My Heart Attack 5— The Wire
I was afraid, but I have learned after much suffering and stress that I can push aside the fear and the uncertainly and surrender to the events of the moment. I learned that trick from my dog. He is very wise sometimes.
I was wheeled into an Operating Room, shaved, and undressed under a stack of blankets. They had prepped my inner thighs and wrists for a procedure called balloon angioplasty. In it, they would run a special wire through my arteries to the blockages, and first push through a wire mesh to push through and extract the fatty blockage, and then inflate a little balloon to push back the goop they missed. Finally, a wire mesh stent would be placed at the site to shore up the artery mine shaft against another collapse. Most people I knew had a little scar on their inner thigh from it, but in my case, they wanted to use a new method that was less invasive and less likely to bleed out so quickly if something went wrong. They were going through my wrist.
I was trying to keep calm, meditating on pleasant things I loved and made me happy, but the more I thought of what I loved, the more the inherent darkness in my brain told me that I would never see them again, that this was going to be fatal. I pushed it aside and stood firm, trusting in the doctors, and living in the moment. I didn’t have a choice, the only option was abject terror.
They added blankets because the OR was cold and covered me with a plastic surgical tarp. The tarp was in case it got messy, I guess. They bound my right arm tightly to an arm attached to the slab I was on, wrist hyper-extended back to reveal the veins in my wrist and they began the imaging process.
A giant machine moved above me, finally targeting on my chest. I couldn’t help but think it reminded me of the chair Bill Bixby’s David Banner sat in in the opening credits of The Incredible Hulk TV show. I hoped I would get superpowers. The camera provided a live feed of my arteries, providing the surgeon a video game featuring my arteries and his wire with the object to collect as many clots as he could. He didn’t win, but he managed to get a high score. I was dissociating.
He injected local anesthetic into my wrist, but I CLEARLY felt the scalpel slice open my artery. It hurt, but not as bad as I expected. He jabbed in some kind of collar for the wire into the open artery, dilating it wide, and started explaining what he was doing. I told him I was okay not knowing, and continued trying to not look at the monitors displaying a wire slowly traveling up the artery in my right arm, heading for my heart.
The doctor said he was pleased that there didn’t seem to be any heart damage. Suddenly, there was an explosion of pain in the right center of my chest! The doctor had said arteries couldn’t feel anything, but I felt that like a hammer blow! He continued communicating with his staff, as I desperately fought to find a calm center of my mind and stay there until this was all over!
Boom! Another flowering of pain! Another balloon extended and contracted, another stent placed on the right. BOOM! a big firework of pain around the top left! The pain was brief and tolerable, I was just glad that they could fix it and wondered idly naked, with a wire stuck half way through my body if it the stents would set off metal detectors in airports. (They do not.)
I felt a slight pain, and the doctor was moving like he’d gotten his drain snake stuck in roots. He had. He couldn’t penetrate the 100% blocked artery with his wire. He had to abandon it. This concerned me, but…happy place…in the now…relax…had to breathe.
He closed the hole in my wrist and applied an inflatable pressure bandage, warning me to not so much as touch it because if it releases before the wound clots, I would bleed out in a few minutes. I jokingly saluted with that hand, but no one laughed.
Recovery was awful. I was forgotten for hours, getting a sprite about once an hour, the pressure bandage stayed on for a lot longer than it was intended and my hand would ache as a consequence for hours after. I would stay in my meditative now, looking at my phone for company, (remember, I had sent everyone home) and was taken back to my room to be fussed over and teased with release until noon the next day.
I felt GREAT. It wasn’t until full circulation was restored that I realized how down and tired I had slowly become. I went to North Carolina the day after getting out of the hospital to officiate the wedding of some dear friends. I danced and ate and drank and felt euphoric!
The wave of energy didn’t go away. My body, I theorize, had been so congested and starved for blood flow, it had learned to do more with less, so when 3/4 circulation was restored, I was powerful and could think more clearly than I had in ages!
The problem was the one artery they missed. The doctor told me not to worry about it, it wasn’t “essential,” and that it was not worth another risky procedure. Still, I could FEEL IT. It was like a gnarled tree branch scraping against my inner rib cage, a persistent irritation, itch, or scratch. It would hurt so bad at first I had to go home, but it’s calmed over time. Now, six months later, it’s flaring up right now, but it was almost forgotten for a few weeks! I suspect it is related to diet and weight since I’ve been a bit bad since Thanksgiving and avoided my diet.
I have not yet figured out how to pay the medical bills which have overwhelmed me demanding $6000 all at once. Payments don’t satisfy the machine, and I think my cardiologist is going to deny me my next appointment because they demand $1500 on top of that. I can’t complain, it’s better than the $175,000+ before insurance. I figure bankruptcy is in my near future if I can’t find a big moneymaker just for medical bills.
I am leaving behind a lot of stresses and a lot of people who are not conducive to my health. I’ve started eating more veggies, cut out fried foods, and try to strictly limit the saturated fats I do consume. I do yoga to loosen up the twig in my chest. It seems to work, it leaves me alone, generally.
I’ve survived death one more time, but this time, they have diagnosed me with Coronary Artery Disease, a major killer in my family. I don’t know that anything I do can give me more time to live. If it closed down my arteries at the age of 47, how much longer can I go, even eating a better diet before genetics again betray me. My diabetes is a contributing factor, and I have had trouble controlling both diseases since I’m generally having to prioritize how I eat if I’m not cooking for myself.
It was a blow to not be as invincible as I thought I was. It’s led to a bit of depression and a need to stop wasting time. I get more lonely, a feeling totally foreign to me before, but I’m still not feeling commitment any more than I ever did. Fortunately, my dog is wise, and loves me and only occasionally runs away, so I’m fine on my own.
I’ve pretty much recovered, and I’m feeling good. I could use more exercise, but otherwise, I’m fully capable, and missing less work to chest pain and shortness of breath.
The future is mine to build. I just need enough time and good health to enjoy it.
Thanks for listening. I’m moving on to more creative writing now.
Avoid the saturated fats kids, and if you have chest pains that persist more than a few minutes, go directly to the Emergency Room!
Shannon D. Brown
December 19, 2017