CAD-zooks!

My back has been killing me for the past couple of months.  T-6 and T-7 (amongst others) continually give me grief due to a combination of being hit by a car twice (no, it wasn't the same car), front looping a car twice (yes, it was the same car during the same wreck). too many reserve rides (37), too many hard landings under a Stratoflyer, too many hard openings, too many brutal exits, too many hard landings in general, too many ... well you get the idea.  A lifetime of abuse is taking its toll and I'm not too happy about it.  On the other hand the alternative sucks so lets not go there right now.

Be that as it may I was unable to get any relief from the pain in my back using the normal self-chiropractic techniques I've developed over the years.  It was directly in the front of the aforementioned area and I just couldn't get away from it. No way.  No how.  This even included taking drugs (which I don't like to do because they kick my butt), well not "drugs" per se, rather officially prescribed pain medication and muscle relaxants.  Nuthin'.  Nada.  Zip.  Etc.

Then the plane nosed down and parts of the control surfaces started coming off, I was getting short of breath with little exertion.  Chest pains.  More biting back pain.  And chest pains that would sometimes radiate outward from the middle of my chest then go down the backs of my arms to my elbows (vs. the much dreaded radiating out of the armpits).

Hummm, maybe I should see a doctor.

Duh!

So I broke Guy Rule #1 and made an appointment with the doctor when nothing was broken, bleeding, smashed or generally torn all to hell and gone.

This, of course, took several weeks to accomplish because none of the above having had occurred and I wasn't overtly dying.

Finally the big day arrived and I presented myself at Kaiser in Valencia to see my doctor, Dr. Wong.  You've got it right, no matter what he says or does he's always Wong.

Groan.

I gave him a litany of complaints about this and that assorted snivels and he got to work thumping this and prodding that and poking ... well lets just say I was glad he wasn't from West Hollywood.  If you know what I mean.  He took my pulse.  He took my temperature.  He took my wallet.  He listened to my lungs (or fiddled with my tits, I'm not really sure).  He took my blood pressure.  His eyes got as big as saucers when it was 150 over 105.

Now, clearly, there are 2 things that are bad in life, when your doctor's eyes get as big as saucers and when he says "Oh oh..."

Fortunately it was only 1 out of 2 and I got the lesser of the 2.

Whew!

So he made another appointment for me to get a treadmill test at Kaiser's Panorama City facility and gave me a prescription for blood thinner.  Atenolol.  Try to pronounce that without tying your tongue in a knot or making the pharmacist smirk.

Another week and a half went by.

Meanwhile my chest continued to cause me no end of grief and it seemed to be getting worse.  The pain was greater and my shortness of breath would happen even if I did something as strenuous as getting the mail.  Now I fully understand that the 100' hike to the mailbox with the staggering elevation drop of 12" should tax my system to the maximum because it's so brutal.

It did.  Every day.

This is not good so I didn't bother to tell the boss about it because she'd just worry herself sick and it wouldn't make any difference.

Of course I got beat up for this later.

After the intolerable 11 day wait I was able to present myself at Kaiser Panorama City for the aforementioned treadmill test.  Being an optimist (read: fool) I just took a magazine to read while I was waiting for the test knowing I'd be back out in the car and on the road in an hour or so.

As if...

When it was my turn I went into the treadmill testing room and was presented with 3 pairs of eyes.  One belonged to a nurse/technician/ne'er-do-well who got all excited when I allowed him to shave 5 different areas of my chest so the stick-on contacts he was going to stick on would actually stick on.  The next set of eyes belonged to some blonde who probably did the same thing to women, although I was unable to figure out why they'd need their chest shaved.  Hey, it's a wacky world, what do I know?  The final pair of eyes belonged to a Chinese woman who was obviously the treadmill operator.  She was short.  She was thin.  She was very friendly.  She had jet black hair about 2-3" long that appeared as if she'd stuck a fork in an outlet that morning.  On purpose.  You know, something like Mao on acid.  But not as cute.

After I was shaved and stuck on and plugged in and wrapped with a blood pressure cuff and had a blood oxygen sensor put on my finger and Nurse Ratched was done fiddling with her Machine of Doom™ she explained to me what was going to happen.

Of course she lied.

She said the treadmill would start out slowly and gradually increase over time.  The angle and elevation would change and the speed would increase every 3 minutes.  I looked at the machine and it looked like she didn't know what she was talking about because there was no obvious way for the treadmill belt to change angles.  "Obviously on drugs," I thought to myself.  Ignoring the thought balloon over my head she started the machine and I trundled off into the sunset.

No, wait.  That's later.

So the belt moved and, brilliantly, I walked forward to keep from falling on my schnozzola.  Having done that in the past, no, not on a treadmill, I quickly decided that repeating the process wouldn't be a fun thing.  There's the blood, the pain, the embarrassment, the tittering from passersby, the big guy standing over you.  Oops, that was a different story.  After some time, probably only a minute or so, Nurse Ratched watching her instrumentation asked "Do you have any chest pain?"  I said "Only a little," and kept soldiering on at the furious pace the treadmill was racing along at ... about a mile a day.  Or less.  Meanwhile she's sticking another fork in the outlet nearest her to keep her hair so immaculately coifed and bugging me about the pain in my chest.  "On a scale of 1 to 10 what does the pain feel like?"

Then she told me to "Grab the grip rail in front of me."  I asked "Why?" and she said to keep from falling on my schnozzola.

Good point.

Being quick on the uptake I grabbed the grip rail indicated by her haughty sneer.  Or was it a smile?  It's hard to tell when you're staring into the face of a dead Chinese leader that's been resurrected at a treadmill operator on the other side of the planet and is now incessantly torturing you with stupid questions about the fire in your chest.

Somewhere in her endless banter she asked me if I wanted to stop and I foolishly replied that "I'd keep going until you pull the plug."  This was an extension of the previous question I'd posed about if I complained about anything during the test would it effect the way she tested me.  I didn't want that to happen because I wanted to get as much information out of the test before it was finished ... or I was.

After an interminable period of time she said "The treadmill is going to speed up now."  And it did.  It also changed its angle by extending posts that were hidden in the support columns for the side grip rails.

Very tricky these Chinese.

You might even say inscrutable.

As the speed of the treadmill increased and the fire in my chest increased also.  Prior to the change Herr Ratched (she's getting more evil now) had posed the "On a scale of 1 to 10 what does the pain feel like?" question once again.  Now you've got to understand this is an unanswerable question.  It's something akin to putting you in a dark room, having you move a few feet forward and asking "How far across the room are you?"

A question like that can only be answered by God ... or a electricity crazed Chinese treadmill operator, named Rosie, with a fork in her hand.

I ignored it and her and kept going.

The fire in my chest really has my attention now.

