Oh.  Blood sugar’s low.  Go fig.

Alternately titled:  MY LIFE CHANGES FOREVER PT 2

You’ve had a heart attack.

You.  Not you.  Me.  I’ve.

I’ve had a heart attack.

What.the.fuck.

And then the whirlwind hits.  A new doc comes in.  Cardiologist.  My flushed face and sweating body take in the words best as they can.  I feel like it’s a million degrees all the sudden.  They are going to take me up to the Cath Lab.  They are going to put dye in my blood.  They are probably going to have to put a stent in my artery (or arteries).  There’s a 1% chance I might die during the procedure.

One percent sounds like a really safe procedure until it’s in relation to your personal life.  Then you realize that out of every 100 people who have this done, one will die.  When was the last one?  What are the factors that determine this?  How is this happening to me?  Am I the one?

I realize I’m not going home any time soon.  I start texting my girlfriend at 12:58.  I manage to get out ‘Beb.  I’ve been in the er all day.  Thought I was getting out soon but it looks like I’ll be here a while.  They think I had a heart attack this morning.  I feel fine but they’re going to run more tests.’  By the time I send my dad’s cell # to her at 12:59 I have to throw my phone to my sister because a duo of nurses are pushing my bed out of the ER room.  I feel like a total jackass.  I think about how shitty it would be to get that text with zero notice.

To be fair, I thought I was going home at one.

The two nurses push their captive through hallways and elevators.  At this point I’m shaking pretty bad.  I try to level myself with controlled breathing but it only reduces my terror by a small amount.  To be perfectly honest this is the scariest thing I’ve experienced to date.

More halls.  More twists and turns.  The nurses are telling me I’m doing really well.  ‘Really well compared to what?’ I want to scream.  What choice do I have but to do ‘really well’?  My god.  I want off this ride, like, now.  After what seems like miles we get to the Cath Lab.  They wheel me in and I help them scoot me onto some sci-fi looking torture device table-metal hand grip included.  At this point I’m essentially movable cargo.  The cardio is telling me they’re going to try to go in through my wrist but may not be able to.  In that case they have to go through the groin, which will render me unable to sit up for a week or so.  With that gem of information passed, one of the nurses quickly shaves my wrist and then does the same to the right half of my crotch (which looks super sexy when I’m in recovery-oh, spoiler alert..I survived).

The cardio doc, who is a rock star, by the way, lays it out again for me.  They’re going to give me a benzo to calm me down.  Then they’re going to do the dye.  Then, god willing (or not) the stent.  He assures me I’m going to make it through and that if it isn’t something a stent will fix he will do everything he needs to make sure they figure out what’s going on.  He tells me I will feel one more thing; a quick sting on my wrist.  He’s not entirely correct.

The sting comes, and then the benzos.  They help for about half the procedure.  I ask for more when they stop but at that point there’s nothing the team working on me can do.

The room is full-on sci-fi.  There are bulbs on the ceiling with beautiful coated lenses and what appear to be mirrors and ..lights?  I dunno.  I’m laying on a body shaped board, gripping a metal handhold.  There is a robotic thing that twists and turns and pulses over me, stopping at times while the wizards work their magic, and then moving again to allow new visibility.  Like I mentioned, I’m essentially out of the equation at this point.  The team of two doctors, two nurses and, I believe, one tech work like a precision machine.  Chatter is kept to an absolute minimum.  Small phrases emerge and response is immediate.  Doc leans in and tells me there’s a clot.  They can fix this.  They are fixing this right now.

And then comes the weirdest sensation of my life.

The stent has to make it to the arteries in/around my heart via my wrist.  This means a long twisting journey up and around my tubes.  And I can feel.every.millimeter of movement.  Occasionally it feels like the tube is ribbed…it pushes and sticks and pushes and sticks.  It twists and turns and snakes.  And holy shit.  It burns like no other.

Doc tells me I may feel a recurrence of the pain that brought me in as they get to the stent part.  I brace myself.  And then, I feel a horrible slippery sensation in my arm, and he leans in to tell me they’re done.  I’ve survived the procedure.  There are two more small arteries with minor blockage but he doesn’t believe they’re anything exercise and diet can’t clear up.  ‘And if we need to we’ll throw a few more stents in there’.

‘Also, you’ll be on blood thinners and aspirin for the rest of your life’.

However long that may be.

The nurses wheel me to a recovery room where I get a new nurse, who looks a little like Christina Ricci before she got alien skinny.  Same mischevious half-smile.  She gets me all set up and tells me I have to stay there for an hour or so before I get the ‘nice’ room.  At this point I feel strangely great.  Like, with the removal of the blockage I might be a new person.  Another doc comes in.  ‘Oh, you also have severe diabetes’.  Walks out.

