April Fool

"It could be worse"

No kidding!  On March 31st the Aztec priests took me to the top of the pyramid, raised their obsidian knives to the heavens and tore out my heart.  Just kidding, just another routine triple-bypass; no drama but I'll have an impressive 9.5 inch scar in the middle of my chest.  Things went so well that they cut me loose on Easter Sunday for my own Resurrection and am doing a recuperation at my sister's home in Niles, a clash of realities but I can deal with it.  No complaints except for the healing part.  And the follow-up appointments, therapy sessions, and paperwork, lots and lots of paperwork.  No need for a cane or walker, nice to be on my feet walking around.

So that's how my month has started; how you guys doing?

It Could Be Worse

 That's what I say every time I start feeling sorry for myself.  Sounds like both of my esteemed colleagues are in worse shape than I am, at least heart wise.  I don't know about my shortness of breath issue.  I always figured that was connected to that bout with rheumatic fever that I had as a kid, but now I'm not so sure.  They said they fixed my heart issue when I was in the hospital last summer, but my breath is still as short as it ever was.  I am sucking on my nebulizer as we speak, and I have purchased a portable oxygen concentrator, but I can't seem to find the time to get into a reliable routine with either one of them.  That's why we are looking into assisted living.  If we could get someone to pick up some of our household chores, it might free us up to spend more time on our health therapy regimes.

Meanwhile, as Red Green used to say, "Remember, I'm pulling for you.  We're all in this together."

The stent

 Common alternative names for urgent care centers include immediate care, convenient care, walk-in clinics, and acute care clinics. These facilities provide prompt, non-life-threatening medical services, often with extended hours and no appointment necessary. 

We have three of them downtown, one for Rush, one for Northwestern and one for UChicago.  It is nice living downtown where we have all of them and the big factory hospital at Northwestern.  

The urgent care I went to was UChicago east on Grand maybe a half mile from my house and I walked it also walked to Northwestern from there.  My only symptom was that pain in my chest and left arm and I never had that pain when I was doing normal stuff.

Anyway I went in Monday morning for my stent and everything went pretty smooth.  One bad moment was when one of the docs dropped in just before surgery and told me that the operation is successful 9 times out of 10, like this was good news, that I only had a one in ten chance of never getting off the gurney?  Chatz had told me my odds were more like 99.99%.  I asked my primary doc about this later, and she kind of laughed and said that what he was talking about was that about ten percent don't follow the rules afterwards and those are the people who didn't make it.

The operation took a couple hours but it was like a colostomy where you are half in the bag and time passes easily.  Then they put me in the recovery room and told me that I would have to stay there six hours to make sure that my groin where they put the balloon in did not start leaking, or spurting, or whatever.

But that was ok because I was assured that I would be going home right away after it was done.  But then with about an hour to go the nurses discovered what they thought was a leak in my groin.  They couldn't figure it out and the clock was running and maybe I would have to stay overnight.  But then a friendly doc dropped by and said, "Oh that?  That's nothing."  And I got to go home and see my cat.

I guess I could be pissed at those nurses for keeping me there because they could not figure out that it was nothing.  But you know, it could have been.  Northwestern, they treat you like a piece of meat, but do a pretty good job of making sure you get home alive.

I will still have another stent put in in about a month, but it should go easier, I think.  Anyway it's a month away.

And I got more pills to take.  And the doc stressed that if I don't take them every day I will die.  I tend to be forgetful so now my bathroom is adorned with post it notes to remind me.

The other thing is something called Cardiac Rehab which I will go into in the next post.

Heartbreakers

It's starting to look like there are peculiar cardiac issues arising at The Institute.  Last year Mr. Beagles had some blockage blasted away in lieu of stents and very soon Uncle Ken will get stents of his own.  Kind of nice living so close to a world-class medical facility, isn't it?  But the term "urgent care" facility is new to me; how does that work?  I had Mr. Google look it up for me but it looks like those facilities are unevenly distributed with a couple near the ivory towers of Marina City.  Did you walk there or take a cab and was the trip to the ER via ambulance?  None of my business, just curious how these situations get handled.

