Heart Attack-ack-ack-ack-ack

Heart Attack-ack-ack-ack-ack. Billy Joel only had it in his song. Writer Mel Miskimen just had it in her life. There’s a lesson here … if you live long enough to survive Heart Attack-ack-ack-ack-ack.

Last Friday I was out walking my black Lab, when . . . Ow!

There was that pain again. The one that I had been ignoring for, oh, the past week? It was in my chest. A sort of tightening. I was sure that it was nothing.

But there it was. Again. And nothing really, really hurt.

I called my doctor. I thought that she would tell me to come in, ask the usual questions, then dismiss it and tell me to take a yoga class.

“You need to get to the ER,” she said.

Okay. But, I had to drive myself. Why? Oh, because I didn’t want to get anyone else involved. Over nothing.

There’s something about chest pains that make people act quickly. Labor pains? Not so much. Within twenty minutes, I was transported via wheel chair by an older-than-dirt-man named Sy, to a curtained room with lots of expensive machines, told to take off all my clothing and given a regulation hospital garment that I could not for the life of me figure out how it snapped or where it tied. I had this funny feeling of being filmed for You Tube.

Then came the peel and stick electrodes. The cables. The hook up. The blood draw. The wait. The watching of my heart rate, my oxygen levels, it was like I was living General Hospital. Geeze! Luke got old!

Finally, a doctor. How old was she? 24? My daughter is 24! She asked me how I felt.

“Not bad,” I said.

“What does that mean? Not bad.”

“Oh . . . it means . . . I’m sitting here in the ER tethered to a machine listening to my bill go up with every ping, beep and boop.”

“I don’t understand.” She was expressionless.

I went into the whole rigamarole, my litany – shortness of breath, chest pain, etc.

“Uh huh. Do you have a history of heart problems?” she asked, without making any eye contact.

“Well, my uncle. He ran 5 miles a day, every day for like 50 years – that’s how he died, running. I think he had a major heart snafu. And my great-grandfather died of a massive heart attack, on the toilet. He got up from the Christmas dinner table and never came back. That’s the way my father tells the tale, anyway.

”She sighed a tired sigh. Was my case that boring?

“Immediate family. Father, mother, sister, brother. Anything?”

“Uh . . . no.”

She clicked her pen and left.

Ellen was on TV. Then Millionaire. Then local news. Then network news. Back to local news. Sienfeld. The curtains parted. She returned.

“You’re going downstairs for a stress test. Did you wear comfortable shoes?”

“I wore clogs.”

She shrugged, “Whatever.”

Dremonte wheeled me to cardio. He parked me in front of an unoccupied desk with a counter top as vast as the Great Plains.

“Good luck,” he said.

Good luck getting seen? Good luck getting out of there? Good luck ever seeing your family again? No one in my family even knew that I was in the ER. My husband was out of town on business. My daughter was traveling. My son was in college and incommunicado. I could have called them, but, why make them worry?

A nurse? A surgeon? A psycho impersonating a nurse or surgeon? One of them appeared and yanked off all the upstairs electrodes, along with a top layer of my skin. The only good news is, my chest isn’t hairy like a man’s.

“We don’t use these. We have our own. And we are very, very, particular about oils and dirt, so we have to make sure that your skin is clean.” She got out a scouring sponge and began to sand off whatever skin I had left and then re-applied their electrodes, but only after rubbing my reddened skin with alcohol, “Oh, this may sting.”

She then asked me if I had ever had a stress test. I hadn’t.

“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. You will be hooked up to this machine. You will get on the treadmill. You will start out walking. Slowly at first. I will increase the speed and incline every two minutes until we get your resting heart rate of 63 up to 172…..”

“My head will explode!” I said.

“…..at that point, I will count backwards from 10, you will put one foot on the side of the treadmill, turn around, get onto the bed,” (conveniently located near the treadmill), “lay on your left side in the EXACT position that Bernice” (the technician with the four inch finger nails), “put you in earlier. She will then take an ultrasound of your heart. Within 3 seconds. Got it?”

“Wait a sec,” I said. “I have to get off this treadmill while it’s still running, do a double Lutz and land on my left side, left arm up, head resting on left arm, gown open, my back at a 48° angle to the bed within 3 seconds?”

“Yes.”

“In clogs?”

I took a few deep (and painful) breaths. I wondered how out of shape was I? At 52 I had let myself slide. It was only recently, well, since we got our Lab, that I started walking everyday. I was up to 2 miles, and I was curious. Had it done any good?

Dr. Cardio – a black suit coat over his scrubs – waltzed in. “Let’s do this!” he said.

I got on the treadmill.

The machine sped up.

The incline got steeper.

Not bad. I could still talk. Make jokes.

Faster. Steeper. Faster. Steeper. Faster. It felt like I was running up Mt. Everest, without oxygen, a Sherpa and in clogs.

“10 . . . 9 . . . 8–”

Uh oh. What was I supposed to do? Left foot where? Right arm how? This was why I never made it in any high school musicals.

“5 . . . 4 . . 3 . . 2–”

I don’t know how I did it, but I got off the treadmill, did a triple (Dick Button would have been so proud) Lutz, got into the position and boom! Thumpathumpathumpathumpa.

I passed! I felt so invigorated! So validated! Whatever I had done up to this point in my life, I should keep on doing it. The ol’ ticker wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.

Dr. Cardio couldn’t say what was the cause of my chest pain, but whatever it was, it wasn’t going to kill me.

Although, his bill might.

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