So I haphazardly checked myself into the ER on Wednesday at a
frisky 4 something am, with those chest pains notated previously
thumping under my breast. Thinking about the hospital, let alone
checking into one is very destructive process for me, because, until
yesterday, I have never checked myself into one and been allowed to
leave within a few days. Granted, my entire history with those is
entirely emergency related. The first being spinal meningitis at 12.
The second being my first aortic graft at 18/19 (I turned 19 in the
middle of the surgery), the third a month after, and my aortic valve
which was done like 6 and a half years ago.

Once you’re there, it becomes a whole different ball game. You see a
whole arrangement of people at their bottom-most moments, and the one
thing all of us have in common as patients is our striped gowns, asses
hanging out, chickenlegs and all, underwearless, haphazardly flashing
each other as we struggle to stand up, shift and just move around. It’s
a place where we all become privy to information we wouldn’t want to
know of anyone, let alone the half-naked stranger diagonal to you. For
example, a conversation I wrote down exemplifies this the most:

Nurse: How was the bowel movement? Was it large?

Patient: Yeah, it was pretty large, but it was more snakey and less bally than before, you know what I mean?

Nurse: Was that hard for you?

Patient: Yeah it was…

The man, in his late 40s, was a patient who had just undergone
heart surgery and had a jagged scar like mine running down the center
of his chest in an uncertain line. The guy next to me was waiting for a
transplant and was maybe 65, and the woman directly across from me was
like 80+.

It really is humbling to be half the age of the youngest patient in the ward, but that’s to be expected.

The accommodations in most hospitals, and this is certainly true of any
ER, are super high-end hotel prices at below-poverty level conditions.
I was pleased to see that the recovery area for Cardiothoracic
procedures and surgeries was well-maintained. Four people to a room
with a nurse’s desk in each one. The curtains in all of the cardiac
areas of this hospital are mauve with burgundy hears running down
vertically all over the place in each and every area.

I was first appalled in the ER. It was hellacious at best, watching
dozens of people file out and in in some crazy bumper-cars-like bed
arrangement. I realized quickly that as with any bar, there were the
regulars, and the new faces. The EMT’s knew some of them by name even.
When I first came in it was snoring and sleeping-the drunk sleeping
their alcohol off, and a few other people who had asthma and chest
pains to take care of. By mid-morning it was a frenzy, and it seemed
that almost everyone who had been checked in that morning was gone by
early afternoon. Except me. They pushed me through a whole battery of
tests, most of which came back good. Some areas of the tests were
inconclusive, as in we have no magic genie bottle to figure out the
whens, but we know what is. My surgeon is probably the top in his
field, Dr. G, who attended Stanford and was one of the
students of the man who did the first surviving cardiac patient. He is
somewhat of a celebrity in this hospital, I guess. After the tests came
back okay, they discussed the probability of letting me go. Dr. G
was not satisfied with the lack of answers and decided to admit me,
and  put me through one more additional test, a Cardiac
Cathertization and Possible PCI/Vulvoplasty/IABP/CABG and periodic
followup (I wrote this off my consent form). haha. But anyhow, the
explanation was, that it was possible that part of my aortic valve
procedure might be coming a bit loose (he used the term buttons) and
that the blood leakage could be causing the pain.

In layman’s terms, they stick a catheter up your femoral artery and to
your heart. During this they have a trusty x-ray camera that bobbles
around which can see inside you, your organs, and watches the catheter
snake up. Once it’s up, they shoot dye into the vessel, and you can
watch the way your heart processes  blood, from the lungs to the
heart and watch any potential leaks, whatever, that might come up.

They asked me for my consent form at 2 pm. I sat squirming on the ER
bed for another 7 some hours until they had the cathertization lab
available. Because I am a hospital rebel, I sat there using my cell
phone to text message and call a few people, putting the phone
underneath the sheet next to the pillow. I speak quietly, and no one
was wiser to what I was doing, which made me happy.

They told me if they needed to push a balloon up there they would do
that, and that time spent waiting and waiting got my anxiety levels up
so high that I sat crying in the waiting area for the tests. My
patience has worn thin with this heart crap, and it’s really hard to
consistently deal with and think about. Once I got in, they assured me
they were gonna drug me up with some form of something like valium, so
I would be awake, but not excitable.

