4/14/03
I hugged nurse Bonnie.
The weekend started perfectly. My family (Michelle, Emily, Dave and Marcia) came for a rare visit. We had a break in the weather which meant unseasonable warmth and clear blue skies for us to play beneath.
I even emailed an itinerary to everyone for our weekend as sort of a joke:
8:00 a.m. Breakfast (Pancakes, Hash Browns, Link Sausage)
8:05 a.m. Cartoons
9:30 a.m. Bathing, Primping
1 0:30 a.m. Shopping in Madison
11:45 a.m. Light Lunch in Madison
etc.
The truth was, I had planned to stick fairly close to this fake itinerary as I could. I am not an organized person. It's just that my family doesn't come up to see us all that often and I wanted everything to run smoothly.
The centerpoint of our weekend was a Saturday night reservation at a Mediterranean restaurant. I hired a babysitter for the kids. The adults were going to share wine and tapas without any concerns about childrens menus, booster seats or who's taking whom to the potty.
My Mom got the flu. Poor thing.
In a matter of seconds I had a back up plan in place. I canceled the babysitter, the reservations, hopped in the car with Dave and found the best cuts of beef available within city limits. Then we headed to the liquor store.
According to my Dad, Jim's Liquor has a surprisingly impressive wine collection for a small store located in a small town. It also turns out that Jim (of Jim's Liquor) is the devil.
The devil sold Dave two bottles of Cabernet.
We got back home and began all the chopping, slicing, grilling, roasting. The entire time we sipped on the wine.
In about an hour, or so, we had a meal. Filets for Mom, Michelle and Deb. Dave and I had big, juicy, Flintstone-like T-bones. We ate roasted baby potatoes covered in rosemary, garlic and olive oil. We sautˇed mushrooms in butter, chives and more garlic. The best part is I had actually cooked everything properly (unlike the raw prime rib debacle that I put Glenn and Judy through, but that's a story for another time).
Now. If you have been reading these updates over the past few weeks you would know that lately I've changed the way I've been eating. I haven't been eating less food, just stuff that's better for me. That means for over two weeks I didn't feel the need to suck up everything from my plate. I avoided fried foods and ate a healthy breakfast each morning. Generally, I ate like most normal, healthy people do every day.
Saturday's meal was a detour from this path of wholesome eating. I wandered into the wicked yet familiar territory that I'll call gastronomic sin city. A town built from oil, butter, beef fat with rivers of rich, red wine running through it.
You can guess where this is headed. For some reason I didn't see it coming.
The pains started around 10:30. I knew the symptoms of a heart attack and the pain wasn't radiating into my arm or up into my jaw. I wasn't experiencing the type of heavy, labored breathing you read about. It was just a stabbing pain right in the middle of my chest. On the 1-10 pain scale I was at an 8.5 for about an hour.
I sat thinking about all the stories I'd heard about men who wait to do anything about their symptoms and die unnecessarily because they were afraid of being embarrassed. As for me, I'm used to being embarrassed so I finally decided to go upstairs and ask my pregnant, sleeping wife to drive me to the emergency room.
I walked into the emergency room and told the nurses my name and announced that I was having chest pains. They moved very quickly. Before I knew it I was on a hospital bed with oxygen tubes up each nostril and electrodes connected to my chest, abdomen and ankles (ankles?).
Deb sat quietly and watched.
The nurse, her name was Bonnie, came in and asked me to drink a cocktail composed primarily of Lidocaine and the bile of a dead seagull. Before I had time to fully realize the horror of nurse Bonnie's aperitif, a guy introducing himself as Doctor Sullivan arrived. He plopped down on a chair and rested his feet up on the bed I was lying on. He asked me what I had been doing all evening and I told him the same stuff I just told you.
The doctor told us that because I had been eating better the decision to impersonate Orson Welles for an evening was a bad one. My gall bladder or pancreas had become accustomed to my new diet quickly and got used to taking things easy. Seems that Saturday's dinner produced a workload equivalent to H & R Block's this time of year and those pesky, yet oh so necessary, little organs rebelled.
My cardiovascular system is fine, by the way. "That healthy eating. It'll kill you," Doctor Sullivan said.
Nurse Bonnie came in with a syringe of anti-spasmodic and stuck me in the right shoulder. In about ten minutes, I was back to normal (a relative term). Nurse Bonnie asked me to sign a release paper before I left. Unfortunately she was standing near me as I signed the form and I grabbed her and squeezed like I'd just signed some kind of peace accord. I think she was a little surprised. I was just happy to be getting out of there.
Why am I telling you this embarrassing story? I would like everyone I love to remember that there is no shame in asking for help when you don't feel well. If you even have a slightly suspicious twinge, get your ass to a hospital.
Another good idea is to find, or hold on to, a good partner that will have the grace and kindness to act like it's no big deal to be roused from a sound sleep at two a.m. to sit in an E.R. for an hour and a half because you, basically, have indigestion.
I have Debbie, you get your own.