But I'm not telling her even if she is giving me the "On a scale of 1 to 10 what does the pain feel like?" question way too often.

It's starting to get unnerving.  The treadmill rumbles on and I'm moving forward towards the wall never seeming to get any closer.  Sort of like driving towards a mountain in the desert and never seeming to get any closer until, suddenly, it's in your face and you have to put on the brakes or crash into it.

I'm looking for the brakes on the treadmill and I can't see any.  This is not good especially when it's accompanied by the oft repeated "On a scale of 1 to 10 what does the pain feel like?" question.

My hands are sweating and I drop the grip on the grip rail so I can lean on it as I wave them a little to get them to dry off.  She immediately asks "Why are you going that?"  Clearly the obvious escapes her and I say "My hands are sweaty," and I add silently "You dolt!"

By now I'm seriously hoping for a black out.  No, not me.  Nor to get the machine to stop carrying me to my doom when I slam into the wall in front of me that never seems to get closer but to keep Nurse Ratched from continuously coifing her hair and to wipe that Mao-inspired smirk off of her face.

Keeping one eye on the watch on my left wrist I know the next 3 minute mark is coming up and as if to emphasize that fact the electric-fork junkie says "The speed is going to increase now."

Amazingly the speed increases and the angle changes at exactly the next time mark.  Right when it was supposed to.

Imagine that.

The fire has now changed from a barbecue to an inferno accompanied by the obligatory "On a scale of 1 to 10 what does the pain feel like?" question.

Finally I outlast her and she pulls the plug.  Ha!

I made it a whole 6 and a half minutes...

She has a concerned look on her face.  A really concerned look.  Now generally this is a good thing because it means the person with the concerned look cares about you and only wishes you well.  When it comes from someone in the medical field it's not a good thing especially if she looks like she just stuck a fork in an electrical outlet.

In her case she was worried that I was going to die on her and the Kaiser administration would find out about her fork fetish.

She had her 2 minions set me down on the gurney I'd been on so long ago, about 7 and a half minutes, and "Get him on oxygen right now."  While she's making a couple of apparently frantic phone calls she told me to "Sit more in the middle of the gurney."  "Why?"  "I don't want you to fall off."  Ha!  Who does she think she's talking toooooooooo...thud.

Well I didn't fall off, or to use the more technical term DFO (Done Fell Out), but I did move more to the middle of the gurney to keep her happy.

And to keep her from attacking me with that fork.

Suddenly I felt like Arlo Guthrie when he talked to Officer Obie at the Police Station.  I was immediately arrested, handcuffed, and tossed into hospital jail.  It wasn't going to be fun.

Or anything like it.

Right then and there I knew that the rest of my life had just changed.  Forever.  The things I used to do I used to do.  The things I used to eat I used to eat.  Forever.

If I live this is going to suck.

If I don't it'll still suck.

After she got off the phone and offered profuse apologies for telling me several times to be quite--what! who, me? harumph!--because I was yucking it up with her 2 minions while they put the handcuffs on me.  Then they had another goon in blue immediately wheel me down to ER ... with Mao's clone in tow.  I was booked, er, I mean, admitted and people fell all over me (thank goodness not one of them hit my schnozz) hooking me up to an IV.  Taking a blood sample.  Getting my vitals.  Stealing my wallet (little did they know Dr. Wong have beat them already).  You know, the general medical stuff that tells you your life isn't going to be the same anymore.

At one point a woman wheeled a portable X-ray machine beside my gurney, slipped a X-ray film holder behind my back, placed the machine in front of my chest and took the release to the FAR end of the cord, where it was safe and pressed the button.  When she was sure it was safe she gathered up her stuff and went on to irradiate the next person in need of help and not becoming just so much nuked meat.

The 1st time I knew I was really in trouble was when my cell phone went off.  Now normally that isn't a cause for alarm but when you've just failed a treadmill test--miserably--and your cell phone rings you know it's the boss and you'd better tell her what's up.  Of course there were posters all over the hospital ranting about "No cell phone use in hospital!" accompanied by nonspecific threats aimed at your genitalia and how they were softer than any dull scalpel in the hospital.  Dirty or not.

This really got my attention so I didn't answer the phone.

Time passed.

The phone rang.

Repeatedly.

I didn't answer it.

Then my pager went off.  Uh oh, now she's really getting steamed and is resorting to the back-up contact point.

I didn't answer it.

I fantasize about surviving Kaiser and Mao's henchmen only to be killed later when I get home.

Then the phone rang some more and it was becoming a choice between death by scalpel or death by rolling pin.  I was in a quandary.  Was it better to bleed to death in the Death of a Thousand Cuts or just to be beat to death with a rolling pin (wooden or marble, it doesn't really make any difference)?  The phone rang again as if to emphasize the point.

Time went by ... really slowly.  The phone had ceased to ring by this time.  Obviously a judgment had been passed on me but I was unaware of the verdict.  Meanwhile where I was positioned in the room allowed the floor show out in the hall to be observed.  It came in the electrically-barred and card-controlled double-front door upstage, guarded by an armed security guard (pardon my redundancy) with the control card around his neck, moved downstage past the nurse's station and turned left (my right) wrapping around the nurse's station just outside of the glass wall that served as the front room window to my new world.

People moved in and out of my room.  Some worker-bee moved a wheeled tray with a bunch of medical stuff on it in front of my bed and left it there.  This turned out to be a big deal because it blocked most of my view.  Now it was really boring.  With nothing else to do but wait until they freed up a bed upstairs this was a really BIG deal.  Sometime later, minutes?, hours?, days? a cleaning guy came by to religiously empty the trash and I got him to move the tray out of the way.  Hooray!  I could see again.

The parade of humanity kept coming.

After several hours of this mental torture I was finally whisked up to a room on the 6th floor.  Apparently this was at a level of care where they're so worried that you'll die on them and they'll have to fill out huge stacks of forms--in triplicate--that they'll actually respond RIGHT NOW! when you press the nurse's call button.  I wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing but I made the most of it ... and didn't press the button.  On the other hand I was able to get a call out to the boss to let her know I'd been arrested and was in hospital jail.

Of course I didn't make the mistake of telling her what I was in for or she would've brought the rolling pin with her when she showed up later to bring me stuff I was going to need for my little unplanned soirée.  You know, things like, contact lens stuff, glasses to wear when you're not wearing your contacts lenses, a tooth brush, a book to read (P.J. O'Rourke's Give War A Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice and Alcohol-Free Beer, really funny) because a magazine wasn't going to cut it for my sentence ('cause I knew I wasn't going to get out the next day) and some clean undies, socks and a T-shirt for my eventual release from captivity.  After giving me the few things I was going to need in jail she took the stuff I wasn't going to need, my wallet (you can't spend money in hospital jail) all of the things in my pockets, my belt (so I couldn't hang myself, see Alice's Restaurant reference above).  I kept a penny and a dime so I wouldn't die penniless or without a dime in my pocket, hey, you've got to plan ahead, and I kept my shoes because I knew I was going to have another treadmill test the next morning.  "With pictures."

