Some background first (sorry, this is going to be a long post). Back in the late 90s, I was diagnosed with something called “Mitral Valve Prolapse” prior to all of my kidney problems in 1999/200. It’s something that does not need to be treated as long as the symptoms do not become problamatic. They never have, but it’s always something that has been stuck in the back of my mind.The first few years after the diagnosis, I was quite paranoid about the slightest pain.
Fast forward a bit, maybe a year after this diagnosis, and I started having chest pains. Bad ones. I was driving to work one day and they hit, spread into my left arm and the back of my neck. I had a cell phone (wow, in the 90s!) and called my doctor’s office. His was a full service office, so they just told me to drop in there instead of the emergency room, since it was on the way. By the time I got there, I was suffering from very high blood pressure, profuse sweating and shortness of breath.
After about a half hour of poking and prodding, I was given a powerful anti-acid and some soda. I let out an enourmous burp, and the pain was gone. The final verdict was GERD.
But what about the high blood pressure?: Stress and anxiety caused by the chest pains.
…and the profuse sweating?: Same!
The shortness of breath?: Hyperventilation due to stress and anxiety.
Bottom line, a few months of Nexium and all pain was gone for good. I had a great doctor with a great staff who had my interests both physically and financially in mind…not their own bottom line.
Now to the present day. It’s Sunday night after a great lazy Sunday we were enjoying after a movie and a good lunch at a local “bad for you” eatery. I went to bed a bit early but couldn’t get comfortable as I was having bad chest pains. The pains moved into my arm. My first thought was reflux again, so I took some pepto and drank some soda…sure enough a burp lowered the pain, so I went back to bed.
After 30 minutes, the pain was back. No sweating or breathing issues though. I decided that since I’m a lot older than I was back when, I would go to the emergency room. I had my son drive me there (he has a learners) thinking that I’d be there maybe 3 or 4 hours and we’d be home in time to get some sleep. It could have been that way, but it wasn’t.
I’ll skip the triage (most people have been to an emergency room, so they know what it’s like to begin with) and go straight in to the ordeal. Fist came the chest X-ray ( an EKG was done in triage). Two lab techs who talked so fast I could barely hear them did not listen to me at all (“how’s are you guys?” etc.) and scooted me back to the waiting area in about 5 minutes. Then came the CT scan (what? WHY?*)…I’d never had one before…and the technician hardly spoke to me either. The machine did all of the talking to me, and no one warned me that the dye or whatever they put through my IV would make it feel like my blood was boiling and would nauseate me. I said “I think I’m going to throw up” and a puke bag appeared on my chest…with still very little being said to me by a human (I didn’t puke, BTW).
Back to the ER…in a small room with beeping and shit because they didn’t hook me back up to the monitors.
After an hour…a doctor showed up. I think she was a doctor, she said she was one. She was about 5’2 and maybe 80lbs…mid to late 40s and a total, complete bitch (more on that later). “EKG was clean, X-rays looked great and the blood tests tell me it’s not a heart attack.” Excellent news, thought I, but there was more. “We are concerned over your blood pressure,” (why not be, it’s pretty damned high because it’s midnight and some CT tech tried to kill me an hour ago) “so we’re going to give you nitro and some morphine to see if it brings it down.” OK, well…I guess I was stuck there for a little while longer. I’d already decided not to go to work the next day, and since it would be after 1am before we got to bed, my son would go in late to school.
In comes the RN of my dreams. A wonderful German girl who was so damned friendly, just having her around made my BP drop. She was from near Frankfurt, married to an American serviceman stationed at one of the local military complexes. She liked football and basketball, but didn’t “get” baseball. She informed me I’d have three doses of nitro, followed by the morphine if my BP didn’t come down.
Folks, nitro is awful stuff.
Dose 1: I felt like my head was going to explode. I got incredibly hot and my heart rate shot up past 250. I thought it would kill me, but after about 3 minutes, I got very tired and felt relaxed. Dose 2: Holy crap…I’m gonna die. Dose 3: Much better, BP was was down. Then the morphine: I don’t have to tell a lot of you, it’s good stuff. BP almost non existant. Pain was reduced, but still there.
