Sitting in the ER Again

It's Walter's heart.

For the past month or so, he's been having some of the same heart symptoms he did before his triple bypass last year. There's a particular kind of nausea, for instance, associated with it, and he's been getting that again for a while. He only told me last week, wanting to save me from more stress on top of the other things going on.

That's why I was so adamant about getting him to his new cardio doc.

Now, this doc has only seen Walter once before. And apparently he never received the copious file from Deaconess in Indiana, where Walter had the surgery.

Had I known he never got it, I could have remedied that: I have my own copy. I made sure to have my own. Experience taught me that lesson.

This is why Dr. M the cardio guy had no idea Walter still had fairly bad blockages in other vessels - 2 more are 30% blocked.

At least Walter told Dr. M he was smoking again. He didn't tell me. I caught him in the act a few days ago, and it rocked me. Bad.

kdad the MD tells me that even the few per day Walter's been smoking for the past month is enough to kill him pretty quick. And the fact that the heart symptoms resurfaced with the smoking is, I believe, no coincidence.

Walter had arranged only 4 days off. To get more, he needed to call his driver manager. He did that yesterday, Monday. And got permission for two weeks at home.

That surprised me. He'd been pretty adamant about leaving again ASAP.

Perhaps he had some premonition, or the symptoms were already getting worse yesterday. All I know for sure is, today, he felt bad all day. He told me so this evening.

--Bad? How?

--Weird. And there's pressure in my chest, right over my heart. From front to back through my heart. Like a slow pressure, when someone pushes a fist through you, you feel it in the front and then in the back. A pressure that hurts.

Whereupon, we began one hell of a tussle.

He did NOT want to go to the ER. And this is one stubborn man. Let me tell you, folks. He really is.

Plus, he's a lot bigger than me. Much stronger too. Not that I'm a weakling, you understand. My balance is funky and I usually can't walk so good, but my muscles are certainly powerful enough. Not like they were, but nothing to scoff at.

But him? Yeah, he's strong and big and extremely stubborn.

He has learned, however, that I'm pretty stubborn myself.

It took me hours to get him here. I disrespected his sovereignty left and right. I ordered him about. I did what I could, right or wrong, and it finally worked. I had several tricks up my sleeve I didn't even have to use.

When he told me about the pains, he refused to go to the ER. I explained he did not have a choice. He stomped off to bed to lay down for a while.

Then we negotiated. Yes, he could take a bath first. My 5-10 minutes estimated bath time turned into his 45 minutes. That meter ran after he'd been laying in bed refusing for a good 45 minutes.

Then after the bath, he said, --Just let me finish reading this book first.

That's when the pressure pain had abated for a while and he started saying he should just wait until morning. I replied that it was perfectly common for the pains to come and go, it didn't mean it was suddenly fine in there, not at all. And that if I suddenly had to call an ambulance when the pain resurfaced, much more damage would be done to his heart by the time he got treatment.

My luck turned when Mother Nature took over, and the pain came back all on its own. Suddenly that book really did need only 5 or 10 minutes to get finished, and he walked in the home office with his clothes on.

We're at Holy Cross. They gave him a good scolding here. How with his history, he needs to come in to the ER the minute he feels those pains. They told me they spanked him 3 or 4 times already. I, of course, said --Ah! Did you enjoy it?

He still has no idea how much danger he was in tonight. Later, I may tell him how my dad was saying he has to go now, there is NO time, he's not likely to last until the morning. That, from the calm cool collected scientist who never gets excited about stuff like this.

Waiting here, Walter's in an ER bed and they're trying to stabilize him. He's had 3 nitro pills and 2 big doses of morphine. The first morphine finally got the pain under control. It wore off after a half hour or so, and he got another one. Now he's doing the sweaty gray-face thing again.

He wants to go home.

He's already seen the *Admitting* folks. I'd be quite surprised if they didn't keep him here overnight. But they can't take him upstairs until he's stabilized, so we wait.

We wait.