Tuesday, August 26, 2013.  San Diego

 

He thinks he is dying.  And I have to admit, he looks like he’s dying.  He’s aged a decade in the 24 hours since we left the hospital.  As we walk through the San Diego Airport, searching for our gate for our flight home to Cincinnati, his face is ashen and his hands are shaking and his shoulders are rounded.

I am not so much alarmed as I am irritated.  I have known this man for 45 years, and I know he is not dying.  Not the man who biked 123 miles through the desert.  Not the man who throws half of his Burger King French fries away.  Not the man who takes his One-a-Day vitamins once a day.

This man is not dying, but I feel like killing him.  He’s so dramatic about his health, kind of a sissy in that way.  I say, “You are fine.  You are freaking yourself out.  It’s indigestion.  You are fine!”

Was it just yesterday he walked into Carol and Mike’s family room and said he needed to go to the hospital?  He said he had a “twinge in his chest.”

“A twinge?” I asked.  “Did it feel like an elephant was sitting on your chest?  Like I was sitting on your chest?”

“No, it was just a twinge I felt when I walked uphill. Kind of a burning.  But it went away when I walked downhill.”

“Were you short of breath?  Did it radiate to your arm?” I asked.

“No. It was just a twinge, right here.”  He points to his chest.  His shirt is still sweat soaked from his early morning walk in the California sun.

So Carol drove us to the hospital.  As soon as Rick said he was experiencing chest pain, we were whisked into an examining room.  The nurses took his blood pressure, gave him an EKG, drew blood, and listened to his heart.  An hour later, the doctor ambled in, smiling slightly.

“Are you a smoker, sir?” the handsome, young doctor asked.

in san diego hosp

“Well, I smoked a cigar when I was nine.  I don’t think you can hold that against me.”

(Audible sigh) “Okay, nonsmoker. So, Mr. Lingo, did the pain radiate to your arm?”

“No.  Just some burning in the center of my chest when I was taking my walk this morning. Oh, and I had this same twinge this morning before the walk when we were having, well, you know . . . being the frisky 63-year-old I am, and it being Sunday in San Diego and all, I was just — “

“Okay, so I’ll write ‘intimate activity,’” the doctor says as he makes a note on the chart. I think this young guy just got a vision of his parents in bed, and he was trying to un-see it.   I studied the two-year-old Readers Digest in my lap.  My quiet, introverted husband becomes animated and chatty when he’s nervous, and he’s on a roll.

“And yesterday, after my walk, I took a twenty-minute nap – I do that every day, just take a little power nap—and then when I woke up I felt it again, the burning, just for a second.  And then, after dinner when –“

“Well, the EKG is normal, the blood pressure is normal, the blood tests are normal.  And you just take the blood pressure medicine? Right?”

“I take Vitamin D and fish oil and a daily vitamin and sometimes Pepcid AC if I’m going to eat Mexican.  Like yesterday.  I had fish tacos.”

“So, just the blood pressure medicine, then.”

“My blood pressure always ran a little high, but finally my doctor decided to put me on medicine because of my age and history.  My dad dying at 47 after seven or eight heart attacks.  My brother, well he had a stroke a year before, but then they found him dead in his La-Z-Boy recliner, and they assumed he had a heart attack.  Then my other brother, his wife had a brain aneurism, and while she was having surgery on one floor of the hospital, my brother was getting two stents on another.  He was about 53.  Unluckiest guy I know.”

“Well, the tests don’t show anything.  You could stay overnight and we could run your enzymes again tomorrow if you want.  If you decide to go back to your friends’, pick up some baby aspirin and Prilosec on the way.  Maybe it’s just indigestion from the fish tacos.  If you have any problems, come back to this hospital, since we have all your records.”

***********

We were in San Diego visiting Carol and Mike’s home for the first time.   Mike and Carol picked us up at the airport, and we ate at a Mexican restaurant nearby.  The fish tacos were great.  We did a little sightseeing before going to their Spanish-style home. 

When we walked inside, the most delicious aromas wafted through the open door.  Carol had prepared a scrumptious meal.  She showed us to the guest room and bath, which were beautifully prepared for our arrival. 

Then we all sat out on the porch, sipping wine, noshing on cheese and crackers, Fritos and dip, and mixed nuts.  Well, Carol, Mike, and I noshed.  Rick simply doesn’t nosh.  Oh, he might reach into a bag of m & m’s for one m.  He might eat a cookie, one dainty bite at a time. The last time we drove to Gatlinburg, he ate one Pringle an hour.

This is how you tuck into a snack!

When dinner rolled around, we all layered shredded beef, sautéed onions and peppers, and pepper jack cheese on toasted hoagie buns.  Well, Carol, Mike, and I made sandwiches.  Rick doesn’t eat sandwiches.  No, sirree, no bread for him.  No cheese, either.

