Emergency Open Heart Surgery
~ 10/10/2011~
This is my story of how I almost didn't live past October 10, 2011..
It is almost 9pm the evening of October 10, 2012... I sit in my living room typing this and remember exactly what I was doing at this time on this day last year.. I remember what I was wearing and what I had in my pockets..
Monday, October 10, 2011, was a holiday, it was the observance of Columbus Day. At my work, we close on bank holidays so we were closed that day. I had a three day weekend. My sister had given me two free movie passes so I'd have something to do with my long weekend. Having recently decided to separate from my husband of five years (no children between us), I was renting a room at my friend's house and didn't usually have much to do on the weekends.
I had gone to dinner at my sister's house the Saturday of that weekend and had a great day with my family and some of my sisters' friends. Figured I'd see one movie on Sunday and another one on Monday. One of them was Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part II.. I still don't remember what the other movie I wanted to see was though.. Sunday afternoon, I went to leave & saw my back tire on my truck was low-very low. The tire place I go to isn't open Sundays, so I drove my truck to the gas station & aired it up, figuring it wouldn't be a good idea to go see a movie with a tire that could be leaking & may be flat by the time I come out of the movie, so I stayed in for the night after all.
On Monday, I slept in, took my truck to the tire place and waited while they fixed my tire (it had a nail in it). I ran into a friend there and we chatted most of our wait until she was taken care of & good to go. I went back to the house & read my book, talked to my boyfriend on the phone until he went to bed (he's on the East Coast, so three hours later than we are). There was a 645ish showing of Harry Potter that I decided to go to once I got off the phone. The last person I talked to was my room mate & told her I was going to see the movie, I also posted it on facebook-of course- lol ;-)
I got to the theater about 655pm & had missed the first few minutes of the movie, I was pretty irked with myself over that lol.. I sat down, the movie had been out several weeks by then so there weren't many people in the theater. Right about the time that Harry, Hermoine, Ron, GripHook & the confounded stranger were walking into Gringotts bank.... I started to feel an uncomfortable sensation in my chest.. I do use an inhaler during the spring time, sometimes during the winter but usually I need it when I've been exercising/working out & have been exerting my self.. it just felt like I couldn't take a deep breath in.. I happened to have my inhaler in the truck but was really, really hoping it would just pass because I'd waited forever to see this movie!
After about five minutes, I was literally squirming with discomfort and started wondering if it was indigestion and what I needed was tums? There was just an uncomfortably tight sensation about where my diaphragm is, I couldn't take in a deep breath. I finally decided to leave the theater to get my inhaler and by the time I walked out of the theater, I was starting to sweat, which was very weird because I was not warm or overheated in anyway. In the time it took to walk to the front of the theater, my arms and face had a thin layer of sweat on them, I remember running my finger across my arm & couldn't believe the amount of sweat there was..
I was starting to feel lightheaded, like you do if you haven't eaten and you stand up to fast? I was feeling nauseous, lightheaded, my hands were starting to feel tingly. You know when you rest your arm on the rest of a chair or couch & it just starts to fall asleep, it's not pins & needles yet, but just slightly tingly? That's how both of my hands felt and it was spreading to my arm. I was in the lobby of the theater, had walked to the door, then decided maybe I needed to splash some water on my face & had turned and headed toward the bathroom, only to change my mind again and head to the truck after all for my inhaler..
I got to my truck & took 2 puffs off my inhaler but didn't notice any difference & usually within a couple minutes, I can feel an improvement, so I took two more puffs. There was no difference what so ever & I just was feeling more & more uncomfortable.. I tried to lay down in the cab of my truck but it's too small, so I actually went back into the theater, into the bathroom, went to the handicapped stall & laid down on the floor with my sweater under my head as a cushion. I took a couple sips off my soda, waiting for the nauseous/lightheaded feeling to pass but it didn't.. I started thinking something serious was going on but didn't have a clue what, the only thing I could guess was my lungs were closing up for some reason & I wasn't getting the oxygen I needed..
