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_________DDrawing, February 17, 2007________
In January 2004, I dreamed
Three ravens are picking away at pink insulation in my house.
This did not feel like a good dream. Something dark was eating at me, and something internal was exposed. I was having some difficulty recovering from exercising, and was walking less and less. This was similar to how I had felt in early January 2001, which I then first attributed to some trouble in my lungs with bronchitis.
Once again I went to the Alaska Heart Institute in Anchorage, where they have the closest cardiologists to Fairbanks. I passed twelve minutes on the on the thallium treadmill test; the technician told me that almost no one who can walk that fast and long has a problem. The doctor called me that afternoon and told me the test was “positive”, which was not positive for me.
After the placement of another stent, in a lower portion of the problematic left arterial descending artery, I felt relieved, in spite of intense chest pain that I was told was sometimes a by-product of the surgery and was expected to diminish. They kept asking me if I wanted more painkillers. “Sure”, I readily replied.
As I was talking to the nurse, the world suddenly started spinning very fast and I passed out. I woke up sometime later with the nurse shaking me, and at least seven nurses all looking at me in a concerned way. My heart had slowed down to about ten beats a minute, an emergency Code Red was called, and I was given two shots of epinephrine to restart my heart. The nurse told me this had never happened on her shift in twenty years after the placement of a stent.
The doctor was called, and once again I was headed back in surgery. This was not good, and it was feared there was blockage in the artery. My wife and I had one of those serious talks that couples facing unknown surgery have, and said good-bye.
Three ravens are picking away at pink insulation in my house.
This did not feel like a good dream. Something dark was eating at me, and something internal was exposed. I was having some difficulty recovering from exercising, and was walking less and less. This was similar to how I had felt in early January 2001, which I then first attributed to some trouble in my lungs with bronchitis.
Once again I went to the Alaska Heart Institute in Anchorage, where they have the closest cardiologists to Fairbanks. I passed twelve minutes on the on the thallium treadmill test; the technician told me that almost no one who can walk that fast and long has a problem. The doctor called me that afternoon and told me the test was “positive”, which was not positive for me.
After the placement of another stent, in a lower portion of the problematic left arterial descending artery, I felt relieved, in spite of intense chest pain that I was told was sometimes a by-product of the surgery and was expected to diminish. They kept asking me if I wanted more painkillers. “Sure”, I readily replied.
As I was talking to the nurse, the world suddenly started spinning very fast and I passed out. I woke up sometime later with the nurse shaking me, and at least seven nurses all looking at me in a concerned way. My heart had slowed down to about ten beats a minute, an emergency Code Red was called, and I was given two shots of epinephrine to restart my heart. The nurse told me this had never happened on her shift in twenty years after the placement of a stent.
The doctor was called, and once again I was headed back in surgery. This was not good, and it was feared there was blockage in the artery. My wife and I had one of those serious talks that couples facing unknown surgery have, and said good-bye.
The stent was re-positioned and I survived, to my surprise. No explanation was given to me why this had happened; my feeling is that I was given too much morphine. After several extra days in the hospital, I returned home to Fairbanks and forty degrees below zero. Next time, I vowed, I would go to Hawaii after any operation.
