Florida Journal

Florida Journal 2011     Friday, June 3

Last night I survived a heart attack!  Amazing that it leaves me feeling healthier and more optimistic about the future!  The cardiologist who worked me over in the catheter lab whooshing again and again up from my femoral artery into my heart to clean out the plaque, open the flow, and install the stent that stays,  called it “the big event.”

I can’t say I didn’t feel it coming.  Crushing chest pains have stopped me in my tracks whenever I was over-exerting in past months—more frequent in my sorting and packing mode.  Sitting down in comfy recliner, deep breathing, meditating, enjoying my mountains usually got it to calm down.  Any exertion with pulmonary fibrosis makes oxygen drop and heart rate speed up to compensate, thus straining the heart.  I didn’t realize until I read the heart attack book they gave me here in Florida Hospital that high altitude itself can cause angina leading to myocardial infarction. 

It’s never a good day for a heart attack.  But If there were ever a good time and place for it, blacking out while waiting for Lisa in her chiropractor’s office scared me enough to ask for help.  We were on the way for drinks with her old friend, the other Lisa, who calls me her second mom; she lived with us the last two years of their HS.  A heart attack is nothing like happy hour margaritas.

Everything happened fast.  911 brought EMT team instantly.  They took me to the closest ER, where the docs told me it was a heart attack, and I’d be taken by helicopter to the main hospital where a team was waiting.  Flight medicine crew took me from Florida East ER to the Cath Lab at Florida Hospital in a record 18 minutes. 

Cardiologist and crew got right to work.  Although somewhat sedated, I was fully alert in parallel universes—one where I pushed with all my will against checking out but felt scared every time my blood pressure dropped and I started blacking out again and the other where I was calm in the face of whatever lay ahead.  I had confidence in the team charging into my physical core.  When I heard them joking, I knew I was out of the woods. From the outset they were confident.  Now I’m delirious with joy to be alive.

Monday, June 6

I'm celebrating Day 4 of survival in my new cat life.  I was released Sunday about 4 pm from Florida Hospital--about 5 miles from my little Winter Park bungalow that I loved.  Cheyenne snapped my picture in a “Hallelujah I’m alive!” pose with the hospital ID bracelet still attached—not a fashion statement. Doris insisted I attach the picture to friend emails so you see I'm none the worse for wear.  Today at Lisa's house I’m planning my future.  I bought my airline ticket for trip to Denver pulmonologist at NJH 6/20-22, where I’ll spend two nights with Doris, who’ll drive up from ABQ.

Cardiologist said No to NY trip.  Cheyenne took bad news very well.  To my “I know you’re disappointed, so am I,” she smiled and said, “You being OK, Gram, is more important.”

My heart attack was the deadly sort that most often kills –esp women because symptoms are atypical.  I’ve never called 911 before, but somehow I instantly knew this blacking out was urgent.  Cardiologist who put in the stent showed me the video of the procedure afterward, and he showed it to Lisa.  Today she told me that he said that my arteries were basically clear—no fatty build-up over time from bad eating that he usually sees.  That makes sense because had a complete stress echo-cardiogram at NJH ten months ago showing no blockage. My PCP in ABQ wrote “good!” by my cholesterol score on my blood tests last month.  I had the lowest possible cardiac risk.  So I feel exonerated.   But I did push myself too hard recently.  What likely happened was ordinary plaque was dislodged (stress and strain?) and platelets rushed to the site and created the blockage in my right coronary artery where I now have the stent.

I woke Sunday in hospital with my memoir of this new adventure rolling in my brain—stories of the dramatis personae of medical world that flashed through my life in 3 days.  Call them healing angels or captors I must befriend lest they kill me.  Later for those stories.

Thursday, June 9

Yesterday I was feeling fragile and shaky enough to cancel today’s plans to go on Lisa errands and drop off cartons of Australian books at Rollins.  I didn’t think I had stamina even for a car ride.  Now at 6 am a week since my “incident,” I’m feeling stronger.  I’ve been moving slowly from bed to desk with laptop, needing oxygen when I move but not when I’m reading in bed.  We can add the book drop to our next Tuesday schedule between appointments with my new local PCP and cardiologist. 

Last night I wrote a draft on the dramatis personae of medical world but woke this morning revising what seemed too self-serving.  Perhaps I can be forgiven exhibiting the euphoria of one who’s recently passed through the shadow of the valley of (“Jolly Green Giant” offers Doris on the phone last night).   I imagine I’m saving the people I encounter who were actually saving me.  

These days being sort of bed-ridden I’ve been awash in homesickness for everything land of enchantment.  Joining the DeVore family watching an episode of the TV series “In Plain Sight” filmed in Albuquerque, I got weepy seeing the familiar adobes, my glowing Sandia Mountains, even the flash of a pastry box with “Flying Star” logo. Thanks to massive doses of prednisone, I can’t sleep, so I write and feel alive and strong.  Announcements of theater openings in ABQ have me mourning what I left behind, not being able to review the Shakespeare festival at the Vortex, the second annual SoloFest at the Filling Station where I performed my Mabel show last July.