It bugs me, how he eats like a girl. And how he does stretches every day in our living room like some kind of Indian yogi.  How he talks about his physical ailments: his prostatitis; the Cryptosporidium  he picked up in a Mexican cantina ten years ago; the Raynaud’s phenomenon that turns his fingers white.  How he says he has to take his “medication,” not a “pill” like everyone else.  How he wears sun block 365 days a year.  Why can’t he be a real man, like my grandpa, who rubberbanded his broken index finger to the adjacent one for two weeks before going to the doctor?  (The doctor had to rebreak his finger and insert a pin to correct the damage done by the delay.  Maybe I haven’t picked the best example.)

We walked on the beach after Rick was released from the hospital.

So when we left the Emergency Room, I was thinking, We’re supposed to go to Vegas for three days.  We’re going to ruin the little time we have left with Carol and Mike talking about the twinge you had in your chest.  It’s just acid reflux from yesterday’s tacos.  But what I said was, “I think we should catch the next flight home and get this checked out.”  And why, this time, maybe for the first time, does he do what I ask?  Upon returning to Carol and Mike’s house from the hospital, he doesn’t relax in their hot tub, but instead goes into the guest room, closes the door, and spends the next 45 minutes canceling reservations and booking flights.

 

 

 Wednesday, August 28, 2013.  Cincinnati

 

 Rick insists we leave the house at 6:30 AM to get to the doctor’s office when it opens at 7:00.  The office sets aside a couple hours in the early morning when the physician’s assistant will see patients without an appointment.  Of course they explain that chest pain doesn’t really qualify for a condition that can be treated by a PA.  His doctor is out of town, so they give us a 1:30 appointment with a Dr. Bort. I think, Good, this afternoon he’ll get a stress test and he’ll get over it.  I say, “Thank God they’re getting us in today.”

The nurse wants to weigh him, so Rick steps on the scale wearing long pants, golf shirt, jacket, shoes, and belt, and he has his keys, wallet, and cell phone in his pocket.  Who does that?  He weighs in at 180.

Dr. Bort comes in and says before even introducing himself, “Congratulations on being so smart to go to the emergency room.  White guys at our age, if it’s between the waist and the neck, think heart.”  Rick’s EKG is still normal, and the doctor is not alarmed by anything he hears through his stethoscope.  But he seems very interested in Rick’s description (which goes on and on) of the pain he’s experienced for the last few days.  When Rick tells him about his lousy DNA,  Dr. Bort’s forehead pleats.  He asks the nurse to bring in two aspirin and instructs Rick to chew them.  Then he says, “I’m not giving you a stress test.  You might collapse.  You need a cardio catheterization.”

Dr. Martin, a young doctor who looks more like a defensive lineman than a cardiologist, also listens intently to what Rick says, though he cuts him off when Rick starts describing our latest geriatric conjugal episode.  It’s now 6:00 PM, and Dr. Martin takes us to the scheduler to make sure Rick gets the first surgical slot the next morning.   And I think, You’re going to find out it’s nothing.

Thursday morning, August 29, 2013

 

We arrive at Good Samaritan Hospital at 5:00 Thursday morning.  After they prep Rick, he calmly works his way through the New York Times.  Calm?  This is just not like him.  Now I start to get a little worried.  We kiss goodbye and he’s wheeled into the Cath Lab.  I’m told if he requires a stent, it should take about an hour and a half.  I feel disloyal that I’m so hungry, but still I go to the cafeteria for breakfast. I am so sure that those arteries are going to be clean as a whistle and he’ll be out in half an hour, that I wolf down my heart-unhealthy breakfast of tater tots and goetta and rush back to the waiting room. I finish reading the magazine I brought. And I wait.  And wait.

After an hour and a half, the nurse comes to get me, but she won’t tell me what happened in surgery, even though I beg.  Only the doctor can tell me, she explains.  Rick is wheeled in and he looks bad.  Now I’m terrified.  The nurse takes pity on me and whispers, “He’s fine.  One artery was 99% blocked so Dr. Martin put in a stent.  His blood pressure was high, but he’s fine.”  I assure her I won’t blow her cover to the cardiologist.

Rick mumbles, “I have pain.  Is that normal?”

The nurse says, “Well, sometimes it happens.  We really stretched that artery.  What would you rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10?”

“Six.”.  She says she’ll tell the doctor.

I think, Where is the doctor?  Come on!   I say, “What’s your pain now?”.

“A nine.”

I run out to the nurse’s station and tell them, and they say they’ll tell the doctor.  Just then Dr. Martin comes in, and when I tell him Rick has chest pain, the doctor is visibly concerned.  He thinks out loud:  “It could be a clot, but that is so rare.  This isn’t good at all.” He turns his head to the nurses’ station and shouts, “Get me another nurse in here.  Come on, I need an EKG!” When he doesn’t get the hurried response he wants, he yells,“ I don’t want to see anyone sitting down when something like this is going on!”