I was hoping for 8" x10" color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one to be used as evidence against me.  But no such luck.

Foolishly I didn't keep my folding hair brush (stop laughing!) and I was going to regret that for the rest of my sentence.  You have no idea how valuable a hair brush or a comb is when you haven't bathed for a few days and you don't have access to one.  Even if you're facing death you want to look your best.

Besides that because they wouldn't give me a metal fork Mao's clone's technique was out of the question.

I was stuck.  Combless.  Forkless.  And ugly to boot.

Things weren't going my way.

On the other hand I had remembered that morning what Mom used to say "Always wear clean underwear, you might get in a wreck."  So that was one thing that I didn't have to worry about.

Good ol' Mom, always thinking ahead.

At least somebody was.

By now I'm starving to death and have a splitting headache because I haven't eaten since a mere bowl of cereal in the morning, 4 hours ahead of the treadmill test (hospital rules you know).  Apparently they don't want you throwing up after you've collapsed in a heap on the rapidly spinning treadmill and making a mess on the floor.  Or electrocuting yourself and Nurse Ratched when she sticks the fork in the wall socket as she leans over to check your pulse.

After reassuring the boss that I was only going to have another treadmill test the following morning because they needed to "check some stuff" she left and I was finally able to get some food in my system at around 9 o'clock.  The headache went away and I wasn't facing death by starvation anymore, I was just facing death by a bad ticker.

And the clock was ticking...

During the process several people had asked me if I was allergic to anything and I said not that I know of.  Later in the evening I was rudely reminded that I was allergic to something.  I have no idea what it is but every once-in-a-while something will irritate my upper lip (although sometimes it's my lower lip) and it'll swell up.  Generally it's only one side or the other, but occasionally it's the full lip.  Well tonight it was the lower lip. The full lower lip.  The entire lower lip.  It was really swelling up and I was getting somewhat concerned.  I waited until it seemed like it wasn't going to stop and I buzzed the nurse to have her send in a doctor.  He showed up fairly promptly, I told him what was happening and my concerns about it.  He took it under advisement and said he'd note it in my file.  After he left I went into the bathroom to see what I looked like.  It was worse than I'd ever experienced.  Ever.  My entire lower lip was swollen to about 1" thick and was protruding out of my face like a Ubangi.  I looked like I'd been in a bar fight and lost.  When I went back to my bed my upper lip started to do the same thing and my lower lip was so swollen that the swelling extended out past the corners of my mouth out into my cheeks and half-way down to my chin.  To say that it was unnerving would be putting it mildly.

Sidebar: The following day after the swelling went down I discovered that my lip had swollen so much that it'd split the lip's surface vertically in a bunch of places on the soft inside (where your tongue touches it) where the swelling had taken place.  Dang.  What would it be like if I'd been in a real bar fight?

The oh-so-friendly nurses would come in every couple of hours and take my vital signs.  It didn't matter what you were doing, asleep or not, they'd barge right in and do their job.  After a couple of times I had the routine down and I'd offer them my arm (with the IV line in it) for the blood pressure cuff hooked up to an automatic blood pressure machine, my index finger for the blood oxygen level sensor (it reads it through your fingernail) and opened my mouth for the digital thermometer.  All of these sensors were hooked up to the same wheeled blood pressure machine and it recorded all of the data with the date and time each patient was tested.  Pretty slick but it is the 21st Century so I suppose it's probably passé by now.

Now it goes without saying that I wasn't going to get fed in the morning because I was going to have another treadmill test.  This was starting to piss me off the but jailers were totally unsympathetic.  At about 4:00 AM one of the guards woke me to give me my sleeping pill.  OK so it wasn't a sleeping pill but she did give me something in a glass and said "Drink this."  Hoping against hope that she'd snuck me something under the cover of darkness I immediately snatched it out of her hand and quaffed it.

Nothing happened.

She left and I tried to go back to sleep with 5 wires coming off of my chest attached to the the stick-on thingies from the treadmill test, the oxygen tube still in my nose (from the failed treadmill test) while laying on a very uncomfortable bed that was an automatic air bed that not only sensed your body's position but adjusted to it EVERY time you moved in the bed.  Normally you might think this was a good thing but in the middle of the night when you're trying in vain to fall asleep and you roll over to find "the soft spot" only to be jarred back to full consciousness when the air compressor goes off and adjusts the bed's internal pressure, it's not even close.

On the drawing board it's a great idea.  In a hospital room in the middle of the night it's anything but.

The next morning I was up and ready to go when the "transporter" arrived.  Transporter is what they call the drone that pushes you in a wheelchair from where you are to where you need to go.  I hopped in the wheelchair and put all of my stuff in my lap.

I was ready to go.

She wasn't and said "You won't need your stuff, you're coming back here."  Unthinkingly I put it all back on the bed but was smart enough to keep the book.  Or so I thought.  Then we went on a circuitous route that took us through a general tour of the entire hospital winding up in the dungeon that passes for a basement in front of a door labeled "Nuclear Medicine do not enter."  Cool.  She reached for the handle.  Maybe not so cool (I'd forgotten lead lined codpiece).  As we were going through the door I realized that I'd left my shoes on the bed.  These are the shoes that have my I've-GOT-to-have-my-orthodics-in-them or my-arches-will-collapse and my-back-will-start-to-kill-me-in-just-a-couple-of-steps shoes.  These are important shoes.  Really important shoes.  They're not Ruby Slippers but they're important nonetheless.  The transporter said she'd go back up and get them.  Then she parked my butt in front of a big dry-erase board, put my name on it and left.

Probably glad to get the hell out of the radioactive environment she'd left me in.

Time passed and passed and she finally showed up transporting another victim but clearly not with my shoes anywhere on her person.  Then she said "I didn't forget," and handed me a plastic bag with my shoes in it.

Aaaaaaaaah, I'm saved.  Of course because I was sure she'd forgotten all about me I'd told someone else about my lack-of-shoes problem and had him send for my shoes.  Amazingly they weren't able to find them because my efficient transporter had already grabbed them when she'd gone back upstairs.  I didn't find this out until hours later when I got back to my room and was told by the nurse that she'd been unable to find my shoes.

I didn't admit to what had happened out of the very real fear of being beat over the noggin with an IV bottle (because there weren't any rolling pins handy).

I put my shoes on and was ready for the next treadmill test.  It didn't happen.  After about half a chapter in the book "Vincent" (I'm sure it was an alias) showed up and wheeled me into the "with pictures" room.  It had a huge machine in it looking like it'd been stolen from the set of Frankenstein.  No, Vincent didn't look like Igor for the most part but he did have that same shifty look that bodes no well.

