Heart attack…really?
So early last Friday morning I had a heart attack. Not the kind where you’re walking along minding your own business and suddenly grab your chest, grimace and drop to the ground. I just woke up way too early with a weird feeling, numb hands, a sore left arm and a squeeze that shouldn’t be there. Just enough to overcome the “I can lie here and breathe through this” voice in your head. Instead I had my lovely wife drive me to the ER where, after a normal EKG, two caring doctors who didn’t trust it found a life-threatening “critical” blockage in the artery they so gracefully call “the Widow Maker”. So I had an emergency angioplasty.
It went well. All the people I spoke to in the procedure room as they hooked me up and slid me from the stretcher to the table were incredibly nice. I don’t remember the last thing the friendly anesthesiologist said to me before I went out but I think, and this is real, that ishe said “you’ll probably never see me again”. Yes, that seems at least insensitive and arguably cruel, but I think we were having a tension-breaking conversation and, since a guy was in the process of shaving my groin just in case my wrist access didn’t work out, I may have said something about my embarrassing circumstance. To which she may have replied, “don’t worry, you’ll probably never see me again”. Luckily I wasn’t thinking straight, don’t scare easily and was seconds from unconscious bliss.
Here’s the thing… I like total anesthesia. I’ve only been under twice and yes, I know that it can be dangerous, but it’s the only real sleep that I’ve had in years. “Normal” sleep, to me, is an activity. It has to wrestle me down and even then it never quite pins me. I go uncomfortably into the dark and seem to have a third eye open all night. It probably doesn’t help that my years of floating weightless at the epicenter of raging rock bands has left me with tinnitus that should, by all rights, drive me insane. Miraculously it doesn’t. Still, it whistles like the dentist-drill of God and quiet just gives it something to work on. So, anesthesia? Yes please.
Okay, heart attack. It got my attention for sure. Especially the “widow maker” part. But we’ve all got something to recover from, right?. Luckily, once the stent was in, I’m supposed to be better than ever. Most things aren’t that clear and easily fixed. Where’s my tinnitus stent?
I’m posting a song with this. One I wrote a while back that very few people have heard. It’s about something coming into your line of sight that can’t easily be turned away from or ignored. Something with warning signs that come too late.
Thanks and take care.