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I'm in the middle of a coronary adventure of my own with a couple of "procedures" in the near future.  Couple of weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night unable to breathe, very scary, gasping for air.  Took some aspirin, dialed 911, got dressed, packed minimal necessities and waited but not long.  No sirens; the responders were in ninja stealth mode and they wheeled me out with some oxygen.  Quick trip to what used to be Swedish Covenant Hospital two miles away and their ER pit crew went to work.  Lot of action for a while they wired me up with monitoring sensors, IV hook ups, a little nitroglycerine pill under the tongue but still could barely breathe so they slapped a  high pressure oxygen gadget on my face and I settled down a bit.  Definitely a heart attack, or so they say (I believe it), and indications of internal bleeding of unknown origin or just severe anemia.  A baffler to be sure, or in medical parlance, "idiopathic."  Anyhow, tests were in order and I ended up spending a week there; not as bad as I thought and the food was more than tolerable.  Had an angiogram, the one that goes through the right arm, which indicated serious blockage with the coronary arteries, too clogged for blasting or stents.  Time to make reservations at the Triple Bypass Resort.  Got my first colonoscopy too, with some not-so-good news.  Not to be an alarmist but there's something that's got to come out, rhymes with "dancer."  Could be worse; it's small and not spreading but the heart stuff has to come first.  So 2026 is turning out to be the Year of the Long Knives for The Old Dog.

In retrospect there are things that I should have paid more attention to, and didn't.  Any shortness of breath I attributed to a previous diagnosis of mild emphysema, weakness in my legs due to lack of exercise, that sort of thing.  It could be one of those "guy things" where you only seek medical attention at the very last moment and I just squeaked by.  Whew!  That was close!  No complaints about the hospital stay; I felt like I was treated like a king.  Solid information from the nurses and doctors as I picked their brains, nothing held back, no waffling, and I took copious notes.  So I feel fine, maybe better than fine, as I deal with a new reality.  And the beat goes on...

 

The Medical Bureaucracy

 I had a little run in with those people last summer.  Turned out I didn't need a stint, they just shocked the shit out of me to make my heart beat like it was supposed to.  They said I would be okay after that, but I needed to take a blood thinner to prevent clots.  The druggist cautioned me that if I experienced gastrointestinal bleeding, I should go to the emergency room immediately.  Since I have experienced gastrointestinal bleeding in the past from taking blood thinners, but have never experienced clots, I decided not to take those pills.  I subsequently experienced the bleeding anyway, but I never did experience clots.   

Sometimes I wonder if their left hands know what their right hands are doing, but they must or they wouldn't be allowed to practice medicine.  Would they?  I think that they mostly mean well and are well qualified, but that doesn't mean you should give them your blind unconditional trust.  You have to ask questions and advocate for yourself, just to be on the safe side.   

adventures in aging

Every time a big snow blows hard here so that I can barely see the building across the street I think of you Beagles way up north, way up out of town.  I picture your house slung low to the ground and snow piling on the roof and up to the doorway so that if anybody was so stupid as to stand by the road and look all they could see was a muted glow from the kitchen.  I assume the kitchen, sounds like the place to go in a storm, close to the food, maybe you can turn on the burners for a little more warmth, and worrying about how much heating oil or just plain food you have and if it will get to you before, well before.

I've been to the houses of people who live deep in the country and throw open their doors and brag about how there is not a soul around for ten miles, and I think I could not live like that.  The most alone I've been is living in a trailer in the back yard of a house in a city of 10,000.  Now I have about 800 people living in the two towers with me and when I look out the window most of what I see is other windows most of them with people on the other side of them.  

Yes Beagles move to downtown Cheboygan, down on Main Street just south of Lincoln where that medical center is and looks like a Walmart and some fast foods, you could walk there in a blizzard, or at least get a grubhub or a cab.