Because it was nuclear medicine I asked Vincent "Will I need a nightlight when I got back to my room?"  He said "No, but I can use a lower wattage bulb if I want to."

I climbed onto the machine and he and a woman who I took to be the machine's operator positioned me just so until they were satisfied that I wasn't going to be crushed like a bug once they turned it on.  Then I was told to lay very still while the machine did it's thing.  "Thing" when used in this context is a medical term that means the machine was going to take a series of 32 images of my heart in a full-360° series of wrap around images that would be compared to another series of images taken later in the day after my heart had rested for the abuse they were going to give in on the treadmill when the imaging was completed.  It gives a whole new meaning to "thing," doesn't it?

The test took 25 minutes and I was glad to get off of the cold hard platform I'd been laying on.  Then I hopped back into the chair and Vincent wheeled me back out into the hall by a new door.  After some futzing around and 2 other people had entered and exited the room I was obviously waiting for a female technician had me come in and take off my gown.  They're not "gowns" they're thin, short, bathrobes that you wear backwards so the world can see your butt as you walk down the hall.  She pulled off all 5 of the stick-on contacts that had been there since Mao's minion had installed them the day before.  Because they'd practically fused to my skin in the ensuing 20 hours she decided that I hadn't been shaved well enough and repeated it (with, I'm sure, a gleam in her eye) "Just to be sure."  By now my chest was starting to look like a hairless Chihuahua.  Or a clear-cut forest.  Then she applied yet another set of stick-on contacts and sent be back out to my wheelchair.

On the other side of the "hall" from me was a large open area that has the treadmill and associated equipment in it.  This is cleverly hidden from view by a cheesy cloth curtain.  This only hides the images but not the audio portion of whatever is going on behind the curtain.  Yes, I tried to ignore the man behind the curtain but he was making too much noise as he clumped along at a pretty good clip (he was actually running).

Yet another half chapter passed and I was wheeled into the treadmill "room" and right up to some sort of a table/bed/dealie.  Once you've been tagged as a wheelchair patient they won't let you walk anywhere for anything.  After I was laying down and totally uncomfortable they plugged onto all 5 contacts, installed a blood-pressure cuff and blood O² level finger pin (it's shaped something like a clothes pin with a wire coming off of it) and put something onto the IV line so they could fill me with truth serum.

I never spilled my guts.

As they were pumping stuff into my arm the treadmill operator was looking at an endless array of data on his computer screen (he looked something like a Mengele of the new millennium).  At some point the stuff being pumped into me caused me to feel very flushed and a warm sensation flowed throughout my body.  I mentioned it to the guy operating the pump that was, strangely enough, pumping the stuff and he said "That's normal."  Sure it is ... I'll bet Mengele said the same thing.

After they were finished having their way with me I was disconnected, put back in my wheelchair, rolled back out into the hall, parked under the big dry-erase board, my name was marked on the board and I was abandoned to my fate.

I had just had what is known in the medical field as treadmill-in-a-bottle but I didn't realize it.

Another one of their army of transporters arrived and schlepped me back up to my room.  Hooray, I was back in my room and it was lunch time so I could eat.

As if.

I sat and I waited and I waited and I sat.  The other guy in the room got lunch.  Repeat Step 1 of this sentence with the same results.  Finally I mentioned it and as luck (evil design?) would have it lunch arrived just as another Transporter from Hell showed up to take me back down to "Nuclear Medicine do not enter."

Damn.

I was wheeled back down to the basement, it was starting to look like the Tales From The Crypt set and I flopped back on the table for another series of 32 heart images.

Another 25 minutes passed and I was wheeled back to my ol' friend the dry-erase board.

Eventually I made it back to my room and was fed.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh, bliss.

Then the roof fell in.

A doctor, he had to be a doctor because he was in a white lab coat and they don't give those to just any ne'er-do-well that happens by (or so I hoped), stumbled into my room with a long face and told me that my heart was pretty messed up.  This was the abbreviated version of the medicalese he spoke.  There is a major blockage of the main artery that feeds the heart and you're toast if we don't fix it soon.  I figured it out all by myself that that was naughty but I let him go on so he'd feel like he'd actually done something productive that day.  Plus I didn't want to hurt his feelings because he looked like he knew his way around a scalpel.

He said the cardiologist would be up later to explain what's what and promptly left.

The room got suddenly smaller.

When a doctor tells you your heart is bleeped up and you're alone in your hospital bed time passes slowly.  Really slowly.  As I was waiting for the cardiologist to make his appearance and pronounce his sentence on me it was something like sitting in O' Sparky and staring at the phone on the wall with the direct line to the Governor's Office ... but I knew it'd never ring.

I was staring into The Abyss and I didn't like the view.

After allowing me to stew in my own juices for too long the cardiologist made his appearance and gave me the new script changes.  He said that the dual imaging series didn't allow for as good of a diagnosis as he needed so I was going to be transported to Kaiser's Sunset facility in the morning for a 9:30 AM appointment with the Queen of Hearts.  Oh great, they're going to move a guy with a bad heart condition to a place called "Sunset."

Great planning.  It sounded like something out of a William Castle movie.

There I'd be given an angiogram and depending on what they found I'd either be returned to where I was and checked out of the Kaiser system, immediately given a balloon angioplasty and kept overnight, immediately have a stent installed and kept overnight or have a full-on heart by-pass operation and be kept for several days (until I was either well or died, as the case may be).  Then he asked if I had any questions and trundled off to give the good news to some other poor sucker.

Things weren't looking too good, the walls were getting closer and I was starting to think about George Gipp and trying to come up with a good last line.

Now you don't have to ask, because, no, I wasn't going to get anything to eat in the morning but I was going to be able to eat dinner.  Actually I wasn't supposed to have "anything by mouth" after midnight.  Of course this ruling was broken by one of the nurses who woke me up to give me my blood thinner medication sometime in the middle of the night and again to give me something that I was supposed to have in my system when I got to Sunset.  This is not to mention being woken up to have my vitals taken.  It might kill me but they were certainly going to get them nonetheless.

After I was finished feeling sorry for myself I called the boss and gave her the Reader's Digest Condensed Books version of the new game plan and told her that I didn't need her to come down and hold my hand.  Friday was going to be Valentine's Day and there was a party for her class so she needed to stay at work and prep for it and not worry about anything.

A little consultation with your long-term desktop chronology device (i.e., calendar) will show you that I'd found out that I had major problem with my heart on the 11^th (a day forever associated with evilness), was going to be operated on on on the 13th (too bad it wasn't a Friday!) and released back into society on Valentine's Day.  That was either a stroke of luck or an ominous portent.

I was betting on the former.

