RELAX

 I thought that being RETIRED I was relaxed.  My attitude this past three years of "One day at a time Sweet Jesus, ONE DAY AT A TIME!" was well articulated to any and all.  However, that was the "WORD" that I heard as the cup of Tom's very strong coffee coursed through my body causing waves of DIZZINESS followed by vomiting.  My stomach was empty so it was nearly dry heaves every 15 to 20 minutes - pretty vile looking stuff!!  After three weeks of motel and truck stop coffee while we traveled to and from Colorado to spend Christmas with family I decided my body was just out of the habit of STRONG BREWED COFFEE.  While laying in a bed in the ER for 36 hours in Phoenix it gave me SOMETHING to do. I was just surprised the effect it had on me!

After the third episode, I "heard" a thought "RELAX, I HAVE THIS!"  and told Tom to go ahead and call the 911 number.  The local EMT ran his portable EKG machine,  then the ambulance arrived from Parker and that EMT ran his EKG and got the same result, calling in the helicopter for the 30 minute flight to the nearest hospital in Phoenix area. A prefect flight at 4,500 feet and a landing as if that BIRD - with four people on board - was a feather!!  

There was a blockage of my coronary artery, a 90 - 95% blockage!!  Angioplasty was the FIX. and I had that two days later after a battery of TESTS - more EKGs, blood until I felt that I was back at the Blood Bank in Sonora!!  AND an MRI was ordered after some  questionable results of a CAT scan.  I informed the hospitolist that anything in my brain was staying in my brain - no biopsies, no brain surgery - and refused the MRI.  That was an interesting time caused by the ER doc having it firmly in her head that I had had a stroke in the base of my skull that causes no bilateral symptoms!!  So she was chasing rabbits down rabbit holes,  or as she would say "following procedures"  meanwhile the EKGs from two reliable sources laid on my tray table.

When the trio of Cardiologists arrived at my bedside in the ER,  they commented that they sure wished that they had the EKGs that had caused me to be flown in from where we are spending the winter.  I reached over and handed then the original EKGs and they laid them out on my legs there in the ER.   They were really upset that a full day had passed since my arrival and they were not notified IMMEDIATELY.   Hopefully, the communication channels were cleared of some PROCEDURES!!  The symptoms that initiated the 911 call were just to get me to where I needed to BE!  I had the last, the seventh, episode of DIZZY followed by vomiting - YUCK!! just after I was hooked to THEIR monitors.  It had served its purpose!  Sergio, my nurse, said that my heart was "all over the place!" in a shocked voice..

As happens often in life you have 20/20 hindsight.  I had been sleeping more, moving slower, and not taking my Blood Pressure regularly, but was taking my  BP Rx.  Now I have another piece of metal in my body,  a 2 inch STENT and am on a blood thinning Rx but off the one that I had been taking for over a year to lower or regulate my blood pressure.

My sweet and usually easily STRESSED husband must have called every prayer chain he could find.  Fortunately, we do have a LOT of praying friends and relatives and those prayers were LIFE SAVERS as he was away from home for four days as well!!  We have slept in a lot of motels this past month as well as my sister's guest room!!  I even helped my brother-in-law shovel NINE INCHES of snow there in the Denver area just before we hit the road back to AZ.   After 41 years in greater, downtown Strawberry I do know how to handle a snow shovel!

Aw well,  enough of my adventure with the medical system in just one hospital.  I am sure others have had to deal with much more.  I am just so thankful I passed through the caffeine withdrawal - just a morning headache - so that I can make Tom's coffee and almost NOT WANT a cup!   GOD is GOOD,  all the TIME!!

"RELAX,  I have this"  

Again, I say RELAX!