So, there I am, lying flat on my back on a skinny bed with railing on either side just in case I had any ideas of falling off. I am peeing into a grey, bio-degradable carton. Making it harder is the sandbag resting high on my right thigh, a reminder that I could bleed to death if I bend my leg. The nurse walks towards the door of the room, saying, “I’ll let you do that on your own…”
You lose all pretence of dignity when you’re a hospital patient.
I went to Branson because I was having shortness of breath and chest pains. “This is a clinic,” said the annoyed intake nurse. “Next time, call for an ambulance and go to a hospital!” By the time I was being wheeled out on a gurney to be taken by ambulance to a hospital, she had completely changed her tune. “This is a clinic,” she said gently, with compassion. “Next time, call for an ambulance and go to a hospital…”
When you’ve had a heart attack (so mild that I prefer to think of it as a “heart finger wagging”), the tone of your caretakers matters.
I was in Branson for less than an hour, long enough for the nurses to take an EEG and determine that something strange was going on with my heart. At one point, they thought they might take an X-ray of my chest. The doctor running the machine turned it on, but couldn’t get an image on the screen to aim the camera properly. He apologized, saying the equipment was 20 years old and he hadn’t trained on it. I jokingly suggested that if they had a tape measure, they could draw a line between the lens and a point on my chest above my heart, and, to my surprise, THE DOCTOR PULLED ONE OUT OF THE MACHINE!
I wasn’t destined to get a chest X-ray that weekend, but that was small potatoes. Soon, I would be on my way to the big show: an angiogram (not to be confused with actress Dickinson delivering a singing telegram)!
I had only been in an ambulance once before, and not as a patient, so this was a new experience for me. I noticed a clock on the inner wall read 9:40, which was odd because it was about four in the afternoon. But, the ambulance! it was smaller than ambulances look on TV (which, apparently, adds 20 inches to the width of any enclosed space). I watched the city recede through the rear door windows, a kind of reverse city documentary film with AM lance written backwards on the bottom of the screen.
When I looked back at the clock, it read 20 to 10. That was alright, the wait a minute! Wait just a minute! The time hadn’t changed! Could I have entered some kind of Twilight Zone ambulance? You know what I’m talking about. The kind where you don’t want to ask, “How soon will we arrive at the hospital?” because you know the EMT in the back with you will state with inflectionless finality: “You are now in this ambulance, you have always been in this ambulance and you will always be in this ambulance!”
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t one of the show’s best episodes. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy to arrive at a hospital as I was that day!
The angiogram (not to be confused with the 1930s burlesque artist) was pretty much as I remembered: somebody poked a hole in my groin, pumped dyes into my system and watched what happened. It was still a thrill being able to watch a screen that showed a throbbing shadow that was my heart.
The palpitations I felt during the procedure were new. It didn’t help that one of the doctors said, “Your heart will palpitate a little,” a couple of seconds after it happened. Then, a wave of heat started in my groin and pulsed up my body and out of my mouth. Seriously. It felt as though my soul was being sucked out of my body, just like at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, except without the Maraschino cherry on top. “You’ll feel a little hot,” the doctor told me after it happened.
Science: ever helpful.
WORDS YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR COME OUT OF THE MOUTH OF A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL: “Oh, that’s interesting.” WORDS YOU DON’T WANT TO HEAR COME OUT OF THE MOUTH OF A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL, ALTERNATE VERSION: “Come and take a look at this. I think you’ll find it interesting…” Of course, I heard both during the testing phase of my hospital stay, which made me want to respond, “YOU’RE NOT INSTILLING CONFIDENCE IN THE PATIENT, HERE!”
I didn’t say that, of course; I was still clinging to the illusion of dignity.
After the angiogram (not to be confused with the lump of flesh taken from the subject of a Rolling Stones song) and other tests, I was transferred to Toronto General Hospital, where a treatment was to be found for me. I know I can overstay my welcome at places, but still…
Each of the hospitals fitted me up with their own sets of medical gadgetry; by the end of my weekend stay, I had two IV drips and three sets of heart monitoring pads. My last nurse at Toronto General took off the pads they had put on me, looked at the other sets and said: “When you take a shower, those will come off more easily.” So, for a couple of days after my hospital stay, I had eight extra useless nipples.
During my three days in hospital, I did manage to lose a pound…of hair from the various adhesive objects ripped from my body. Still chest stubble is sexy, right? RIGHT?
It’s funny. For the last couple of years, I was hoping my father would stay alive long enough to watch me enjoy a little literary success. Now, I hope that I will stay alive long enough to enjoy a little literary success. Sorry, funny isn’t the right word. What would the right word be? Oh, yeah: sad.
Okay, this is funny: I was taking mental notes of what was happening to me so I could write about it afterwards. Who does that? Okay, funny might not be the right word for this, either. What’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, yeah: demented. Or, alternately: writerly.
Sure, the heart attack (so mild that I prefer to think of it as a “heart chiding”) happened on Friday the 13th, but I prefer not to see it as an omen of bad luck. I prefer to see it as a late birthday present from the universe.
You could almost call me an optimist…