dcnovice
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Joined: 8/2/2006
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January 14, 2015
ER Adventures
Dear Ones ---
And I said, “You can stop, if you want, with the Z
Because most people stop with the Z
But not me!”
Dr. Seuss, On Beyond Zebra
In my case, it’s more a matter of not stopping with the C. Most folks, I’m guessing, would have found a cancer diagnosis plenty of medical misadventure for one lifetime. But I seem to feel a sudden need, not conspicuous during my first half century, to multitask. As some of you have heard me joke, my body real does seem to have had a 50-year warranty. And I’m also—let’s be honest here—paying the hefty tab for five decades of poor self-care.
Twice already this year, I’ve been to the ER. Miraculously, neither visit landed me in the hospital. No small gift, that.
My first visit, on Monday the 5th, arose out of a routine “vitals” check before hyperbaric oxygen therapy. My blood pressure was fine, but my pulse (150) was in the stratosphere. I lay down for a bit, then the tech tried again. It had dropped to 144, which was still too high. So instead of diving, I found myself being led to the ER.
The odd thing is, I was totally asymptomatic. No chest pain. No “racing” sensation. No shortness of breath. No dizziness. (Well, no more than normal!)
Presenting with cardiac symptoms has a huge ER advantage: They see you right away. Almost instantly, I was on a bed, having blood drawn. (Has anyone, I wonder, ever visited an ER without tithing blood?) I also had half a dozen EKGs and a chest x-ray.
All this led to the hypothesis that I was experiencing supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), a hyperactive heartbeat resulting, if I understood correctly, from the chambers’ failure to work and play well together. The solution, as in so many cases, was rebooting. I was given an IV burst of adenosine. Again if I grasped things correctly, it stopped my heart for a split second. (They had the “paddles” ready.) That “reset” my heartbeat, which dropped back to normal a second later. After an hour or so of precautionary observation, I got the all-clear to go home.
My second visit, last night, was far less exciting. Out of nowhere (so far as I could tell), brutal stomach cramps walloped me. Hours and several calls to a beloved doctor friend later, I finally admitted there was no way I could sleep with that going on. So I headed to Georgetown, arriving at about one in the morning.
Tummy troubles have far less impact on triage nurses than a racing pulse does. I was in the waiting room—which seemed even more surreal than usual, with a homeless woman recounting her travails to anyone who’d listen and a hair-loss infomercial blaring from the Texas-size TV—for about two hours before getting a bed. Then it was close to another hour before anyone dropped by.
IV morphine erased the pain; Deo gratias! X-rays and CT imagery revealed that I was clogged up, largely due to my overfondness for rice and possibly the constipating effect of some medications. Amazingly, I then got a nice stretch of shut-eye, a rarity in any hospital setting, let alone an ER. The morning crew made sure I was still all right, briefed me on how to avoid a recurrence and whom to follow up with, ensured that I could hold food down, and let me go.
I got home in the early afternoon and pretty much crashed. I finally crawled out of bed after sunset, so I’m mildly disoriented about time. I’ll probably stay up for a spell, then try to “reset” myself by sleeping till morning.
Till then, my thanks for reading and lots of love!
Cheers,
DC
_____________________________
No matter how cynical you become,
it's never enough to keep up.
JANE WAGNER, THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF
INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
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