And on the Third Day...

...He was still in the hospital

It would be a whole lot easier if I could just submit the pieces, and stay out of the hospital altogether.

Take my arm, for example. Please. Spare the rest of my body, and do whatever you want to my stand-in. If I had a “training arm” (picture above), that’s what I would send. As it is, my right arm is now a patchwork of two IV sites, one failed IV site, and additional puncture holes which each served their purpose for blood draws.

And why, you ask, would all this be happening? Because I’m busy earning yet another medical merit badge. This time for the heart.

As I was ending dialysis on Monday, I suddenly drifted off to sleep. But it was an unusual moment to do so. I was at the time holding down bandages on my dialysis access sites from my fistula. This is a normal part of getting bandaged up, and it helps ensure that you have no extraneous bleeding after you walk out of the building. It’s normally no big deal. But I managed to make it such.

I remember closing my eyes for a moment. And the next thing I know, the dialysis tech is all over me, wondering why I took my hand off the bandages. I suddenly realized I had drifted off (How long?). Well, no worries. I re-positioned my fingers on the two sites and once again applied pressure. And I remember closing my eyes for a moment.

Yes, I had just done it again, and that brought out nurses in force. They immediately checked my blood pressure. My heart rate was 136.

That number would represent a PR for me,But and I would gladly display and wear a tee shirt which celebrated that fact; but the fact that my number was really, really bad kept the party under wraps.

I was, eventually, dismissed from the dialysis clinic, but I was soon due at my oncologist’s office for an appointment. I arrived there, was taken back to a room, and a nurse came in to get vitals. My heart rate was 146. Once again, I didn’t have much of an opportunity to enjoy my accomplishment, because they put me in a wheelchair and hauled my rear end across the parking lot to the hospital ER.

As is often the case in ER, I was shuttled around three different locations where they could examine me, poke me, study me, and store me while my fate was being determined. But soon enough, the decision was made to admit me, because the heart rate was not coming down.

That’s where my arm enters the story. But not as some detachable piece which the medical personnel could accept on premises and fix without my required presence. No, I just had to be there, with arm in hand ( Yes, yes…that’s not exactly how it happened).

My day had started at 3:00 a.m. It was 9:00 p.m. when I was transported to a room. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.

The Procedure Which Wasn’t

Tuesday brought news that a cardiologist was going to do a procedure on my heart, which I can only describe as a “re-boot.” We all know that when almost any computer-related question is asked, there is an almost always solution. Re-start your computer. Like Han Solo slapping the dashboard of the Millennium Falcon, it just works.

But these clever medical people have figured out how to do that with the human heart. A very, very brief shock to the heart (for which they’re to blame) - that’s the procedure. And with that the hope that a normal heart rate would kick back into place.

This was all fine by me. It’s not like a had some other master plan. So after breakfast, I went NPO in preparation for the procedure, which was planned for late afternoon or early evening.

But by 5:00 p.m. the word came that the cardiac team would not be able to get to my case. Too much catching up to do from yesterday’s demands. But I was able to get some dinner, and, after a bit of reading, shut down for the day. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.

To Be Continued…

As I write this, it’s almost 5:00 a.m. on Wednesday. And I’m supposed to have the procedure done this morning. And I’m due, also, for in-patient dialysis, since that’s exactly where I’d be at this time if I were not in the hospital.

And it could be a whole lot worse. A stroke. A rogue blood clot. A Foley Catheter. But here I am, on the third day, without a foot in the grave. I assume that the plan to re-boot will go as expected, and life will go on. For awhile. As it is, it is through many hospitalizations that some of us will enter the kingdom of God.