I move upstairs to what will become my home for the next few days.  More doctors and nurses come in.  I had a full artery blockage that caused a heart attack.  Fortunately there is little to no permanent damage.  I have type II diabetes.  The A1C shows that my glucose has been extremely high for at least the last 90 days, as far back as they can test.  My blood pressure is high.  My pulse-rate is high.  My cholesterol is high-normal.

Essentially my body nuked itself.  They believe this is primarily genetic.  As I mentioned earlier, I’m fairly active and eat pretty well.

I get released a few days later.  As I walk in my room the cat jumps on my bed and starts purring.  She never jumps on my bed.  She still sits outside my door pretty constantly.  My little sentinel.

The terms of my release are, I carry nitro pills with me at all times.  I go low fat, low sodium, diabetic friendly diet. I get two pills a day for diabetes, one for cholesterol, a blood thinner, aspirin, a beta blocker, and another heart-friendly pill that should aid recovery.  I go to cardiac rehab and am given a workout regimen.

And then two days ago, the cardio and the PT peeps give me, essentially the all clear.  The meds are working.  The numbers look good.  The damage is little to none.  I have to keep the pills and the diet, but I can resume life as otherwise normal.

I’m still alive.  The last two days my blood sugar has remained in the ‘healthy’ range.  I’ve been working out again.

The forever changes are frustrating and I try hard to not let them get to me but, for the most part, I’m feeling better than when I went in.  Almost…normal, where most of my life I’ve felt tense and uncomfortable.  It’s very strange, but definitely not bad.  

Not bad at all, considering how it could’ve turned out.

Except first time trying the whole wheat pasta.  Here’s hoping it doesn’t kill me.

My entire life, when I’ve lay down there has been a hard pulse.  Hard enough to feel and, often, to hear against whatever surface I was resting on.

Now, because of the pressure meds, there is just a soft slushiness.

Very strange indeed.

I think the hardest part of this whole thing for me is something I touched on in my first post.  I was getting my room ready for bed tonight and caught the guy in the mirror.  While I’m no chiseled adonis, this apparently wrecked body at least looks better than it has since I was at my ‘peak’ in my early 20’s.  I recently started wearing pants I haven’t fit into for years.  My neck and collarbones are defined.  My ‘wings’ stand out a bit.  My side profile is starting to show those lines where abs are under the remaining bit of gut.  Chest is in the mid stages of flattening and defining.  Love handles are almost completely gone.

So how now?  I mean, right after I quit smoking I balooned quite a bit.  I’ve been struggling ever since to get the weight down to better than I was before that.  And I’m there now.  Or at least a damn sight closer than I have been in a long time.

I guess the positive in this is, with the new diet, a heart that actually works properly, ‘normal’ blood sugar and pressure, maybe I’ll end up with that six pack I’ve always dreamed of having-but was never quite motivated enough to get.

How funny would that be?

Tonight is my first night sleeping alone since the attack.  There are no nurses poking me every few hours, no electrodes at vigil making sure I’m alive; no girlfriend in my room/bed.  There are people in the house, upstairs.  I’m not doing this entirely on my own.

That said, I’d be lying if I said the prospect wasn’t slightly terrifying and that I didn’t feel more than a little like the little kid I used to be; the one who likely spawned my insomnia/sleep troubles later on in life.  The one who lay awake all night in mortal terror of the concept of the blackness of an (as yet) undefined atheistic death.

You see, after your body tries to kill you, you have to regain a trust relationship, and I’m just not there yet.  For now every ache, pain, tic, pop could potentially be the harbinger of my doom.

This will pass.  I know this.  Someday, hopefully sooner than later, I’ll regain that trust.  But for now I lay down in an uneasy compromise to the fatigue and hope against hope that everything is going to be ok.

June 4, 4AM.  I wake up earlier than necessary for work.  Fumble around, check the time.  Realize, as I sit up and shake off the groggy, that I am in the strangest-most intense state of pain I’ve ever experienced.  What’s going on?  I down some room temperature water. Pace for a few seconds.

I’d gone to bed the night before with a bit of soreness in my arms that had been lingering for a few days.  I thought I’d just hit the pushups too hard, or maybe it was the attempts at pull-ups.  This morning everything from my mid-body up was screaming from a deep crushing sensation.  Agony.  Pure agony.  Something wrong.

