THE UNEXPECTED DETOUR

I am writing this sitting next to my husband of three weeks in the IC unit for complications from a completely out-of-the-blue heart attack. Once again, I am smacked in the face with how few things are really in our control. 

Mitch always has prided himself for being in shape, eating well, has never smoked, and never drank in his life. And yet he had one artery completely blocked, and a heart attack that didn’t present itself in any normal fashion on his 70th birthday. Of course we didn’t go in until the next day because we didn’t know what was going on, which didn’t help matters much. Then every step of the way, it has been the opposite experience of what's "normal". Usually people feel so much better after a stent. Well not Mitch. He had terrible pain after the stent, and he was one of the few that gets inflammation around the heart. 

Then we got to go home, and they say most people do so well when they get home. Not Mitch. He slept nearly 20 hours the first day, and then the second day was lightheaded, nauseous, and had low blood pressure. So I called the cardiologist. While we were waiting for her to call back, I got another blood pressure reading and checked his oxygen/pulse. His blood pressure was 78/42, his oxygen was 94, and his pulse rate was 165 – which is ridiculous! I told him we needed to go in, and he said let’s wait for her to call back. Thankfully she called pretty quickly. I told her what was going on, and she said this happens very rarely (lucky Mitch) and to get in here now. 

So we loaded up, and I became an ambulance driver going 25 miles an hour over the speed limit and running several red lights safely with my flashers going. Everybody was so nice. I got him in a wheelchair and inside, and it was a whirlwind. 

Thankfully, his doctor and nurse were the ones on-call in cardio so they were right there. They thought they were going to have to shock his heart back into rhythm, but it went back into rhythm on its own. They took him back to do another angiogram to see if the stent collapsed. His heart went back into tachycardia, and they had to shock him. The angiogram looked good. They put in another stent. His heart did that three more times so three more times being shocked. Unfortunately, he was very aware of all this because they had to balance his sedation with his low blood pressure so he was much more aware than he should’ve been of all of this. They put in an assistive heart pump impeller to assist his heart to beat so that it could rest for a while. 

They took him up to the ICU, and I finally got to see him. He is the nicest man, and everything seems to be stable and calm. Now it is just a matter of time to see how his heart heals. After the four shocks, his heart developed a fib; however, thankfully that cleared up on its own.

It’s just a rum go of it. Once again, I am face-to-face with how little control we really have and how precious life is. Heredity gets its say. 

Right now I’m just praying that his heart will heal, and we can begin the journey towards getting home and back to normal life. If not, then we have a whole other road to walk. And we’ll do it hand in hand. Thanks for reading.