The first part of the test was cool, because when I did get to see
(when the camera wasn’t in front of my head), I saw how archaic and
bizarre modern medicine is. I am held together cardiovascularly with
pins, staples, and twisty ties (as was coined by Jeff), little round
halo-like wires that tie around the aorta and are twisted together to
keep fastened. All over. I was like a little kid discovering the joys
of bugs, watching my heart and the pins and staples and twisty ties as
the camera moved around. When they shot the dye in, it was just black
(the screen, being x ray, was a streaming black and white movie), and I
watched my heart process that. The first time that was done, I heard
the 5 of them gasp and one jumped on the phone to call surgery, telling
them of what they saw (indeed, a leak). From what I could gather
surgery wanted them to finish the test and do the dye again. So they
did it again. The second dye shooting made the leak look not so
significant, and the technician assured me that it was nothing huge,
but that it would cause pain.

Now the real party began when they were trying to take the tube out. My
entire thoracic cavity is all scar tissue, the vessels included. The
catheter got stuck on some, and it snapped. To see the horror on the
guys’ faces would have been enough to throw me into a frenzy, had I not
been well-drugged not to care. I mean, I could feel it, and I was
aware, but I was kind of floating around in a little cloud, laughing at
how I was not made of candy or sweet stuff, but a junk drawer of pins
and metal bits. But anyhow, they started talking about what to do, and
they started rushing around. One man had his full body weight on my
leg, pushing down. At some point during this procedure, blood had
squirted up and hit the plastic cover for the camera, which made it all
entirely too comical. I remarked that there was blood pouring down my
leg, an accusation they denied, saying, it was water. It was pooled up
under my crotch, and I was literally sitting in a pool of my own blood.
As the frenzy continued, they decided to call a thoracic surgeon in, to
get the catheter out. They shot me up again with fantasy drug, and I
watched them do their thing, fixing my leg, and strapping this
tourniquet boot thing to my femoral artery. It was like a hammer, and
it felt like someone was stepping on me hard. When they lifted me off
the bed, it was a mess. I don’t think they expect that kind of mess
when they do these procedures, so they called in two additional people
to clean it up, changed my gown, and packed up all of the blood soaked
rags into bags.

When I got out and saw J, I was happy to be going to my room,
but entirely in pain (the boot). They told me 2 hours and I got out of
the thing at midnight. At 6 am, they finally removed the thing, and I
curled over into a ball.

Dr. G woke me up at 8 with “Hello, Ms. Angelo, I’m Dr. G,
yada yada”. Now, as I remarked before he is somewhat of a celebrity,
and having been his patient (though phantom) for 6 years I have never
seen him. I have always talked to his people, as was remarked, he’s so
good, he has us to do a lot of this. I was completely out of it, and
asked nothing I wanted to, but he did say the magical words. I am
working on getting you out of here today, and we need to follow you
closely.

Over the course of yesterday, I was visited by 6 or so people, all
working for him, who I asked the questions to. One of the women looked
alarmed when I said, yeah, so I guess I have to just get used to it
(the chest pain), and she shrugged a bit, and said, well…

So that is the story of my day and some at the hospital.

Conclusion: Never stop taking your blood thinner for even one day
(reiterated to me by EVERYONE), get used to chest pain but be smart
about the severity, and another nice little sternum splitting
experience is waiting for you in the near future (1-2 years) because
mechanical valves are not permanent either (something they forgot to
tell me when they put it in).

I have been speaking very zen over the evening, and will probably be
feeling this way for a while. It (the experience) brought me back to my
darkest days, when I was in so much pain I fantasized about asking the
nurses to euthanize me, never thought I would see light again. Time
wasting, as I had somehow mastered, is not gonna happen. It’s time to
clean again, from the bad friends to appreciating the good ones, to the
endeavors that I desire to partake in, to the shaking of guilt that I
feel for my own accomplishments.

Yeah. So today, proverbially, and literally, is the first day of the rest of my life.