I walked to the front of the movie theater & sat on the ground outside, up against the wall, my arms and legs felt so tingly and weird, I could barely stand, it felt like my legs wanted to cave. I called Mercy hospital because I wanted to ask a nurse if it was safe for me to drive myself to the hospital or not (not being sure what was going on, I couldn't have a clue what to expect & either way I took to the hospital would involve a freeway, I wasn't getting behind the wheel of my truck if I was afraid I'd pass out or something) as soon as I told the operator I couldn't breath, she said I needed to call 911. I didn't want to tie up emergency services for a non emergency but heeded her advice.
I called 911 and explained what was going on, I told them I needed an ambulance but that they didn't have to turn the sirens on or anything, it wasn't life threatening, I just needed urgent help but not "immediate" attention if that makes sense. (reminds me of someone I know who said close to the same thing when he broke his hip & had to call 911 lol) The operator wanted me to stay on the phone, during the few minutes it took the ambulance to arrive, my arm started to feel so weak that I couldn't hold the phone up to my ear anymore & told the operator I was going to put her on speaker so I could set the phone down... Nothing hurt, I just felt incredibly uncomfortable and weak.
When I saw the ambulance, I waved from where I was because I knew standing would take a big effort & didn't want to expend that energy until they truly needed me to. The paramedics got me up & onto the stretcher, asking me questions about how I felt and about my history. 30 year old female, no history of hypertension, heart disease, high blood pressure. No major health issues at all that I was aware of. Had been an off and on smoker from the age of 14 but hadn't smoked in over a month. Some off and on periods of binge drinking/ alcohol abuse but not recent to that date. Not over weight, etc...
The paramedic thought it sounded like a panic attack & asked if I'd been under a lot of stress. The year 2011 had consisted of bankruptcy, foreclosure, putting my 18& a half year old cat to sleep, deciding it was time to file for a divorce, so yes, I had been under a lot of stress. However, I tried to explain to him that anyone who knows me will tell you, stress doesn't effect me like that. I don't have panic or anxiety attacks, actually I'd been dealing with things rather well over all and since I had filed for a separation, I had also met someone new and things were on their way up, the pieces were coming back together- so no, I didn't think it was a panic or anxiety attack. He told me he used to be a drill sergeant in the army & he used to get them, still does! and that it isn't uncommon. I appreciate what he was trying to do, reassure me, and I understood it, but I still didn't think that was what was wrong.
He said my EKG in the ambulance looked fine, I was breathing the way he told me to, nice slow deep breaths, but I was just so uncomfortable.. They got me into the ER, hooked me up to some machines, I was really a little dazed by the aftermath of the next few moments so this bit is a little sketchy to me. I just remember them asking me the same questions, then a cardiologist came into see me & she repeated the same questions about my health history. She assured me she didn't think my mild history of alcohol abuse was to blame for what was happening.
She told me there were some very slight abnormalities in my EKG, she gave me some nitrates (I think that's the right term, I remember thinking "that can't be good... is that what they give people on TV who are having a heart attack?!" and was so confused but I knew something serious was going on so I put my trust in them... She explained that for some reason my blood wasn't getting where it should so they wanted to give me some morphine to open up the capillaries in case there was a blood clot somewhere? That made me nervous because I've never had anything so strong in my system, I take tylenol/ibuprofen maybe once a year for headache/cramping. I had half of a vicodin once and that made me so nauseous I never went near any Rx strength pain meds again...
I called my boss because he is a physician whom I am familiar with, so I feel like I can definitely trust his judgement and opinion. He said it sounded like I may be having an episode of angina (chest pain, can mimic a heart attack but not necessarily anything to be overly concerned by) and that he didn't think a little morphine would be harmful and that if they felt I needed something to open my capillaries, it may not be a bad idea to let them.
So they gave me some morphine, the cardiologist said these exact words "With your health and your age, it doesn't make any sense & I don't understand it, but I think you're having a heart attack" and said she wanted to send me in for an angio-gram, where they mildly sedate you, put a catheter into an artery in the groin area & use that to insert some dye into the arteries and follow the paths to see where, if any, there is a blockage. I called my dad, seeing as no one even knew I was at the hospital. I also called my room mate who is also my coworker & left her a message because the cardiologist said I'd need a couple days to recover from the angio-gram..