No.  Nothing wrong.  I must’ve slept weird or something.  Jump up and down a few times, pace some more.  Down some ice-cold well water.  Still dying.  I lay back down and cower but the pain doesn’t abate.  I go to my computer and pull up my insurance website.  See if any insta-care is open.  No luck.  I check for my in-network ER but am threaded through page after page of poor web design and pass-thru.  I give up in anger and take a cold shower.  Maybe the water will cleanse this and I’ll just go into work an hour early.

The water pulses over me but the pain worsens, if that’s even possible at this point.  I dress quickly in my monochromatic way and hit the computer again.  Ten minutes later I’m no closer to finding which of the local ER’s are mine, and I’ve honestly stopped giving a fuck.  I need to go. Now.  A wave of pain washes over me and I retch.  Dry, but unpleasant.  I spend a few minutes in the bathroom with my body trying to throw up nothing, and for no reason other than the pain.  I am breathing quickly now.

As I’m on the way out the door my dad shuffles into the kitchen and comes to a dead stop, noticing me.  After some explanation and quite a bit of argument from my side he wanders back to his room to get dressed and grab his keys.  At this point I’m feeling like I’m going nuclear inside and I fight the urge to snap at him to JUST.FUCKING.HURRY.ALREADY.  In my head I tell myself irrational anger is often a sign of heart attacks.  But this doesn’t feel like they describe those as.  I also tell myself denial is a symptom.  I know this.  But no.  It’s just not possible for it to be that.

So here’s where I diverge into my status/health for a minute:

I’m 36 years old.  I work out 4-5 times a week, whether it’s cycling, an intense set of pushups, weights, or a ton of crunches.  I smoked for around 12 years but quit close to 3 years ago now.  I don’t vape.  I have the occasional couple of cigarettes if I’m drinking with some friends, but never regularly, during the week, etc.  I drink, but only on the weekends and not every one.  I rarely even crack a single beer if it’s a non social situation/work night.  I don’t take any regular medication, do any drugs, etc.  Hell, I don’t even take OTC stuff if I’m sick or have a headache.

I love food.  I bake bread most sundays and I love to cook.  I consider myself a ‘foodie’ and have recently enjoyed some increased funding that’s allowed for some amazing meals out at fantastic restaurants on a pretty regular basis.  Sometimes I feel like this is one of the only real things I offer as a boyfriend to my girl, but we’ll get to that…at some other time.  I do like fatty foods and stuff like that, but for the last month or so I stopped drinking soda again and cut almost all sugar out of my diet and often my meals are a simple protein and green with some occasional starch thrown in.  I was vegan for 10 of my 36 years and still love to eat vegetarian occasionally.

What I’m trying to get at is, I don’t think I’m an incredibly unhealthy person.  I carry some extra weight on me that I’m constantly fighting to keep off/down.  I work stressful jobs.  I suck at sleep, but otherwise I exercise, eat pretty well and, most shockingly to me…am 36 years old.

Now we return to the story at hand:

I get to the ER and everyone seems sleepy.  I’m doing my best to hold it together in the midst of pain so bad I can barely form a coherent thought, let alone sentence.  I explain the pain is in my WHOLE UPPER BODY and new people keep coming by asking how I injured my arm.  Finally I get a room and they run some vitals, take some blood and such.  No worries.  I’m given a shot of some non-narcotic thing that slowly reduces the pain.  A nurse comes in.  Initial tests aren’t showing much but they’re going to shoot some blood over to the full lab.  Shortly after my pain subsides and I feel ‘normal’.

Around 9AM a doctor comes in and tells me my blood sugar is at 350 which, I guess, is incredibly high.  He thinks I may have diabetes or pre-diabetes.  Further results to come.  An hour or so later he comes back in.  The lab has noticed some strange enzymes that they usually only find with heart damage.  They’re a bit concerned but they’ve seen it happen with high blood sugar.  They want to retest, but have to wait 4 hours to pull the new sample, plus an hour to test.

I wait.

And wait.  And still feel perfectly fine.  In fact, I think at this point I feel better than I did the day before, which is cool.

I’m told by nurses and doctors that at 1pm I should expect to be on my way home.  Everything’s looking good now..just waiting on the new test for that enzyme.  I should note here that I still have not told my girlfriend I’m in the ER, because I figured I’d be home before she was off work and didn’t want to unnecessarily worry her.

1pm almost on the dot a new face walks in, seemingly not too serious expression.  He nods to my dad and sister.  ‘These family members?’

‘That must mean bad news.’ I half-joke.

‘I’m afraid it does.  Your enzyme count has gone up.  You’ve had a heart attack.’

And that’s when the whirlwind begins.