Days and nights are getting a little out of control. I think I’ve been in the hospital a few days. Hmm, since Saturday? Apparently I pushed myself a little too far while tearing out a deck. I thought I had developed a muscle pull between the shoulder blades. Well, it seemed reasonable, I was really very tired. I tried resting, reclining in my car. It didn’t work. I tried laying down, it was like laying down on a golf ball, I could get comfortable, but I still wasn’t recovering. I wanted to drive home. Maybe I was dehydrated.
I’ve never been dehydrated, I had the sweats, that doesn’t sound like dehydrated. I’ve never had low blood sugar, maybe that’s it. I have some emergency stuff in the car, but what if it is actually super high sugar. I haven’t had any of these things so I couldn’t tell what what was going on by experience.
I also hadn’t had a heart attack. Apparently a golf ball between the shoulder blades is the warning I get. Not that it stayed like that. Good grief no!
Soon after I was admitted to triage, I started getting crackling sounds while breathing. My lungs were filling with fluid. Not good, I can’t get air where need so technically I’m drowning. I’m supposed to relax, be beatific, calm… nope, I’m fighting for my life, I’ve got both bed rails in a death grip (hey, that’s where that comes from) and my feet are pushing through the end of the bed. I had this brief vision of an old western hanging, while the cattle rustler was gasping for breathe.
I just couldn’t inhale deep enough, so the visual was more like a rapid panting while I said “I think this is it”. My daughter and wife didn’t agreed, which was fine from their perspective. I wasn’t so sure. My daughter had just had a baby so perhaps I should treat it like pushing. Every breath I pushed air in, one after the other. I could tell it was up to me because the doctor was standing there with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t have some magic drug or instrument. I had to do it. Eventually I passed out.
I woke up with a tube in my arm The wire was carrying a balloon and a shunt. The offending artery was patched, heart attack over. The bad news is that I have two or three others that are clogged or completely closed. I’ve got to come back to take care of them. Probably open heart surgery.
I can’t seem to get out of ICU because my diabetes is way off the mark, and I’m still short of breath, so I have a mask that shoves air into my face. Oh well….
So now I know A few things more than I did. I’m still pondering the care and love that has been expressed to me. I thought I might be will to go peacefully, not true, I’m fighting hard for every inch. Apparently it shows, because nurses are always offering morphine.
It looks like a long path to recovery.