An hour passes…it’s now well beyond 1am, and Doctor Bitch comes in. “We can’t really find anything wrong with you other than some minor calcification of your arteries (I’m 43, so?). I want to keep you overnight for observation then give you a stress test in the morning.”
What the….nothing is wrong but you want me to stay? At this point the picture was clear. Blood and EKG were good…X-ray for good measure and some more money. X-ray was good, let’s give him a CT and get more money. CT was good, BP is down, let’s keep him overnight for more money. I told her I was leaving…so she decided to scare my son (he was in the room) “well, if you go home, I want you to take aspirin and don’t climb any stairs. I will get a form for you to sign so if you die tonight we won’t be held responsible.” I argued that I was a single parent and had obligations, and if they couldn’t find anything wrong, then I could leave.
Well, he started to tear up. He said he’d be ok overnight and could take a cab home. For his benefit, I decided to send him home and stay overnight. I’m thinking stress test, some food and I’d be home by noon on Monday…no biggie.
The cab came, he got home OK and I was taken to the “observation floor.” The whole floor was empty except for me, the room was big with a mountain view (at night, meh) and the bed looked inviting. It was 3am, I’m thinking a few hours of sleep, a treadmill in the morning, a nice breakfast, then head home. Of course…that did NOT happen. I’m greeted in the room by Nurse Clumsy and Nurse Prozac. Nurse Clumsy was a very nice guy, but dropped everything (clipboard, oxygen tank, his badge, a pen, etc.) and Nurse Prozac was just…well…”there,” no personality, could barely speak and didn’t know how to use a manual sphygmomanometer (I had to show her.) They took my vitals again and then just stood in the room talking to each other.
“Do you guys have a toothbrush and some jammies or something for me, I’d like to sleep a bit.”
Silence.
So I took my shoes off and laid down anyway. After 15 minutes Nurse Clumsy said “The Doctor is coming up to speak to you, we are moving you to CCU on the second floor.
Great, I’m moving again…and I was just getting comfy. In comes Doctor Sleepy. A Japanese man who asked me every question I’d been answering since 9pm (it was 3am now). He of course chastised me for drinking and smoking…everything short of bombing Hiroshima..and then left. I was given more drugs, more nitro and another shot of Morphine…then everyone left. I fell asleep….and it was wonderful…until 4:30. In comes a man, late 50′s with white hair and a white beard who wakes me up with the words “Good morning, I’m from the Laboratory.” I am NOT making this shit up…Doc Brown himself came to draw blood. He was nice though, and kindly turned the light off and closed the door when he left. Glorious sleep once again…this time for a whole hour!
At 5: 30, Nurse Prozac walks in with a wheelchair…and I’m on the move again. At this point let me stop and say that all I had was what I walked in with. A Hoodie, a T-Shirt, a pair of jeans, a pair of socks and a pair of underwear. My phone was dead, I didn’t have my iPod, my Kindle, no comb, no toothbrush, nothing. Lesson learned…bring everything when you go to the ER…I’m packing a bug out bag the next time I go (if I ever do).
Anyway, Nurse Prozac pushes me to the elevator. We get to the second floor and we traverse the entire length of the hospital to get to another elevator…where we go up back to the third floor. Don’t ask, I don’t wanna know.
3rd floor CCU is like a weird horror film. Every room “beep beep boop beep” and the sound of FOX News on the TV sets (i.e. they were all old people). My room was small and cramped, and the bed moved…all the damned time…if I shifted, it moved, like it was anticipating how I wanted it adjusted (or to keep me awake, I’m unsure). Nurse Prozac left and was replaced by Nurse Himmler. Nurse Himmler had his own assistant, I’ll call him Nurse Skaterboy. Himmler decided to hook me up to an IV, then ignore me for two hours.
I need to stop here again and explain that I was not rude to any of these people. I was friendly, made jokes, asked quesions about them, just about everything I could to get them to open up. It was almost as if they had lost their spirit of life or something….like they were robots going about their routines withouth a thought about the people they were trying to care for. Just let me get through my shift.
