The Start Of A New, Different Life – The First Night

Note: I’ve started writing this post about four times. Either I’ve rambled on or just lost track of what I wanted to say. So, I’ve decided to break the whole thing into multiple posts, so I can focus on what I want to get out in each post, at each point in my experience. Hopefully, you’ll follow along. – Leo

“We’re activating.”

That simple two-word phrase has a very specific meaning in an emergency room. I didn’t know that meaning at the time, but in general, it meant that my life was perceived to be in danger. The cardiac team was being assembled.

You know it’s serious when they ask you “Do you have an advanced directive?”. This is a very clinical way of asking you “If you’re dying and can’t speak for yourself, have you made alternate plans?”. No, I hadn’t.

That one question took me from being in pain to being genuinely worried. That’s not an idle question. I was in the hospital in the middle of the night. At the time I got there, only those who had followed a short series of Facebook posts had a clue I had gone there.
I had been working a new job for a few weeks, and was sore from lifting and moving boxes. I had tried to make my 47-year-old body keep up with the 22-year-olds. And I had. But the back aches got worse. On the 22nd of December, they actually felt like they were wrapping around to my chest. I woke up at 1 am and couldn’t get back to sleep from the excruciating pain. Four and a half hours later, I fell asleep, only to have to get up in an hour to go to work. Most likely, I thought, I pulled muscles lifting boxes from a ladder and twisting while carrying. My own damn fault.

But breathing was a bit tougher. By Christmas Eve, I was coughing and having a hard time breathing. I was very tired. And my ankles had swollen to about twice their size. Must have been from all the time on my feet, right? I was working 12-14 hour days, while still trying to be a single dad. But something didn’t feel right.

On Christmas Day, I took my daughter to the airport for a trip to visit her grandparents. Carrying her small carry-on bag to the terminal was excruciating. I was out of breath just making the walk back to the car. I was getting concerned – this was more than just a muscle ache. When I weighed myself at home, I had gained 12 pounds in a week.

But as I turned to head back to the store, the pain in my chest soared.

Still, the next day, I went to work again. But I was feeling badly enough that I asked about when our insurance would kick in. We had originally been told 90 days, which would have been the end of January. I figured I might be able to tough it out until then. But when I was told it would not kick in until the end of April, my stress level kicked up a notch. I might make it a few weeks, but not months. The pain was too great.

I helped a customer out to her car that morning with a box. It was a light box, a gift keyboard for her daughter. I dropped it off at her car, placing it in the trunk for her. But as I turned to head back to the store, the pain in my chest soared.

Chest. Not back.

I could barely catch a breath. I got back in the store, and had to stop for a few minutes to breathe. I told the powers that be that I would need to leave early, but I toughed it out for a few more hours, getting in my eight. I headed home, got in bed, and figured I’d just rest. When I woke up four hours later, I wasn’t any better.

That’s when I started doing research online. I came across a page that listed the symptoms for Congestive Heart Failure.

Swelling of the feet/ankles: Check
Dry, unproductive cough: Check
Fatigue that isn’t resolved by rest: Check
Shortness of breath, chest pain, loss of appetite, abdominal pain: Check, check, check and check.

This wasn’t a pulled muscle. This was much worse.

After the Facebook messages, I got in the car and drove to the hospital. I felt ok, a bit achy, but not bad. I parked in the parking structure and made my way to the ER through the cold 1am air. By the time I got to the counter I couldn’t breathe. In five minutes they were taking my vitals and in five more I was on a gurney in the ER. And 5 minutes later, after an EKG, they “activated”.

They informed me that I either had suffered or was in the midst of a heart attack. And they would be getting me into the cath lab immediately. They wanted to do an angiogram to see what was going on. They prepped me, gave me nitro sprays, took a chest x-ray, and off we went.

Things get a little fuzzy from there. I was awake for the whole procedure, but wasn’t really sure what was going on. I knew they were going to go in through the groin for the angiogram. And that one of the nurses had been pulled over on her way in. Other than that, I joked with them about coming in for chest pains and getting a manscaping in the process, and tried to use humor to disguise the fact that I was genuinely fucking scared.

By the time I had been in the hospital two hours, I was up in the CCU (Cardiac Care Unit). And they gave me the news. I had suffered a heart attack about a week earlier. I knew when it was immediately – the 22nd. The excruciating pain. I had gained 12 pounds in a week, fluid that my body couldn’t process out because my heart wasn’t pumping.

The heart attack had damaged a large part of the front side of my heart. There was a 90% blockage in the Lateral Anterior Descending Artery – the “Widowmaker”. Most people – 90% – don’t survive a heart attack in the LAD. I survived, and lasted four more days.

And then they left me alone

While I was in the cath lab, they placed a stent to keep the LAD open, and inserted a baloon pump in my aorta to help my heart and give it a little rest. I couldn’t sit up, couldn’t bend my legs. The catheter for the pump ran up the left side of my groin. On the right, another catheter had sensors that ran to my heart to monitor the status of my heart. I was on oxygen, as my lungs had diminished capacity for oxygenation. And I had IVs in both arms, as well as a blood pressure cuff. I could hear the balloon pump’s machinery working to inflate and deflate the device that was helping my heart move blood.

They gave me medicine to help remove fluids. They started me on blood thinners.

And then they left me alone.

I decided to go to the hospital because I was scared. And because my daughter was out of town. Had she been in town, this would have been much more difficult.

But it didn’t escape me that I had had a heart attack. That I could have left her without a dad. And that I had made no alternate plans. No “Advanced Directive”.

And I was alone. Just the hiss of the pump, the occasional beep of the monitors. And me.