At one point in the evening a guy came into the room with another portable X-ray machine, hooked it up to the other guy in the room and ... walked right past me to the "safe area" as indicated by the length of the cord.  Hey!  What about me?!  Took the picture and left.

Then I had dinner (I was bummed they didn't give the condemned man a choice for his last meal), read more of the only book I could lay my hands on, watched the MONSTER rain storm raging on TV (it'd started the day I was arrested) and spent another nearly sleepless night with tubes and wires coming off of me in all directions in an uncomfortable bed dressed in a bathrobe that doesn't turn when you do and you wind up nearly strangling yourself in the electrician's nightmare you're wearing only to wake up gasping for breath.  My heart problem notwithstanding.  Then just as I would nod off the nurse would show up with "something."

It was an ugly night.

When the dawn broke (does dawn really "break"? and if it does break who fixes it?) I was up and ready for the ambulance crew to schlepp me to Sunset.  I would've rather ridden off into the sunset but the director had nixed that change in the script.

At some point in the morning a male orderly, even though he looked disheveled, arrived with yet another razor in one hand and a glass of cold water in the other (thanks for nothing).  Then he shaved my inner thighs and the groin above them all the way up to my waist.  He asked if I wanted him "to shave the whole thing?"  I said "No, I don't want to look like a male porn star."

I'm sure he was disappointed.

Finally I was presented with the Mexican version of Laurel and Hardy.  An averaged sized portly guy and his teammate, a thin tallish guy with mutton chops.  They strapped me to a bright canary yellow gurney, raised it up until I was almost at their height and off we rolled.  It was so high I felt like ducking when we'd go through each doorway.  After I'd been placed in the back of their ambulance and had everything hooked up to me again we headed for the freeway.  This was the 1st time I'd been outside or even seen outside in 2 whole days.  It was overcast and drizzly and wonderful.  It was also the 2nd time I'd ever been in an ambulance.  The 1st time was one month short of 39 years ago (after the 1st time I'd been hit by a car) and I'd gone to the same hospital I was now leaving.

History does repeat itself after an odd fashion.

After I'd signed the forms, so they could bill Kaiser, I tried, in vain, to get them to go Code 3, but they were wimps and wouldn't go for it.  Then I said to Hardy the Paramedic (vs. Laurel the EMT/driver) "This is a great view," as I looked out the back.  He took the bait and asked "Why?" and I gave him the kicker ... "Because I can see who's going to run into us."

He groaned, just like you did.

When we arrived at Kaiser I was delivered into what turned out to be the waiting room for the OR I would be going into.  I moved from one gurney to another, they plugged me in and handed me off to my new team of handlers.  The new team of nurses showed up with the obligatory clipboards full of forms to be signed and asked me if I "have an advance directive."  Say what?  Well that's a little form that's a combo of your will and whether or not you want them to resuscitate you if things get really ugly and the feces hits the rotary oscillating device.  I said no, she checked off another box in the seemingly endless stream of check boxes, I signed the form and she went on her way to pester some other person who was in no position to not sign her forms.  I was obviously over a barrel even though I was flat on my back on a gurney.  What a strange twist.  So to speak.

Later a woman showed up, removed the IV line I had in the crook of my elbow and put in another one that was the size of a garden hose.  Really.  It was placed in my mid-forearm and I was much more comfortable than I'd been with that little dinker at my elbow even though it looked large enough to water rutabagas with.

At all of the major points in this whole soap opera script I found myself mired in there was a cardiac defibrillator in the room, plugged in, turned on and ready to go.  Not much of a confidence builder I can assure you.  Then before I went into OR someone showed up and put new, of course the other ones were more than 10 minutes old so they've got to be replaced, stick-on contacts on my chest--after ripping the other ones off with an evil grin--and added 2 large differently colored ones.  These didn't have any contacts on them and they were rectangular in shape.  One was placed on the lower-left-side of my rib cage and the other one was placed on my right breast.  I asked him what they were for and thought I was talking to myself when he said something about "They're there for the magic stuff."

"Right, what are they really for?"

"They're so I don't burn you when I use the machine."

How thoughtful.

The guy across from me in bay #3, who it turned out was ahead of me in line, was wheeled out and sometime later wheeled back in.  He appeared to be still alive, so that was a good thing.  By now I've been laying on my back on a fairly hard gurney and my lower back was starting to hurt in the bottom of the Ls (more damage from the above list of naughtiness).  Unbeknownst to me while I was still waiting they were cleaning up from the last procedure.  Finally after much hemming and hawing one of the two guys who looked like a mechanic and had handled the guy across from me arrived, introduced himself and wheeled me into OR.

Dunh dahhhhh!  (major ominous chord, lightening crashes in the background)  The doors parted and I was in yet another room filled with more bewildering medical equipment.  All of painted the same shade of bilious green. The two mechanics dressed in OR green were wearing, I swear to God, purple rubber gloves.  They looked like the Pros from Dover without the golf clubs.  One of them was wearing what appeared to be a painter's cap that tied in the back, didn't have a brim and had some medical product printed on the front of it.  Great, I wondered who was the sponsor of my surgery.  I busted him on his choice of apparel and he said something about not pestering the hired help.  Then they busied themselves with moving me to the main machine's table, hooking me up to the 5 electrical lines, the IV tube and the blood pressure cuff (but no O² sensor).  Just as they started draping me in what I assumed were sterile cloths The Dave Brubeck Quartet's Take Five started playing on the radio and I knew everything was going to be all right.

Or al Qaeda was going to attack within the next minute.

Right then it was a toss-up but I didn't really care because the mechanics were covering me with a heated blanket (nice touch), sealing the area around the procedure site and sterilizing it before the A-team arrived.

When they were finished they left and the A-team doctor meandered into the room.  Of course he was dressed in the same OR green with the dopy purple rubber gloves and was wearing blood splash shield in front of his face and a white mask over his mouth so it made it hard to hear him and impossible to read his lips.  He was standing on my right side and there were 2 large monitors across from him that were positioned so that I could see them too (by sheer luck, not intention).  Then he put a portable X-ray shield between the two of us, another non-confidence builder I can tell you and got ready to work on my ticker.  Just as he started in I said "Doctor, aren't you forgetting something?"  He said "What's that?" and I said "Aren't you supposed to give me a bullet to bite on?"  He said "It's digital now," and dug right in.  So to speak.

For some reason he'd move the table I was on under the X-ray head vs. merely moving the X-ray head itself.  The arm the X-ray head was on moved from side to side and slightly up and down my body and the X-ray head itself could be rotated back and forth across my chest and up towards my face.  I believe the this was being done by someone else on the team sitting in another room because the A-team doctor was busy with other stuff and didn't want to get his hands dirty playing with a damned joystick.  Occasionally I'd be instructed to move my face ot one side or the other to keep from getting my nose broken, literally.

