Buy Three get One Free My Story, PART THREE

It was ten months after the stroke when I had my first chest pain.

On a darkish fall, late afternoon, while I was walking my dog up a very slight incline, my chest hurt. It was like someone was pressing a finger tip deep into the center, really hard. I slowed down and took some deep breathes and it went away so I went back to walking. I had almost forgotten about it by the time I got home, but I got to thinking about it and worried. That’s when I Googled it (The first place to go for medical advice, right?). 

I read that if you are just sitting around after dinner watching a movie, for example, and your chest hurts it’s probably just indigestion. On the other hand if you are exerting yourself or in a stressful situation you should take the pain very seriously and go to the emergency room immediately. The pain I experienced was the latter, but it was gone for now so I went on with my life. 

Several weeks later my mom was diagnosed with cancer for a fourth time and stressful family issues were surfacing. During a trip to the hospital with her in the middle of one night, was the second time I felt that particular pain in my chest. After the doctor in the emergency room checked my mom out and a room was being prepped for her to stay the night I left to go charge my phone in my truck, the only charger I had with me at the time. 

Sitting in my truck I received a text and as I read it my chest began to feel like it was being poked again. Like a single finger was pressing into the middle of my chest causing a deep, penetrating pain just like that day  walking my dog. I set my phone down and decided not to respond to the text. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes and the pain vanished so I went back in to take care for my mom.

After that, life was stressful but the pain hadn’t come back, and I was distracted by my mom’s failing health, so mine went on the back burner.

After a week off from work over Christmas, it was New Years Day 2017. My husband and I, along with two very special friends, were celebrating the beautiful, blue sky new year at an art Exhibit called WOW, The World of Wearable Art, showing at what was then Seattle’s Experience Music Project. We played at the huge new, artist designed playground next to the EMP and ran around laughing in the sunshine. The people with me and the show itself were so wonderful that had I died there that day of a heart attack I would have died happy.  

But I didn’t have a heart attack. I never had any kind of “event”, as it’s called. I just had that really bad pain in my chest again as I climbed some stairs. So this was not going away. I had decided to “adult” my way though this awhile ago. My dad on the other hand had died of a heart attack at 50 in my grandparent’s driveway when I was 21. Lessons in what not to do…

I thought I could avoid that whole scenario by doing what my doctors told me. That’s where getting health insurance, a doctor, naturopath and health coach came in. It all cost a lot of money but I was invested in not dying in a driveway or while caring for someone’s child, so I was willing to pay and willing to do the work. I didn’t realize the advice I got was going to cost me so much more than money.

I went back to work for a half day then went to see my cardiologist in the afternoon. Not the one I had chosen, she was in Hawaii. But at this point I knew I just had to show up and take care of this so I didn’t care who I saw.

I arrived and they immediately put me on a treadmill for a stress test. I was on it for almost a half hour before the “anomaly” appeared. That’s what the nurse called the familiar pain. Off to a cardiologist for an angiogram.

Before going into the operating room to have a look at my heart I signed a bunch of papers and called my husband to come up. I had stupidly chosen a hospital that was far away because I like the cardiologist. I had imagined us working together to turn this thing around, instead she was in Hawaii and I was a long way from home having a camera poked into my veins. 

On the up side the camera use to go into your groin - I don’t love that word and hate the idea of poking something in there, but now they just put the camera through a vein in your wrist! You gotta take the wins when you can get them.

The team of doctors and nurses were great! The lead doctor explained that when we got in there and took a look, if I needed stents put in they would just go ahead and do that. Stents, if you haven’t heard, are little tube like thingies that open your arteries up so blood can flow freely. That is not the technical explanation but you get the idea.

“No problem.” I told him. I was at his mercy now. I had done everything I could think of and yet here I was in an operating room with life threatening heart problems. I guess it was just the luck of the draw and I drew the short straw. I got the fat gene, the stroke gene and now the heart surgery gene. Whatever, I thought as we chatted about how beautiful Torifino was in the summer, and the Canadian/US exchange rate. 

I lay patiently on a table as the lead doctor, his assistant, the lead nurse and her assistant lined up to my right and a large monitor sat to my left.

As we talked and they worked, an image came up on the monitor screen. I had never been in an operating room before and nothing was familiar but this looked a little like a baby’s ultra sound. All black and white and pulsing.

“Do you see this?” The doctor said becoming suddenly very serious.

“Well… I’m not sure what I’m looking at exactly. But it looks shreddy.” I answered him.

“I’m not talking to you any more.” He said firmly. Without turning his head and looking straight at the monitor he said, “I couldn’t put stents in here if I wanted to. You would need 20 and there’s nowhere to put them.”

My arteries were shredded, not clogged. It was the right word after all. Not one artery would hold the necessary stent to get blood flowing to and from my heart again. My arteries were not blocked. And why would they be? It turns out I have never had high cholesterol. I had been lied to, we have all been lied to.

After that procedure I was transferred by ambulance from the cardiology wing to the emergency room on the other side of the building, where they even went to the bathroom with me so I didn’t drop dead unnoticed. I spent the night there and in the morning I was transported to a larger hospital where they perform triple by-pass open heart surgeries. Yes, I needed triple by-pass open heart surgery. And yes, I was so sure I could beat this and had never considered open heart surgery an option that I had chosen a hospital that delivered babies, administered chemo and placed stents but did not do open heart surgeries.

“Choose a surgeon." the doctor said handing me two brochures when he came into the emergency room where I was spending the night. There are actually surgeon brochures. They tell you a little bit about this stranger who will saw your chest open, stop your heart and cut around in there before sewing you up and going on to the next person. Um, ok. At this point I was way past being in control. I figured either guy was good enough, so I picked the one who was available first. The next morning, off I went into Seattle. 

As they transferred me I watched out the window of the ambulance. The clear blue skies of just a couple days ago were gone and thick dark clouds loomed over the city. Seattle is cold, grey and dark most Januarys. So I wasn’t missing anything fun at the moment. I figured I’d be better by summer, in time to swim and play out on the lake and have bonfires, and I guess pretend this never happened? 

What else could I do? I had failed. Once again I was destine to be the one who would need heart surgery because I was fat one. The grand finale was here. 

It’s funny but not funny to be having open heart surgery at 50. My roommate’s name at the hospital was Mildred. Her husband’s name was Glen, like my grandpa.

Surgery went fine, the details are boring and unimportant. My husband lived through the worst of it, while I slept through it all. I went home a few days later. 

Before we left, the surgeon came in with paperwork to go over. He explained that he had performed a quadruple bypass instead of the triple bypass we had originally talked about.

“No problem.” my husband answered. “We have a buy-three-get-one-free coupon.” My surgeon did not laugh, not even a smile.

I was on pain meds for two weeks and never felt any pain or had any side effects. My awesome friends came to see me and I did my breathing exercises and used all the tips and tricks they taught me to get around with out ripping my stitches out.  I felt great. But then, I always felt great…