STAT !!!

Continued from yesterday's post (click here), which was continued from the day before

My Saturday morning wake-up call came way sooner than I had expected it!  Keep in mind that I got into bed at 2:00 A.M., then had a myriad of questions to answer, IVs to get set up, blood draws, and a fire alarm to keep me awake for a very long time!  I'm guessing it was 3:30 by that time, and I was still awake!  I don't remember ever falling asleep that night, but I do remember my "wake-up call" at 5:00 A.M.

Two nurses came scurrying into my room, and I said "Good morning" to them.  They barely said much of anything to me because they were too busy setting up more IVs, doing math calculations out loud to make sure they got everything set up right.  When they were finished, I was sporting four IVs--from four separate sites--two in each arm.  (And, once again I had to endure all the poking and pricking, and repeated trying again and again to get the needles inserted properly into the tiny veins in my left arm!)  Add all those IV tubes to the oxygen tube sprouting from my nose, and gauze bandages dotting each arm and hand--you get the picture?  All four bags of assorted fluids hung from one super-sized IV pole (which was designed to hold six different IV monitors), and all four active monitors had their own distinct sounds.

Just as the nurses finished with the new set-up, in came another phlebotimist to draw some more blood--two separate vials (big ones) this time.  As the nurses left my room I heard them talking about when the rest of my medication would be delivered from the pharmacy.  My heart began to pick up a little speed again when one of them said to the other:  "I told them STAT, but I guess their definition of STAT is different than our definition of STAT!  I heard later that she then took off for the pharmacy to get my meds, rather than wait any longer.

Soon after, all was quiet in my room again, and I was left alone to ponder what just happened, a cardiologist showed up to deliver the news:  "You had a heart attack last night!  The confirming enzyme showed up in your second set of bloodwork last night and we just got the results."  (My own suspicion turned out to be true.)  Then he sat down on the edge of my bed and began firing at me a whole slew of questions very quickly--faster than my mind could process them--the same set of questions asked twice before.

He also told me that my heart attack was minor--on a scale of 1 to 10, mine was probably a one or a two, and if someone was going to have a heart attack, mine was the best kind to have!  It turns out that a piece of placque broke off in the end of a small vein and blocked the vein. 

In the emergency room the doctor had said I would be kept overnight so I could be seen by a cardiologist, and then the cardiologist would review my reports and go from there.  I honestly thought (fully believed) that the cardiologist would then release me.  It never even entered my mind that I would be kept for several days!   So, when the cardiologist told me I would be having an angiogram on Monday, and he wanted to keep my heart at rest for the weekend, it was like he just dropped a bombshell on me!  I was far more upset that I would miss out on going to a rodeo with friends on Saturday night, than I was over having a heart attack!  Those plans had been made long ago, and I had waited ever so eagerly for the day to finally arrive.  (I had gone to a rodeo once before, and loved it!  Such excitement!)  I just couldn't believe this was happening . . . missing the rodeo!

To be continued . . .