One of the things that struck me the most wasn't watching my spine slide by and my beating heart come into view rather it was watching my lungs as I breathed.  As you take a breath your lungs fill with air and increase in size to take in the larger volume of air.  Every time I took a breath I watched my left lung move down and out of the frame.  Away from the heart.  It was really weird.

As the A-team doctor worked he would tell me what I was going to experience in terms of sensations and in no time at all he had a catheter in my groin and up into my heart.  Now I've got to tell you that it's somewhat startling to watch, in real-time, someone shove something into your beating heart and not only does it continue to beat but you don't immediately drop dead right then and there.  After he'd gotten it to where he wanted to start looking he squirted some stain, no, I don't know the color or brand-name, out of the catheter and into the blood vessel he was currently in.  I could instantly see where the damage was!  It was a classic medical school textbook image.  It looked like a piece of copper tubing that'd been crimped with common jaw pliers.  There was no smooth tapering down to a thin area and then tapering back out gracefully to the original size of the tubing.  It was a 90° angle down to an extremely small opening that burst back out at another 90° angle to its original size.  I immediately said to myself "That's a 95% blockage," hoping to remember it later when he told me what it was.  He fished around here and there hunting for other naughty bits but wasn't able to find any or at least I didn't see any.  Then he backed out and put the catheter directly IN the right atrium (or was it the ventricle?) and injected about a gallon of the stain vs. the syringe fulls he'd been using previously.  This allowed him to see where the blood was going as it moved throughout the heart vs. seeing where the blood was flowing that actually feeds the heart.  It was pretty amazing stuff.

Then he pulled out and wandered off.  Sort of like a lover that's had his way with you and is going for a nap.  I don't know if he had coffee or took a pee but when he came back he leaned in and said "Pat, the cardiology team is salivating to work on you."

Obviously I was right and it really was classical medical school stuff.

I was also right in that I was later told that it was a 95% blockage of the LAD (Lower Anterior Descending) artery. The LAD is the major artery, hell it's the only artery feeding the left ventricle which does the final push to send oyxgenated blood to the body. No wonder I'd been feeling poorly, as opposed to richly (only the people on the other side of the tracks ever get to feel like that).

Then he left and the female nurse showed up, blasted me with something that was supposed to make me mildly drowsy but gave me the same warm-all-over sensation I'd felt when I had the treadmill-in-a-bottle the day before.  She left and the B-team surgeon came in, introduced himself and told me what he was going to do.

By now I've been admonished not to move (for obvious reasons), I hadn't been moving one bit (having someone put something in your heart has a tendency to get to you listen to their every word), and my lower back was killing me.  This was merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg but I didn't know it yet.

He enlarged the opening the other surgeon had started with.  Originally it was a mere needle hole although somewhat larger.  Now the opening was about 3/16" wide and he put another catheter in and up to the damaged area.  As he was working I told him it was strange to be having heart surgery while I was awake, talking to the surgeon ("Don't talk to the drivere while the bus is in motion!") and listening to jazz playing in the background.  Before he did anything I asked him to tell me when inflated the balloon and installed the stent so I could see if I felt it or anything different.  He did and I didn't (the guy that followed me and wound up in my room said it felt like a knife was stuck in his heart).  When he was satisfied with its placement he inflated the balloon on the end of the catheter.  This immediately stopped ALL blood flow to that area of the heart, my lower-left ventricle, and smashed the offending plaque buildup outwards opening the artery to its normal internal size or at least close to it.  Then he pulled the catheter out, put a stent on the end of it and shoved it back where it'd just come from.  In or out, in or out, can't he make up his mind?  He must've driven him mother nuts with this routine at the front door.

A stent, in layman's terms, is a medical version of the old Chinese (Mao's minions are after me again!) finger handcuffs you used to get stuck in when you were a kid except in this case they're stainless steel and they work in the opposite direction.

As he was working I talked to him about "How amazing this really was and that he was so deep in the forest all he could see were the trees.  It was truly God stuff he was doing."  He seemed about as excited as I am going on a really hairy skydive or working a tough shot on a once-only stunt in a movie.

I.e., not very.

When it was positioned EXACTLY the B-team surgeon (can I call him a B-teamer if he does the major work?) inflated the balloon again.  This expanded the stent into the arterial wall making it a permanent installation.

Like it or not.

Now all I have to worry about is setting off every one of Ashcroft's alarms every time I go through a metal detector.

It may be more trouble than it was worth.

Be that as it may, when he was finished installing the stent he pulled everything out of my heart, said "You'll live," or words that that effect and went for another cuppa Joe with the boys in the back room (I'd always wondered what they were having).

The 2 mechanics showed up and I stopped my stopwatch.  It'd taken a mere 1:11:16.95 from when the 1^st drape was laid on me until the B-team was finished saving my life.  Or at least extending it remarkably.  It was incredible when you stop to think about it.  Only a few years ago they would've cut my chest open with a saw and used spreaders to pry my ribs apart to go in and fix my heart.  Now it's something they can do from a small incision in your groin.  Amazing.

The boys got me unhooked, undraped, uneverythinged else and moved me back onto the gurney whence I'd come.  Then they wheeled me back to the waiting room, now an ICU recovery room, and went back to the OR to clean up the mess so they could start all over with the person in #5.

Just another day of saving lives.

OK so back to my back.  It'd been hurting before I was wheeled into OR and was really hurting now.  It's not much of a guess that the 1^st nurse who showed up said that I couldn't move.

No, she wasn't Chinese but I was sure it was a Commie plot anyway.

I stayed pretty much motionless for the next 2 hours until they were satisfied that I wasn't going to die on them and they could hand me off to the next team in the loop.

I was starting to see a trend here, "Can we keep this poor sucker alive long enough to hand him off to the next guy without getting caught and having it show up on our permanent record?"

HMOs, don't you just love 'em?

After the obligatory 2 hours had passed I was taken up to my room by a couple of people who were about as medically gifted as Heckle and Jeckle.  We're talking stumblebums here.  When we got up to my room they cranked my gurney to the same level as the bed and asked me to move my hips over and work my way onto the bed.  Swoop! and I was on the bed.  They were shocked and said that most people would take a full 30 minutes to do what I just did in 5 seconds.  I'm sure they spent the next 30 minutes dicking off at the water cooler or whatever passes for it in the hospital.

Now this was my kind of a room.  It was a room with a view.  The entire outside wall was glass with 2 big sliding glass doors in it and a balcony outside.  Unfortunately it faced another wing of the hospital so there wasn't much to see.  But it was outside and I could see the sky.

Personally I think it was another Commie plot.

But who cares, I'm in my room and I can move my back ... or so I thought.  All of a sudden Imelda's 1^st cousin bursts into the room and declares that I'm not to move for 2 hours.  Yaaaaaaaa!  The Commies are everywhere and my back is killing me!  She's so prissy that I can't even slightly, and I mean SLIGHTLY, raise my back or even move my left leg.  All I can do is wiggle my toes.

