Different shoe, different foot

On my Sunday morning walk I began to have tightness in my chest, dizziness and shortness of breath. In fact, I had to sit on the curb to recover while Gina rustled up a cell phone from someone, called her husband who came and picked us up. Next thing I knew she and her sister were carting me off to the hospital emergency room with a possible "cardiac event." That was the hospital's name for it. I was wired up, fed aspirin, given an EKG (normal), had blood drawn for the presence of heart enzymes (normal), had my chest X-rayed and generally given the once, no twice over by any number of incredibly skilled Kaiser staff. They gave me a nitro patch and three injections of a Beta blocker to slow my heart rate. The end result was I had to stay overnight for "observation" since I have several "risk factors" such as diabetes and high cholesterol. This time it was my turn.

Have you ever stayed "overnight" in a hospital. First is they don't know the meaning of "night." You know, the time you sleep, when things quiet down and people keep their voices low, turn the lights down or off, and leave you alone? Not a chance. It was as noisy and busy as it had been when I was admitted at noon. Every two hours someone came in to draw blood, take my blood pressure, check the heart monitor which kept losing power because one of the sensors came off. At 2 AM some cheerful nurse came in announcing "Good Morning!" and drew off a few vials of blood. At 4 AM another cheerful soul wanted "vitals." At 6 they wanted yet more blood. By now there's hardly any left for the nurse who came in at 7 to take the pressure. At 8:30 I was told that all the blood work was negative but that I would be having a stress test just to be sure. So at 9:30 I was wheeled down to the EKG lab, rewired, and put on a treadmill for 12 minutes (max). I didn't make it for all 12 minutes, but everything was normal anyway. I passed and they said I could go home!

Jim drove up to Sacramento to pick me up, his first foray onto the freeway in many weeks. But he made it and I got home about 1 PM, and mighty glad to be here. He is better, I am fine. Now that this little drama is over we can get back to his healing progress. Tomorrow is the first visit back to the radiation oncologist since he stopped treatment five weeks ago. We'll see what Dr. Schmidt has to say. Jim is continuing to take a bit more by mouth, cough and huck a bit less, and stay up and active a bit more. Sounds good to me!