If It's Not One Thing...

Well, here we go again. 48 hours before I was scheduled for my first cancer surgery, I go and have a minor heart attack. Very minor, but enough to cancel the surgery and make me feel very mortal once again.

It started last Friday night. I was sitting in my living room, watching TV when my back started to ache. No news there, my back aches often. I had a theraputic massage the previous day and it is not uncommon to experience a little tenderness afterwards.

This was different.

It kept getting worse. I tried chalking it up to stress about my upcoming surgery and tried to breathe it away.

No dice.

So in the end I broke open my trusty bottle of nitro that I have been carrying unused since 2005. It was kind of like ending a winning streak to open the bottle. I took one pill, placed it under my tongue and waited. One minute later the pain was gone.

Damn, damn, damn.

This meant it was real. According to the teaching I received, if the pain goes away, no problem. So I waited and the pain didn't come back. Whewww! I'm still OK. Probably stress induced angina. I'll be fine. I went to bed and slept fine. The next day seemed fine too. Until 11pm. It is funny how fate waits until 11pm Saturday night to start throwing things at you. The pain returned. OK, no waiting, I took the nitro. The pain went away. Fine. Done.

Not quite.

An hour later it happened again. OK, no waiting, I took the nitro. The pain went away. Fine. Done. Scared. If it happens again, we're going to the hospital.

It happened again 40 minutes later.

Damn, damn, damn.

I just had a stress test on Monday. Everything was FINE. This is not right.

Off we go to the hospital. Fates had arranged for it not only to now be 2am Sunday morning, but had also arranged for icy road conditions. After seeing four cars in the ditch within two miles we got off the expressway and made our way to the hospital overland. We got there eventually and I was whisked into the emergency room. Just say "chest pain" and you are first in line. (There was no line, it was 2am Sunday morning). They checked everything; bloodwork, EKG, etc. There was no question it was a minor heart attack, but I had to wait 12 hours to see if anything changed to make sure. Fortunately they moved me out of the hustle and bustle of the main ER to a special cardiac area of the ER which was very quiet and restful. I slept a lot during those 12 hours. Poor Kim and Drew. Kim slept in a chair which couldn't have done her back any good and Drew curled up on the floor. He had a chair. He found the floor more comfortable.

I was admitted to the floor around 3pm Sunday afternoon and started waiting to see my cardiologist. It was a long wait. We finally saw him on Monday at 2:30pm. I like him so I give him the benefit of the doubt. He had been busy in the cath lab all morning with much more serious cases than mine, so I cut him some slack. He recommended that we do a heart cath and see what is going on.

There are problems with this.

If he needs to put in a heart stent, it will postpone my surgery. Non medicated stent: six weeks. Medicated stent: 6 months. He conferred with my surgeon. Everyone agreed that we needed to find out what was happening before I have any surgery, so cath it is. The cath report came back sort of positive. Yes there was a problem. One of my previous stents had become blocked, however, the heart itself had already started the repair job by growing new vessels around the blockage. In short, no stent, no intervention needed. If I have pain, I take nitro. Eventually the new vessels will be adequate and the pain should stop happening. Also, I am good to go for surgery after at least a week of recuperation.

They kept me overnight and released me Tuesday afternoon and now I keep my nitro bottle within easy reach at all times. It is still a little scary, depending on these tiny little pills to prevent any damage, but at least I have something. Now we can move onto "the other thing".

Surgery.

Wow, what a thing to look forward to.