Something like this?

 The nurse is slower with the EKG than Dr. Martin would like.  “Come on,” he commands. 

She says, “I have to get his name on the screen.  It’s on someone else’s name.”

 “Just do it,” Dr. Martin shouts.  He looks at the peaks and valleys on the paper and says, “We’re going back in!”

One nurse yanks all the monitors from the wall, and then two more whisk Rick away.

I am hysterical, like soap opera-hysterical.  Nurses parade in with tissues, juice, and ice chips for me.  One whispers to me, “He’s where he needs to be.  They’ll fix it.”  Another nurse comes in and just hugs me.  They all see that nothing is going to work, that I’m inconsolable, that I am making a spectacle of myself, so they yank the curtain around to afford me a cocoon of privacy. 

While I sit there for 45 minutes, I realize I’ve been wrong about everything.  About Rick’s carefulness with food.  About his exercise regimen.  About his persistence about getting answers.  About his assessment of his pain.  And like all backsliders, I look to God when the chips are down.  I pray and promise and bargain.  I will accept Rick as he is.  I will let him tell me to look both ways before I cross the street.  I will just smile when I’m driving and he tells me to watch my speed.  I will tear lettuce in little pieces and buy small apples, just like he likes.  I will quietly tolerate the ugly maroon cardigan he packs for every vacation.  And I won’t be annoyed when he insists I kiss him when I leave the house, or the room.  I won’t be so sure I’m right, because if I’ve been this wrong today, maybe I’ve been wrong many other times as well.

And I wonder how in the world I could live without him.  There’s the practical stuff, the balancing the checkbook, the changing the oil in the car, the working the DVR.  There are entire categories of life skills I’ve never had to learn.  But those things are light brush strokes in the picture my mind paints of life without him.  A life without his encouragement, his jokes, his intelligence, his passion for learning, the kisses he gives me when he comes in or leaves a room. 

 Finally, after an hour, a nurse whips aside the curtain to make way for Rick’s bed.  When he returns, he is not in pain, but he is shivering.  I pile blanket after blanket on him and hold his hands with the white fingertips.  I kiss his cool, immovable lips over and over again. I whisper into his ear, over and over, “I love you.”

Dr. Martin informs me that Rick threw a clot and suffered a mild heart attack. Apparently some plaque from a side artery ruptured.  “He’s not broken.  He’ll be okay.  But if he had not come in  today . . .well, it would have been a very, very bad outcome.  Thank goodness he listened to his body.  If he didn’t exercise regularly, he wouldn’t have had that warning chest pain.”

My daughter stayed with Rick in the hospital a few hours Thursday and Friday so I could go home to shower and nap.  Otherwise, I was by his side. At night I used pillows and blankets to cushion the vinyl recliner at his bedside so I could sleep. I saw every hour pass on the clock those two nights.  Whenever I awoke, I looked over to see the glorious sight of Rick’s chest moving up and down.  I think he heard me all the times I said, “I love you.”  I hope he did.

When our kids were little, I joked that I’d never divorce Rick because I might get stuck with the kids.  Now I quip that our marriage is just a bad habit we can’t break. Rick and I have been together since I was sixteen, 46 years ago.  I was only 19 when we married. I don’t think I had any idea what love was at 19.  I was a child, and not a very mature one at that. 

Over the years, I’ve wondered if Rick would have been the man I married if I had waited until I was all grown up to walk down the aisle. After almost losing him, I grew up, and now I know.

 This is a cautionary tale:  Symptoms of heart problems are not necessarily dramatic or extremely painful.  Rick never felt the crushing, radiating pain we all hear about.  The doctor said it was nothing he did, or didn’t, do that caused the blockage.  When my mother had her heart attack, she felt sick to her stomach and her ears hurt—her ears, but not her chest. 

PLEASE CLICK THIS LINK  to read my friend’s blogpost (on The Goddess Babe) about her symptoms.  Phebe listened to her body and got to her doctor when she experienced shortness of breath    Her caution saved her life.  Just five days later she had a triple bypass. 

 

logo_trans    Here are the symptoms listed by WebMD.

  • pain, fullness, and/or squeezing sensation of the chest
  • jaw pain,toothacheheadache
  • shortness of breath
  • nausea,vomiting, and/or general epigastric (upper middle abdomen) discomfort
  • sweating
  • heartburn and/or indigestion
  • arm pain (more commonly the left arm, but may be either arm)
  • upperback pain
  • generalmalaise (vague feeling of illness)
  • no symptoms (approximately one quarter of all heart attacks are silent, without chest pain or new symptoms and silent heart attacks are especially common among patients withdiabetes mellitus).

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