Above is the actually drawing she drew for me in her office a couple weeks later. The first image in the upper left shows what she should have seen, all of the vessels & arteries lit up on the screen like a map where she can see the blood flowing smoothly. What she saw is what you see on the top right. As you can see, there was absolutely no blood flowing from my LAD, which supplies a huge portion of blood to your heart (in the hospital, I was given different numbers, basically between 40-65%, even at 40, that's a huge loss of blood supply pumping through your body) So she thought there may be a clot (the middle left drawing) and wanted to insert a shunt (see the center drawing with the patch showing where a shunt would open up inside the artery, creating a new path in the vessel for blood to travel through). But she couldn't get the shunt in at all, couldn't get it all the way through the vein.
So she told me, while I was half sedated, that my next option would be a single bypass... I hadn't even really had time to process that I was having a heart attack, now I realized I was in the process of dying, I asked her when & she said "immediately, I've already paged the cardiovascular surgeon on call..."
As they wheeled me out, I saw my dad waiting for me, he had gotten there during the angio gram and had been watching them work. I explained what I could, asked Dr. Nikita Gill if I'd have time to make some phone calls and she said I had a few minutes. I called my boyfriend, Matt and left him a voice mail trying to explain what I knew so far. I think I called one of my sisters, she says she still has the voice mail, I keep meaning to listen to it sometime..
Then I just remember them putting a mask over my face and having me count backwards from 100...
I remember waking up a little bit at some point and I could hear someone say "If you can hear me, squeeze my hand" and could feel someone's hand so I squeezed. I found out later, it was my dad. I had just been wheeled out of surgery and was on my way to recovery. I didn't really start to wake up for good until a few hours later when they needed to extract my breathing tube (I can't remember what it was called lol) and they told me that when they said so, I needed to cough & they would pull it out..
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| (10/13/12, about 48hrs after surgery, the first time the dressing was changed on my surgery site) |
I had a single bypass, they had to cut my sternum completely open to perform it. I was in a lot of pain the following weeks, especially anytime I went from laying down for a long time to sitting up, the shift was very very uncomfortable. I was in the hospital three and a half days. Went into the ER Monday night around 8pm, surgery like at 10pm, or something like that. Was discharged Friday around noon.
My cardiologist explained the next day that there are three layers of tissue in the arteries, the inner most lining of tissue in my LAD had a tear in it. That tear of tissue had flapped into the valve causing a complete blockage, the reason she couldn't get the catheter through was because she was stabbing the tissue with it. My surgeon explained that it is the type of tear you would typically see in someone with high blood pressure, body builders, weight lifters, meth addicts, people who strain their hearts beyond measure. I asked what the chances are of it happening in someone such as myself with none of those risk factors at all? He said about 2 in a million, that's 1 in half a million odds...
Couldn't have been a lottery ticket instead, could it?! lol!
But anyways, that's my incredible story of my rare, freak incident, nearly fatal heart attack. It's still so weird to say 'when I had my heart attack'. Every once in a while people notice my scar and ask, but overall the scar is looking pretty good I think :) I've seen some much more serious scars.
This was the first time I had been hospitalized for anything since I was born, the first stitches I had ever hard were put in my heart, I've never even been treated for a serious infection or anything. I think in the last ten years, I've taken antibiotics two- three times for a cold & that's it.
I've recovered perfectly well, all follow up visits have gone wonderful. My cholesterol is as perfect as it can be, literally, my cardiologist said that my numbers were smack dab on the line of perfect. I have excellent blood pressure, I am not on any medication, other than a suggested aspirin a day and two fish oil supplements a day as a precautionary measure on my cardiologist's advice. Her over caution is what saved my life so if she wants me to take those two things, I will lol...
Thanks for taking the time to read my story! If you have any story you'd like to share, please feel free!
