Angina!
Odd, isn’t it, how one moment all is good, your world is in good order, and then in the next you are careening out of control. Saturday was one of those days.
Went to services Saturday morning. It was a close-knit group and the teaching was enlightening. We broke for lunch, and unhappily, the ladies plugged in too many crock pots into one circuit, and everything was cold. But we survived by nuking stuff and eating things cold. Afterwards, I was feeling a little short of breath, but nothing really threatening.
I had some persistent discomfort in the chest that was gently radiating up thru my neck and jaw for several days that I attributed to pushing the lawn mower around the edges of the house and trees. One of my dogs greeted me when I got home with her toy bone, and I played a quick game of tug-of-war with her, then the pain struck with a vengeance. I stumbled into my study and sat down at the PC, waiting for the pain to subside. It did ease a little, but not a whole lot.
I had some nitroglycerin tablets in the fridge that I had from 1995 or so. I took one and felt a huge relief, though the pain was not erased completely. If nitro reduces your pain, that is not a good sign if you had been pain-free for 20 years. I followed it up with an Alka-Seltzer to see if that helped. That would tell me if the pain was coming from my stomach rather than the heart. Nothing. Finally, I asked Snook to take me to the ER.
It was a long 20 minutes to town, but we got there, and Snook the whole time was calm and collected.Bless her!
The intake nurse didn’t waste time and had a wheel chair there in moments to transport me back to the ER where they started the usual protocol of blood thinners, and huge doses of nitro. That wasn’t doing the trick, and we tried a stomach numbing mixture that didn’t do much but make me belch and fart.
Finally, the nurse brought in morphine. Ahhhh! The nurses got prettier, the walls became brighter, my world was once again in order.
Sunday they just tried keeping me pain free with morphine and nitro patches and did a fair to middlin job.
Monday morning was tests and more tests, then on to the cath lab to peek inside. While there, they put in two stints to open up some earlier grafts, and cleared another blockage.
Viola! They found it!!
Sometimes illness is so subtle that you are not aware of the extent of your suffering until the cause is removed. I am sitting here without the usual shortness of breath, and feeling energetic, which isn’t good. I have to remain sedate for a week or better.
The first thing I did was crawl into my daybed for a little afternoon nappy-poo. My eyes rolled back in my head and I went out like a light for a couple of hours. No vampires were waking me for blood, no dieticians were poking my finger for blood sugars, no wires were going to a machine that chimed every ten minutes, no tube led to an infusion machine. I was FREEEEEE!
Woke, and tried to catch up with y’all, but you are a busy busy bunch, so I probably missed a few posts.
Glad to be back!
~r
Rusty's Armory 