My heart attack story, Part 5 - going home

Leaving the hospital was a weird thing.

First I almost died had I not been flown to the specialist ER via helicopter at 150+mph. Just one week prior!

For that week, at any given time, there was a team of 8-10 people assigned to watch over me and observe everything. I was wired to monitoring equipment. They dutifully measured my urine output and fluid intake. They would wake me up at 5AM to weigh me. It was a pretty high level of concern and care.

Then, on Friday evening, you get your discharge packet, take you down to the lobby in a wheelchair, and send you on your way with a fistful of prescriptions to be filled.

I will not lie, it was a bit scary to be going home. We are on a dirt road off of another dirt road, partway up a mountain. The cardiac care unit with all of it's monitoring devices and specialist staff is 40 miles away.

We are pretty much on our own here. Usually that whole rugged individualism thing is something to be proud of, but a near-fatal heart attack followed by a week in a specialist hospital unit introduces the idea that sometimes outside help is a good thing.

The prescriptions were sent to a pharmacy down the road from the hospital because our normal pharmacy (about 15 miles from home) would have been closed by the time we got there. My wife drove us to the place and the stuff wasn't ready yet, it would be maybe 1/2 hour. So we went next door to the food co-op store to get my daughter as snack and kill some time...maybe pick up something for dinner since we had been eating hospital food all week.

We wandered around the store slowly. It was the first time I had worn anything other than a hospital johnny or those ridiculous rubber-nubbed hospital socks for a week. It was both comforting and foreign to be in my own clothes and my own shoes again.

Still, I was kind of in a fog. I was probably still feeling residual effects of the opiates, but at the same time the whole thing may have just been overwhelming. At some point I had to pee, so I located the men's room and shuffled my way there.

It was liberating to NOT have to wrangle an IV pole, half a dozen wires, two IV lines and carry the vital signs telemetry device with me just to take a leak. After a week of that, it almost felt like a body part was missing.

Then I went to the sink to wash my hands & saw myself in the mirror. Damn, I looked tired. I still had flakes of rust in my hair from working on the van when this all started. Then when I went to wash my hands, I looked down at them and saw the dried blood, the dozens of needle marks, the bandages from where IVs were taken out an hour previously and the big wad of bandage with a special clear bandaid kinda thing over it where the incision had been for the procedure and it was all a bit overwhelming.

There are a million emotions to process here, but a grocery store bathroom is not the place to do it, so I choked them down, washed my hands and shuffled my way back to my girls.

When we got home, my dog Sammy, who I had told to keep an eye on things when I left to make my run to the ER, was overjoyed to see me. She was leaping in the air and running circles around us. The cat was happy to see me. The chickens knew something weird was going on, but just kinda rolled with it, but the ducks were pretty happy to see me too.

We turned on the oil furnace to heat the house for the first few days. We heat with wood, using two antique stoves, but I wasn't up for lighting fires and wasn't supposed to use my right arm for a week, which meant no playing around with firewood. The concern was that if the incision into the wrist artery cracked open, I'd bleed out but quick.

Generally, I ignore most doctor's orders unless I agree that they make sense, but this time around I'm listening to every word. I usually set my own broken bones and have even pulled one of my own teeth with pliers when I broke one, but this time I'm doing what I'm told.

After the first week, I wasn't supposed to pick up anything heavier than a gallon of milk. Then a follow up doctor visit gave me permission to carry TWO pieces of firewood.

At the time I am writing this, I have to go back to the hospital for a cardiac doctor follow-up visit, then on Thursday am going to the cardiac rehab place at the hospital in the next town for stress testing and intake into their rehab program. It calls for sessions three times a week for 12 weeks, up to 24 weeks if the doctor thinks it is warranted.

I will conclude this tale in the next post.