Speaking of medical centers.  When we had that last cold spell I noticed when climbing the stars that my chest hurt and so did my left arm.  Well it's cold in the stairwell so it must be the cold.  But then the hurting continued when it got warmer.

So I went to urgent care where the guy gave me an EKG and said go right to the Northwestern Memoria Hospital Emergency Room right now.   Well I said, Ill drop by there tomorrow early when it's not so crowded.  "Right Now!" he repeated pointing a finger in that direction.

So I did, it was crowded, but the line moved pretty good.  Right off they wanted to give me an EKG and I pulled out the copy that I got at the urgent care, and he waved  away.  We don't need no EKG from some podunk urgent care we are Northwestern Memorial Hospital by gum.

Well ok then.  The emergency room once you get out of the waiting room is like a block long.  Doctors, patients, jabber, jabber.  I saw three or four docs, or folks who looked like docs, and they talked that doctor talk so I didn't know what they were saying.  Then they put on a gurney and pushed me into a hallway and then it seemed like they forgot about me, but after a couple hours they pushed me into a room.  Small room, no window, tethered me to some buzzing thing, and all I had was the clothes I was wearing and a magazine I'd mostly read, and a bossy nurse.  

It was a long night and a long morning, docs came in and out and I learned that I was going to get an angiogram.  I knew what that was because I had been speaking to Chatz before I went to the urgent care.  They stick a tube down your wrist or ankle and it goes up through your wrist or your ankle and if they see something they don't like they put in a stent or two.  Well I know people who have had stents, not so bad, let's get to it.

They put me on a gurney and wheeled me down to surgery and prepped me and I was good to go.  But first I had to just lay there on the gurney for three hours while people buzzed around me.  Finally I learned that the surgery before me was going well into overtime.  Not a good sign.

Finally they wheeled me into surgery, doped me just a tad and did the angiogram.  They wheeled me out and I was so happy because Chatz had told me once they do the deed you are good to go and I was ready to go.

But it turns out that they didn't put any stents in.  They wanted to talk about it.  I was back in the room with the bossy nurse tethered to that thing, nothing to read, half in and out of one of those gowns.

It turned out that they wanted to that they wanted me to stay another night.

I wanted to go home.  See my cat, wear some clothes, get loosed from that thing I was tethered to.  I was pretty sure I had the right to sign myself out so I asked to.  Well they talked and they talked, this person, that person.  If I stayed they could do it the next morning and everything would be taken care of.  I didn't believe them for a second, once they get you in their clutches they never want to let you go.

I went home and saw my cat.  Wednesday I had a talk with the surgeon, 3 options, open heart, robotic surgery, or the stent.  I was scared to death of open heart, probably unreasonably but scared to death anyway.  That robotic surgery a little weird, I am going for the stent.  I will get in Monday morning and I should be good to go.

The Blizzard of '26

 It started out on Sunday and continued through Monday, as predicted.  We had just finished digging out from the previous storm, and the weather man promised that the next one would be much worse.  Sure enough, it was.  We are still digging out from this one two days later, and we're not done yet.

Of course, I've seen big snowstorms before, but not when I was this old and infirm.  I found it frustrating to look out the window and realize there was nothing I could do about it except watch it pile up and wait for help to get through to us.  I considered at least digging out the front door, but my wife pointed out that if I fell off the porch and couldn't get up like happened last week, nobody would be able to come and rescue me before I succumbed to hypothermia.  Uncle Ken once theorized that the reason married people lived longer than single people is that, whenever they are about to do something reckless or stupid, their wives talk them out of it.  I tend to agree with him.  

We have both resolved that this would be our last winter on the Freehold.  Time to pack it in and move to the old geezer's home, or at least to someplace in town closer to sources of assistance when we need them.  I always wondered why so many people chose to live in a crowded urban setting when they could just as easily live in splendid isolation.  Maybe this is why.