So I wait for another 2 hours on another empty stomach until she's satisfied I'm not going to die on her.

At long last the time is up and  she starts working on me.  She takes a blood sample and tests it for clotting ability.  It turns out that I was waiting for the blood thinner to get out of my system so I wouldn't bleed to death on her watch.

How thoughtful of her.

After she's cleaned me up a bit she has me slide over to nearly the edge of the bed and from out of nowhere produces a monster C-clamp that has a large flat plate on one end that's about 15" long and 10" wide and a large pointed screw on the other end of the "C."  It doesn't look like any fun and she's starting to look like a modern day Herta Oberhauser.

This is not a good thing.

You have to realize that I have a plastic sheath in the wound from the surgery and it's been acting like a plug to keep the blood that's inside of me from becoming the blood that's outside of me.

This is a good thing.

Then she slides the flat part of the soon-to-be renamed C-clamp from Hell™ under the bed frame and positions the pointy end over the wound.  This is really starting to look ugly.  She places a large thick plastic oval with a hole in it over the wound so that the sheath protrudes through the aforementioned hole and proceeds to crank the C-clamp from Hell™ down on it as hard as she possibly can.  This pushes the sheath up out of the wound and puts the direct pressure on the wound that some of the literature I was given the night before had spoken about.  Of course it showed an image of a cute nurse applying direct pressure to the wound.  I was ripped off and my back was killing me.  Now I'm stuck, literally, and she says that the clamp will stay on for 45 minutes.

Commie plots abound!

All I can do is wiggle my toes, barely, and think about how I'm going to strangle her when I can get loose.  The mere thought alone keeps me going through the pain in my back and the pain in my hip where the C-clamp from Hell™ is pulverizing my right hip.

Of course by now I've got to pee.  I haven't been to the bathroom since early in the morning and now I've got to go but I'm not going to give her the satisfaction of using the bed bottle.  Especially after turning down her offer before she applied the C-clamp from Hell™.  Foolishly I thought I could hold it being totally clueless about how long "holding it" really meant.

When you're in a situation like this the second hand on the clock moves slower than it did when I was in the 6^th grade and waiting to get out of school for Summer vacation.  Glaciers were formed and melted between each tick of the clock.  Entire species evolved and became extinct.  Every time she caught me looking at the clock she'd say "Don't watch the clock or I'll add another hour."

Considering my predicament this was a powerful threat

But I didn't listen.

Every time she was foolish enough to turn her back I'd wiggle my toes and slightly, ever so slightly, shift my pelvis.  It was probably only a millimeter or so but it felt like a mile.  Or at least a kilometer.

Several weeks later the 45 minutes were up and she showed up to remove her torture device as it'd done it's job and kept me motionless for the better part of an hour while applying direct pressure to the wound site.  Now unless you've been asleep for this story you can see this coming a mile away.  Before she removed the clamp she shaved the side of my stomach and abdomen.  When she removed the C-clamp from Hell™ she put on a very large, hard and thick as your thumb pressure bandage that she held on with what looked like a medical version of duct tape.  This tape had the strongest tape adhesive I've ever encountered.  And I've handled a LOT of tape in my time.  Then she covered the area with some sort of (sterile?) cloth and put a 10# shot bag directly on the pressure bandage ... just to keep it in place.  She followed this up by putting a rolled up towel beside my hip and said the words I didn't want to hear, "Don't move for 4 HOURS."

I was doomed and figured that I wasn't going to survive her medical healing.  Or whatever it was she was trying to do to me.

Of course this just restarted the wiggling and fidgeting game we'd played before.  By now my lower spine was in utter agony and beads of sweat were almost popping out of my forehead in response to it.  Then to complete the torture and knowing I was starving (it's now afternoon and I hadn't eaten since the previous dinner) she brought in a tray that had a sandwich, a banana, some juice and a small dish of canned fruit on it.  This was placed just out of my reach on a hospital bed type tray just on my side of the end of the bed ... and she walked out of the room.

Suddenly I understood what was happening.  Not only wasn't I suffering from Coronary Artery Disease but the entire ordeal was being taped by a crew headed by that rat-bastard Alan Funt and any second now he was going to spring out of hiding shouting "Smile, you're on Candid Camera!" knowing full well that I couldn't jump up and kill him on the spot.

Obviously this didn't happen.

Another millennia passed ... one ... second ... at ... a ... time.

Starvation will do wonders for your thinking abilities.  After some time of being left to my own devices I figured out that if I moved my left leg just so I could slide out the near-edge tray that was under the large top of the tray and hook my big toe under it enough to drag the thing close enough to enable me to get the tray with my right hand.

Bingo!  It worked.  Success and the sandwich were in my grasp.

Now what?

I looked around the room nervously waiting for something to happen.  Nothing did.  I closed the slide-out tray and pushed the whole tray back where it'd been at the foot of my bed.  Heh heh heh.  Was I clever or what?  Next I unwrapped the sandwich and knowing she'd somehow find the evidence if I put it under my sheets I put the cellophane wrapper and square styrofoam saucer in the sink on my left.  Well away from my torturer, my archenemies, the unaptly named Grace, the nurse in white.  Much to my amazement things were going like clockwork.

I took one bite out of that sandwich ... and she walked into the room looking right at me.

I felt just like I had my hand in the cookie jar when Mom walked into the kitchen after telling me no snacks before dinner.  I was a trapped rat and she was the cat.

I was doomed.

What a bummer, I had gone through all of this only to be killed by an irate nurse whose real job was supposed to be keeping me alive until she could hand me off to the next link in the chain.  Now she was going to be calling the morgue and telling them to pick up my dead ass.  The dead ass with a chainlink fence wrapped around its neck.

Life can sure hand you some surprises sometimes.  And this was one of them.

My only defense was to go into the classic Ralph Cramden "Humina humina humina humina ..." routine.

It worked and she let me off with a "What sandwich?" query as she busied herself with some of my stuff.  She even asked me if I wanted the juice.

Like an idiot I thought that things were starting to work out for me.

Yet another glacial age came and went as I waited for the 4 HOURS to pass with the 10# shot bag on my groin.  Every once in a while Grace would come by, catch me looking at the clock and and tell me "That's another hour."  Finally the time was up and Don, the other guy in the room with me, and Grace were watching live coverage of some moron in a high-speed chase on the freeway with the cops hot on his heels and helicopters all over the sky.  The 4 HOURS came and went.  My back was screaming at me.  My bladder was ready to burst.  And nothing was happening.

It was 5 minutes over the time.

It was 10 minutes over the time.

It was 15 minutes over the time.