It’s the people in our lives who keep us alive—old friends we’ve known since childhood and people who rush in to save us because that’s their job.  I’ve been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love, cheer, wit, and hope of my vibrant hilarious friends.  My cell rings with area codes I can’t immediately identify, and then it’s a familiar voice.  Sandra was ringing me from Melbourne, Australia, just as I was being wheeled into the cath lab, so Lisa took the call.  Sandra called back the next day and forwarded my news to friends around the globe in International Women Playwrights.  My best friend from 3^rd through 8^th grade at St Jerome in Chicago, who was picking Cheyenne and me up at LGA today, calls and my cell dies from overuse.  A friend from Edgewood HS calls next day from Madison and my battery dies again.  I can’t keep it charged.  I’m delighted to hear everybody’s story—where they are right then—in their garden, going on tour with a show, going to the Berks, getting ready for cataract surgery, making chicken curry.  An old friend from 40 years ago in Fayetteville, finishing her day as doctor in California is putting me in her healing circle.    

While they’re still sharp in mind, I want to remember the angel/captors of medical world who crossed my path and saved my life. I may never see Dr Hussein again, but he gets top billing for opening my right carotid artery.  As he whooshed in each time, he seemed to be exploring the difficult tributaries of the Nile in my arterial branches, and I thought with wonder that everybody’s arterial branching is a bit different exactly like river tributaries.   When I thanked him for saving my life, he grinned.  “It’s our job.”

I don’t know anybody’s name on first EMT crew who started asking me stroke questions—What’s the day?  Who’s the president?  I answered really fast because I knew it wasn’t a stroke.  My bp drop got them starting an IV in the ambulance.  Two ER docs at FL East, especially a woman with lovely Brit accent, said my alertness to atypical symptoms saved my life.  She assured me I’d survive—flight crew on the way.  I asked a sweet 20-ish nurse named Megan to put her healing warm hand directly on my heart.  I announced, “You all are diagnosing, but Megan is actually healing.”  She beamed, and I pondered whether it was appropriate for me to be giving orders and evaluating performance considering my vulnerable position.  They seemed amused at my chutzpah. 

Flight crew zoomed in in royal blue uniforms looking like astronauts.   Flight nurse Mike took over.  He and Todd raced down the hall with me on a gurney to helicopter.   After an amazing smooth flight, they raced me from helipad into hospital.  I enjoyed the brief warm sun on my skin. They raced to the cath lab.  Next day I was amazed when Mike showed up in my ICU unit still in astronaut blues to see how I was doing and chatted for an hour.  He thought I’d hit it off with his dad from the Ukraine who had a PhD in languages from University of Toronto and who loves to travel the world and meet everybody.  So I told Mike the story of Intel destroying the people and animals of my village, Corrales, NM, pumping their toxic gasses and fine particle silica into the air we breathe and getting away with murder all for greed.  He got fired up. We should get Erin Brokovitch. I should write a book.  I told him that Barbara Rockwell, who’d been part of the fight against Intel from the beginning, provides comprehensive research in her book Boiling Frogs: Intel versus the Village.  I said they’d tried in the nineties when the Intel plant expanded.  Like Lisa, he told me I’d been afflicted with my lung disease so that I could save the world from corporate monster polluters.

My ICU nurse Karen, her Norwegian blonde hair in a French braid, ministered to my every need on Friday when I was totally bed-ridden.  When Lisa brings me a beautiful pear, we all admire it.  Karen says, “I could draw it.”  She tells me her story of getting cold feet at the last minute when she was just about to get in Cleveland Art Institute. ”Now it’s too late.”  Her face elongates with the loss of her dream.  “No, it’s not.  You can always pick up your art. You can always support yourself as a nurse.”  She tells me about her mother and sister in Ohio and all their family dramas.  I tell her to read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.  She hopes I won’t get transferred upstairs until near the end of her shift, and she gets her wish.  She takes me to my new room hugs me goodbye.

My day nurse for my next two days, Ruth from Nova Scotia, is brisk efficiency. When I tell her I’m an English prof, she groans, “I hate writing.  I have this paper to write, and I can’t get started.” While she’s checking my vitals, I start quizzing her on her assigned topic: alternative medicine.  Writing teacher kicks in.   I assure her we’ll get started on that paper before I leave.  Now I’m wondering about Karen and Ruth—the art and the writing.  I only know their first names.

Ralph, the ventilation engineer, checks every room in the hospital every day.  “I’m 81 years old. Don’t smoke. Don’t drink. Stopped chasing women years ago.  A doc here says’ Hey Ralph.  I want your job when you retire.’”  He sizes up my beautiful daughter and says, “I can tell you two are related, and I can see where you get your good looks.” He tells me,” “I bet you were a beauty queen in your day.”  I laugh.  I want to tell him this is my day, but he doesn’t draw a breath.  “You know,” he continues, “I’m gonna see you in the Publix line some day and scratch my head trying to figure out how I know you.  You’re sharp.  You’ll remember me and say ‘Hi Ralph!”