Well, I guess I’m not doing Horrordailies as much as Horror-On-Days-I-Can.
My head has been elsewhere this past week: The CT angiogram I mentioned in my last entry revealed a little trouble brewing, so I will have a heart catheterization with possible angioplasty and stent placement on Thursday the 16th.
This procedure is generally low risk and they usually send you home the same day as long as nothing goes wrong. But I am nervous about this because when they placed a stent placed at the midpoint of the same pesky artery the night I had my heart attack, I almost died when the heart went into v-tach, an irregular rhythm at the bottom of the heart that doesn’t allow the heart to fill with enough blood between beats. Now they need to look at the top of the artery because the potential problem is in the “widowmaker” position and I am worried about the same thing happening again.
I’m not in imminent danger in that the blockage is only 40%, which is considered mild, believe it or not. However, the plaque is the soft sticky kind that is prone to rupturing. If it ruptures, the body sends clotting soldiers to the site of the wound, you get a blood clot in your heart, and you have a heart attack—which is exactly what happened two years ago when the midpoint of the artery was 40-60% blocked.
With a work trip coming up in November, the approaching holidays, and having to find a new place to live and then pack up and move by the end of the year, I needed this like a hole in the head. But if they do place a stent and all goes well, chances are that it won’t be my heart that gets me in the end: The rest of the heart looks pretty good and the stress test I had in August showed that the heart is functioning very well. In fact, the tech looked at me and said, “You said you had a heart attack? Wow, it’s like nothing ever happened.” Enough clinicians from my cardiologist to my internist to emergency department physicians to cardiac nurses have made similar comments that I trust my heart is not weak or failing.
Think of it like a car: Everything may be running well, but if the fuel injector gets clogged, there will be engine misfires, poor acceleration, and hard starts. You want to fix it before the “check engine” light goes on and you stall out.
If they do place a stent, as long as there are no problems, it’s an outpatient procedure or a one-night stay in the hospital for observation, at most. One guy in my cardiac rehab class a couple of years ago had five placed at once and went home that evening. A few days of rotting on the couch, a week of not lifting anything, and then life goes on, work trip, packing, and move. Getting a stent would require three months of cardiac rehab and a year back on the antiplatelet medication that had me bruised like I played hockey without protective gear, but that’s all manageable.
Still, not fun. Unfortunately, I’ll have to be awake, if slightly sedated, for the procedure. Medical stuff generally doesn’t gross me out or make me queasy. I just don’t want to be awake if something goes south and then be aware of all the ensuing commotion as they try to keep me from kicking the bucket right there on the table. The last time I had a cath, I was out cold from the heart attack. I’m hoping I don’t remember any of it this time either.
And now I’d like a word with the internet at large. While I was preparing to write this entry, I began to type in a search for “do patients remember their cardiac catheterizations?” This is what autopopulated:
Well, it turns out that patients can and do pass gas during surgery, and it can be dangerous. Witness the case of a woman whose tale of woe made it into Women’s Health. She was undergoing laser surgery on her cervix when she passed gas. The laser ignited the gas and caused a spark that lit the surgical drape on fire, and she got badly burned from the waist down.
Anyway, what I would like to know is who is Googling that? And why?
Until next time, friends and fiends.
zenzalei 