A Tale of the Heart
Glad to Have Mine Intact this Valentine’s Day
As I talked about in my previous story here https://medium.com/the-story-hall/reflection-296eaa35c27, I had a medical procedure yesterday to address some issues involving blood flow to my heart. My doctors felt fairly certain that’s what was causing my recent shortness of breath and strange feelings in my chest whenever I exerted myself in any way.
In my own mind, I still felt a little like I was making a big deal about nothing. I half expected them to get in there to find nothing amiss, i.e. “it’s all in your head, kid!” However, thanks to the persistence of those near and dear to me, and my doctors, I did slow everything down to a crawl — I took (most of) last week off work, I cut way back on my outside-of-work activities, which were considerable, and did everything I could to go real easy until my procedure.
Just walking up a small set of steps on the way into the hospital early in the morning told me “this is not all in your head, kid!” as I gasped for breath. After checking in with my son, we were led to my room by an older man who volunteered for such duties. When I mentioned what I was in for, he said, “Oh, I’ve had several of those myself. When I was younger I didn’t take very good care of my body. Now, I regularly run half- marathons on my birthday every year. Not bad for an 80 year old, eh?” I looked at him, and could not believe he was that old! Then I realized — that’s only 12 years older than me! He quickly became my new hero! That brief conversation brought me such hope!
Once in my room, there was lots of paperwork to fill out, and the poking and prodding began in earnest. I got to wear one of those fabulously stylish hospital gowns open in the back. An IV was installed in my left arm, and a blood pressure sleeve wrapped around the same arm, which inflated every 15 minutes to get an updated reading. After about three hours of waiting there, they came to take me back to the surgical theater. They prepped my right wrist, as well as my groin area — that was the back-up entry site in case they had trouble going through my wrist.
For the next hour and a half I had to lie perfectly still while the wire with a camera that they sent in through my wrist explored all over and around my heart area. There was a lot of chatter between my doctor and his associates, most of which I couldn’t understand a word of the med-speak, but I did hear, at one point, a gasp by the doctor as he said, “look at that blockage!” As I lifted my head to look, I got promptly reminded by one of the associates that I was to keep my head still. The doctor said he would show me pictures later.
There were all kinds of gizmos that looked like large televisions moving back on forth over me, and my legs were absolutely killing me. I couldn’t help but wriggle them a few times to try to get the pain to ease up. When I mentioned it to someone, they said, “Well, that’s not us!” That didn’t make a bit of difference to me — they really hurt, and I had to move them to ease up the pain a bit. They didn’t yell too much when I did — just a gentle reminder to lay still.
When they were finally close to being done, I asked if they were installing a stent. I was afraid, after hearing “all that blockage”, that they were going to tell me I needed a bypass operation. “No, there was a lot of blockage, but it was all concentrated to one place — the ‘widow-maker’ artery. He showed me a picture of what it looked like before they did their thing — a huge white blob that looked like it took up the entire inside circumference of the pictured artery — and after, in which the artery was wide open with no blockage.
Since my brother Chris had mentioned he’d had an 80 % blockage in his ‘widow-maker’ artery, I asked what the percentage of mine was. The doctor just shook his head and said, “Well over 95% — it’s a miracle you didn’t have a heart attack before this. They don’t call it the ‘widow-maker’ for nothing. Consider yourself extremely lucky.”
I do. I am most grateful. I am amazed at how much I tried to downplay something that was as serious as this turned out to be. I have to learn to be more mindful of my tendency to do that, and heed the warnings and suggestions of those around me more than I did in this case.
At least, I did heed them enough to take that week and half hiatus from my usual busy schedule to chill before this procedure. Looking back, I have no doubt that if I hadn’t, I may well of suffered much worse consequences from my nearly entirely blocked widow-maker artery.
Today, I am glad to be alive, and looking forward to getting back to 5 mile walks with my dog. As much as I enjoyed them before, I am going to truly appreciate the ability to take those walks more than ever. I don’t think I’ll be running any half-marathons down the road — but you never know! I think I’ll keep my focus on walking before I start to run!