At around 8am, Himmler told me that the lab guys would be in at 10:30 for more blood. Great…2.5 more hours and still no one has said anything about a “stress test” I was supposed to be getting. I was starting to feel the stress alright. No sleep and almost 12 hours in this place. I still hadn’t seen a “real” doctor since Doctor Sleepy hours ago.
In comes Doctor Practical at around 9:30am. She was a real cardiologist and SUPER nice to me. She explained (again) that it was not a heart attack, my heart was fine, my blood was clean, and her only concern was my blood pressure. She’d get a stress test scheduled and would check in on me in a little bit. She just wanted to be sure about a few things before I left. I was suddenly happy, I was finally going to get my treadmill time in, then be home for a nap in no time at all! Of course…this was not to be, and here’s where my patience finally snapped. It took 26 hour sleep deprevation and over 12 hours in this institution to get me to break down…not bad in hindsight.
At 10am, in walks Doctor Doom. 5’7, maybe 110lbs, early 50s. I’d guess he had two kids, both in college being paid for by his salary. Maybe not his salary, he looked as though he came from privalege…probably not a single student loan to pay off…parents were both probably doctors, or lawyers, or one of each. Either way, he oozed arrogance and made me lie down while he spoke to me…I believe so that he could not only metaphorically, but also physically talk down to me.
“I have an emergency brewing up at the North hospital, but I’d like to do an angioplasty on you to take care of that calcification. If you need a stent, you’ll be here for another night or two.”
What. The. Fuck. “um…everyone else told me it was fine, have you seen anything different?”
“No, it’s not an emergency, let’s just get it done and over with….it’s no big deal. I’ll get it sched…”
“Doc, if it’s not an emergency, I’ll go home and call my regular doc and he can refer me to his cardio guy and we can schedule it if he sees it as necessary. I’m a single parent and have to get some affairs in order first.”
This is verbatim…word for word of what this slime said to me.
“Well, then go home. Have a heart attack and die tonight and never see your son again. Your call.”
I exploded…well…on the inside. I let him walk out of the room alive, and without saying a word. It was Nurse Himmler who was unfortunate enough to walk in at just that moment. “Himmler, I need to take a walk so I can think about this please.”
“You will stay in your room.”
“I am leaving, right now.”
Yes, that was the extent of my “snapping.” I could have made a scene, I could have called him every name in the book and more, I could have called the patient advocate…I have a feeling all of those drugs they pumped into me were for the express purpose of making me docile and open to suggestion. The rage I felt would not, no matter how hard I tried, manifest into anything verbal other than “I am leaving, right now.”
Nurse Himmler said nothing, but came back with a release form and watched me sign it. Then, before I could get my smock thing off, he yanked all of the monitoring wires off of me through the little pocket it was in and said “you can get the sticky things off yourself.” Then came the IV. He didn’t pull it out, he yanked it out…and so hard that it tore a gash in my arm. To stop the massive bleeding, he used a paper towel and not a sterile gauze, then after a minute he put on a band-aid and said “try not to move that for a while.” He quietly escorted me to the exit and walked away.
The valet brought my truck around (this is a HUGE hospital, part of Centura Health…the catholic people…which should have been a warning to me in the first place) and I went home to immediately call my doctor. My doctor is amazing, so I’ll use his real name…Doctor William Malabre. His office calmed me down, talked to me as a human being and set up an appointment for today with a referred cardiologist who I ensured was NOT Doctor Doom from the hospital. I went to bed at 7pm and spelt until 6am this morning….all the way through, and much to Doctor Doom’s likely chagrin, I didn’t die.
This story is still being written…I have an appointment for today in about an hour. If this doc says I need the angioplasty, I’ll get it scheduled and do it…since I’ll have affairs in order and it’s not being rushed it is fine, let’s get it done so I can recover and get back to work. In part 2 I’ll write the results of today’s visit.
Wouldn’t it be funny if it was all just gas?
UPDATE: Part II is up.
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*Doctor Bitch told me the CT scan was to look for a blood clot. She was concerned that since I drove to San Antonio back in early December I might have somehow caused a clot. She claimed it was due to being in a seated position so long, but later, the nurse in CCU told me it was because of the altitude change. The nurse was obviously an idiot, since people travel to different altitudes and return by the thousands every day…and don’t get clots.
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