Shhh, It's a secret!

It's been awhile...

So much has been going on in my life that I just have not had time to post...

A few days after my last post, I started feeling occasional pressure in my chest and a couple days after that I started feeling numbness in my left arm. I had my wife take me to the hospital at that point.

I was admitted from the emergency room after about 6 hours at about 2AM. The next day they ran tests like an EKG, Echo cardiogram and blood tests. No heart attack was indicated and the EKG and Echo cardiogram were all fine.

At this point they were ready to release me but they scheduled me for a Catherization. Now just the thought of that one scared me but the Cardiologist and my GP all figured that it would be clear and just wanted to do it to be sure since this is the third time in the last six years I've had this type of attack.

So along comes March 30th and my wife and I show up at the hospital at 6:15AM in the same day surgical unit. They hooked me all up, wheeled me down to the Cardiac Catherization Unit and I was given an explanation of the procedure and that I was going to be part of a Johns Hopkins University study of doing Catherizations at "community" type hospitals. Filling out the forms for that felt like I was buying a house!

After all that was done, I WALKED into the operating room which was a smallish rectangular room with the table in the middle and a bank of video monitors behind it. I was surprised how small the room was (my living room is bigger). The male nurse asked me to hop up on the table. The table was under a big xray type machine. The nurse began to prep me for the procedure. That included binding my hands so I would not move them during the procedure, shaving my groin area from my penis to my right side and from my navel down to the top third of my thigh. All through this, he and I were talking about his fantasy baseball draft!

The next thing they did was spread the gown over the "Field" and then washed the "Field" with some kind of cold liquid (betadyne was my guess). The nurse then said that they were going to medicate me just so I would be somewhat awake during the procedure (to help the doc with comments on pain and such). When he injected whatever it was I felt the best I have ever felt! I have never taken drugs but I have done some drinking in my day and I have never felt that good in my life. They could have told me that they had to cut off my legs and I would have said "Oh well".

The doc came in next and began. I felt pressure in my leg as he inserted the catheter into my thigh just below the groin. In my haze it felt like only moments later that the cardiologist was telling me that I had a 70-80% blockage and that he was going to do an angioplasty and insert a stent to open it up. I think I replied something like "fine" or "sure" in the drug induced high I was in. Next thing I noted was just some pressure in my chest as the doc inflated the balloon to open the artery and a few moments later it was over.

It could have been 10 minutes later or so and they brought my wife in and the doc showed us the before and after pics of the blockage. It was really amazing to be even somewhat awake during the whole thing. Think of it, I just had a wire inserted in an artery in my groin, passed up to my heart, then a balloon was inserted and inflated to open the blockage. Next, a stent (something like a little spring) is inserted and placed where the balloon was inserted. All in about 20 minutes.

One thing though, they really don't emphasize enough that recovery from this procedure, whether it's a straight catherization or a full blown angioplasty, really is 10 times worse.

I'll get into the recovery and the aftermath in my next post.

Labels: catherization, chest, heart, pain

posted by section306g @ 8:52 PM