For about a year now, I’ve been experiencing some shortness of breath and fatigue. I had attributed it to the inevitable march of time toward the big 7-0.
Recently I was treated for a bout with bronchitis, and it seemed to be responding to the medication. But when I found myself gasping for breath after walking across a small parking lot, I knew I needed attention.
My family physician, Dr. James Ong, had been monitoring my heart, and a recent stress test came out clean. But Dr. Ong took no chances, ordering a chest X-ray and an enzyme test among other things. That evening he called me at home, telling me the enzyme test indicated a possible heart problem and sending me for an EKG.
I spent the evening in Saint John’s Medical Center’s emergency room, where the EKG didn’t show a problem but the ER doctor said the enzyme test score was somewhere between normal and heart attack. Not comforting. He wanted to admit me, but Saint John’s cardiac unit was full. Shortly I was on the way to St. Vincent Heart Center in Carmel.
The move proved fortuitous. I was wheeled into the heart catheterization lab the next afternoon, where the attending cardiologist, Dr. Rothbaum, pronounced my cardiac arteries clean. “Set him up for a lung scan tomorrow,” he said.
I felt even worse the next morning. Eventually I was taken by wheelchair to get a CAT scan. I was feeling a little better, so I ordered some lunch. Then a cardiologist, Dr. Hall, came in and told me they had found the problem: A blood clot had formed in my leg, and part of it had broken loose and lodged at the junction of two major blood vessels in the lung as a pulmonary embolus. I freaked; my namesake uncle had died of a similar problem a year before I was born — in a different era, following gall bladder surgery.
Within minutes, my entire hospital bed was being whisked to the cath lab again (leaving behind my uneaten grilled cheese sandwich) to have a screen implanted to keep any more clots from reaching the lungs,
For the rest of a week’s time, I was poked, prodded and given blood thinners in the form of Lovinox shots and Coumadin in pill form. But gradually I began to feel better. Of course, between the blood thinners and the trauma to my body, I developed bruises in my abdominal and pelvic areas you wouldn’t want to see.
From beginning to end, nurses were prodding and checking my unadorned abdominal area. As one of my daughters observed, when you’re flat on your back in a hospital, modesty is a secondary consideration.
Most hospital stays, of course, are not pleasant, given the conditions that send you there in the first place. It was my first hospital stay of longer than overnight anyway, giving no basis for comparison. But the attention I received from nurses, doctors and everyone involved at St. Vincent Heart Center is still something to write home about.
I’m told I’ll probably be on Coumadin for the foreseeable future, maybe forever, depending on the success of the doctors in locating the cause of my problem. Even before I left the hospital, I had a bleeding problem they had to address. But I’m told I don’t have to worry unless I get a serious cut or fall or something.
All in all, I very likely was extremely lucky (or at least my family was). Thanks to the efficiency of modern medicine, my journey to the sky is on hold for a while, as is my first meeting with my Uncle Jim.
I’ve had loads of cards, phone calls, e-mails and visits, not to mention prayers lifted in my behalf. It’s a different, even humbling experience to find yourself the object of other people’s prayers. Thanks to each of you for your concern.
(Jim Bailey’s column appears on Sunday. He can be reached by e-mail at jameshenrybailey@earthlink.net.)
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JIM BAILEY: Life interrupted: A hospital experience
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