decision to dispense with this doctor was reinforced when on a follow up appointment with Dr. Yun he asked me, just as an aside, if I was aware of the total blockage in the main artery of my right leg. Huh?

 He also said that if there was that much blockage in the right one that there is a pretty good possibility that the left one had blockage as well. Oh great.  He discovered this after a brief glance at a mini ultrasound done to check the incision for the first stent entry. Now that the heart issue is mostly under control we have begun addressing this issue. When will the fun ever stop?

The whole point of me chronicling this experience is to give you all a window into what was a mystery for me prior to the axe falling.  I consider myself lucky to still be here. I have quite a few friends that aren’t here for the same reason. They either waited too long to go to the hospital or put too much faith in a bad doctor that they trusted.

If it doesn’t feel right, pull the trigger. Don’t think, like I did, that “I just had an EKG and my doctor said my heart is fine” especially if you are alone when it happens. Not everybody is lucky enough to have someone like Stacey, my wife, standing by to talk you into calling 911 or taking you to the hospital.

Sometimes you have to trust what you feel, not what you’re told.