Well, I was looking forward to the new year. Made it through to the 14th and celebrated my 45th. Yeah, I celebrated it alone but I did make it through. The the morning of the 16th arrived and I found that my life had changed forever. I know, people always say that, but most of us don’t realize what it means until it happens to us. A life altering event.
I woke up the morning of the 16th around 4am with a pain in my chest, the kind you get when you get a chest freeze eating an Icee too fast. After an hour or so of waiting for it to go away I finally drove myself to the ER (come to find out later that was an amazing feat in itself). When I got there they did all the initial things like an EKG and such. Nothing definitive was found. Over the next couple of days they did sonograms (ultrasound) of my heart and legs (most likely due to them being swollen most of the time slightly). Finally on Sunday the 18th they decided to do a Left Heart Catheter via my groin. Turned out to be a couple of blockages in the arteries around my heart. That’s when I knew that I had driven myself to the ER while having a mild heart attack. What a 45th birthday present eh? Find out later that night that they are going to do a second catheter to do angioplasty (the balloon to open up the artery/smush the plaque to the wall) and a stent (wire mesh tube pressed into place to open the artery with the balloon). Fun times, getting a hole poked in the same artery 2 days in a row.
Monday morning they take me and do the surgery and then ship me off to the ICU. One of the hardest things I have ever done was to lay in bed and not move one leg for 24 hours, as that side had to stay still for the artery to heal enough after being closed via direct pressure to the incision site. I have trouble enough laying flat in bed much less in an uncomfortable hospital bed. I was so happy when I got to sit back up.
Finally on Tuesday they moved me back to a normal room and then released me that evening. Bad thing is that even though they said I could go back to work the next day I would not make it back for another week. Wound up spraining my left knee and ankle trying to favor the right side as it still hurt from the incisions and then hurt my right foot favoring the left side. Am slowly getting back to where the right foot does not hurt a lot but it is taking it a bit. Just glad to have made it back to work as I had ran out of PTO and needed to start earning again.
Now I am on fun meds that make my blood thinner, keep my blood pressure down, and help to lower my cholesterol. And reading labels a lot more to check fat, sodium and the like. Guess I am officially old now.
After all of this I have decided that even though I have to watch my eating and all that, I am going to try to enjoy some other stuff more. I plan on getting out more, and not inhibiting some other aspects of my life that I have in the past. I figure that I’ve paid my dues and can now do some of the stuff that most every other person did in their youth. Watch out world, here I come!