Finally I told Grace that I was done (but I didn't mention sticking a fork in me out of the very real fear that Rosie would show up with one in her hand) and she came over to my side of the room, looked at the clock and started to take all of the crap off of me.  Hooray!  I'd done it.  I hadn't had to use the bottle and I was finally going to be able to move my back.  Things were going to be OK.

Or so I thought.

When she finished taking everything off she looked at the wound to make sure it was looking like it was supposed to look and said to me "Don't move for another 4 HOURS."

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I peed in the bottle.

But my back was still in agony and there wasn't going to be anything that I could do about it until Hell froze over or Grace died.  Whichever came first.  At that point it looked like the guy with the pitchfork was going to be putting on ice skates before I ever got out of that bed.

Entire civilizations rose and fell while I waited for my sentence to be complete.  Sometime after midnight Grace came over, checked me out, blessed my progress and said that I could lay on my side but I couldn't bend my leg for the rest of the night.

I gave up and tried to sleep.

It was a total waste of time with 5 wires coming out of my chest, an IV line in my arm, an O² hose in my nose and a blood pressure cuff taking my blood pressure every 30 minutes and the damned alarm constantly going off on the unit they were all plugged into.  I was having constant uncontrollable (for now?) PVCs (Pre Ventricular Complexes, i.e., extra beats) that either came in pairs or occurred more than 10 times per minute.  I had hoped the operation would clear this up but apparently not.

Fun wasn't a word that could be used around me at that point in my life.

When it got light outside my Wall O' Glass I was ready to get the hell out of Dodge.  Of course this didn't happen.  By now I'd been swapped out to a new nurse team who had to come in and do everything all over again "Just to be sure," but things were looking up because I was finally feeling better.  The pain in my chest had finally subsided for the most part and that was a good thing.

Breakfast finally, unbelievably, came and went and I actually got to have some (for the 1^st time since way back on Tuesday).  It was scrambled eggs and some other stuff.  What a treat!

Don and I were pretty much confined to our beds for the morning but we were allowed some freedom of movement.  Finally at around noon^ish they took the leashes off and we could get out of bed.  Woo-hoo!  I was able to experience ... the floor.  Wow!  It seemed like it'd been forever since I'd actually been on it and it was only just over a day.  We were told to walk up and down the hall once.  I did and touched both doors just to be able to say I did it.  Time had really become distorted ever since my initial incarceration.  At one point it seemed like I'd been there for a couple of weeks (time really has no meaning when you're without any windows to keep your circadian rhythm going) and it was only Wednesday evening.  Early Wednesday evening.  I'd been inside for just over a day and I was already lost.  What must it be like on a nuclear submarine that goes out and hides in the pond for 90 days?  At least in the ISS or the Shuttle you can look out a window, with the sun rising and setting every 90 minutes time appears to be passing.

As the morning grew on we were waiting for the warden to come by and release us.  Sometime around lunch Don's warden (yes, we had different wardens) made an appearance, checked him out and gave him his furlough papers.

Of course this did me no good and actually made me feel like ca-ca (that's medicalese for "crap") because he was 2 hours behind me in the overall time line and he was getting out first.

Meanwhile Don called his boss who came over after lunch and he fled the room as soon as she arrived.  The dog.

I had lunch.

Nothing happened.

Someone said that my cardiologist was "supposed to show up soon but he'd been pulled away for 3 procedures in the morning and would be here as soon as he was able."

Right and I'm the Pope.

I read.

I watched CNN.

I wandered down the hall.  I wandered up the hall.

Several times.

Still no warden.

It was starting to look like I was going to be there for another week or so and I was about to order dinner when he finally showed up at 2:25.  Hooray!  I was free!  Sorta...

He gave me all sorts of dos and don'ts (anything fun is out of the question, so my diet will make British food like positively exciting) and things to watch out for and then gave me his blessing (what! no Holy Water?) after telling me that I had 2 follow-up appointments in two and a half weeks.  He answered all of my post-op questions and was very through when he answered them.

Before he left I shook his hand and thanked him for saving my life.  He replied "I only relieved your symptoms."

No, he saved my life.

Make no mistake about it.  With my LAD 95% blocked and me being a Guy (and Guys don't seek help until it's too late, one of the Guy Rules) he did save my life and I'll never forget it.

Of course this did me little good because I still had to call the boss and wait for the calvary to show up and spirit me away to freedom somewhere in the sunset (or it's environs).

When the calvary finally arrived at 4:00 I was dressed and ready to walk through Freedom's Gate (there was already another person in Don's previously vacated bed).  Of course this didn't happen because you're going to be wheeled out to the parking lot or wheeled out to the parking lot.

Your pick.

I chose being wheeled out to the parking lot--duh--and made the obligatory major tour of most of the halls in the hospital (the place was like a rabbit warren or a Skinner box).  On the way to the parking lot we stopped at the pharmacy and I got the lowdown on the way things were going to be.

Ugly.

I identified myself and the Pharmacist arrived carrying what appeared to be a large halloween bag full of goodies.  As she started pulling out one bottle of pills after another and describing what each one was and how often I should take it the boss's eyes rolled back in her head because she can't take a pill without gagging and making a fuss to beat the band. Never mind that it's to save her life, it's gag and thrash about and make a fuss.  Now I'm taking 7 different medications a day (2 of them twice) and 5 of them including the twice-a-day versions will be for the rest of my life.  I carry nitroglycerine with me at all times, just like in the movies (...gasp...get...me...my...nytro...pills...gasp..), it's my reserve (at least the repack cycle is longer).  The downside is that I can't drive down bumpy roads without risking blowing myself up and making the lead-in to the late news.

We made it to the car and amazingly I managed to survive the trip home.  The pain level was relatively low and I was really glad to be back home and the hell out of hospital jail.  That night I was able to sleep in my OWN bed (what a treat!) completely unencumbered by anything attached to my body or beeping in the room or having someone come in and bother me and not fighting a split-down-the-back hospital gown that doesn't turn with you.

It was glorious and the most restful night of sleep I'd had in a long long time.

When I woke up the next morning I looked like I'd been kicked in the groin by Wonder Woman and my chest looked like it had a combination of mange and ring worm or I'd been attacked by the giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.  This is all because of a 3/16" ever-so-slight scar in my right groin, that if I'm not careful in allowing to heal completely will open up and I'll bleed to death before I can get to a hospital.

It's thoughts like that that I'll go to sleep with for the next few days.  Brrrrrrrrrrr.

Well that and the thought that as any time my ticker can go wacky with an over abundance of PVCs and it's checkout time at Hotel California.

Hey, no pressure...

The bottom line: CAD (Coronary Artery Disease) isn't a good thing.  If you take good care of yourself and are careful you'll live a long life.  Remember what Mom always said, "If you've got your health, you've got everything." Knowing that she was right is the worst part about the whole ordeal.