Serious As A Heart Attack!

Serious As A Heart Attack

“Life is hard.  After all, it kills you.” ~ Katharine Hepburn

Death at a Funeral

Some people think about death once in a blue moon, a fleeting thought that floats in and out of the recesses of their minds.  Some never think about it…really think about it.  I think about death in some form every single day of my life.  I think about when I’m going to die, how I’m going to die, will I be naked when I die?  I then I think, of course, I’ll be naked when I die.  I probably have an unusually thorough concept of my own mortality. 

I’ve been to so many funerals in my life, I’ve become somewhat of a funeral expert.  I’ve been to so many funerals that most of my wardrobe is black, just to be prepared.  I’ve been to so many funerals that they refer to me as pallbearer number three.  I can’t hear “the Old Rugged Cross” without tearing up, on cue. 

I’ve developed an anxiety disorder in reaction to death.  I went to a lawn and garden show with a friend of mine several years ago.  We got to the flower arrangement section, and there were all these big arrangements of beautiful flowers.  It was late May, getting ready for June bride festivities, and there were lilies, carnations, roses…all white.  When most see a big bunch of white flowers, they would think wedding…not me; I’m thinking funeral.  I started to have a panic attack.  I got short of breath, jumpy, light headed.  I freaked out and dove into the koi pond.  I can’t go back to the Nashville Convention Center because of that…and a couple of other things, too, but I won’t get into all that.

I come from an unconventional, dysfunctional family.  When I was little, and still now, people would ask me about my family, and I had my response down.  I was raised by my great grandparents, because my mother died when I was five, and I never really knew my father.  The first thing out of their mouth was, “great grandparents?”  Yes, great grandparents.  We pop ‘em out quick in the Eidson family.  In fact, the women in my family don’t bother getting married, so I come from three generations of Eidson women.  My mother’s maiden name IS my last name.  And so was her mother’s.  We don’t like change. 

Don’t Fear the Reaper

The first Wednesday of the month, I produced a show at the area comedy club.  The show was called “Girl On Girl Comedy and Revue”, and it featured female and gay comedians, burlesque acts, musicians, and pole dancers.  I had been doing this show for a couple of years now and was sitting in the green room, waiting for the show to begin.  All of a sudden, I felt very hot and achy.  It was June, and I had heard of several people acquiring summer colds.  I dismissed how I felt as me possibly coming down with one.  It felt like the flu.  As I finished my beer, the feeling passed, and I headed to the stage to start the show.  The show went on without a hitch.  Some of the other comedians and I even went out to a bar after the show and sang karaoke.  Everything seemed fine.

The next day, I felt like there was an elephant sitting on my chest.  If you have ever had bronchitis, it feels somewhat like that.  I was also coughing quite a bit.  Both of these symptoms supported my thought that it was a cold or bronchitis.  I had decided that if I felt like this the following day that I would go to the doctor.  On Friday, I felt fine, so I dismissed it.   By Saturday, it was back and to a stronger degree.  I was coughing so hard that I thought I may urinate myself.  I could not get comfortable.  Standing, lying down, or walking gave me no signs of relief.  Sunday, I was going downtown to do a tour, and I felt quite disoriented.  I felt drunk as I was walking down the sidewalk.

I had been taking medications to alleviate my symptoms.  For my cough, I was taking cough syrup.  I took Benadryl in case it was allergies.  I even took Xanax in case it was just my anxiety flaring up.  Nothing helped.  I thought that my disorientation and woozy feelings were a result of taking these medications.

At that time of year, we had a music festival going on downtown, and there was a medical tent set up.  I thought that I would stop in and ask them some questions.  My feeling was that if they expressed concerns, I would go to the emergency room after the tour was over.  Once I told the medics that I was experiencing chest tightness, they refused to let me leave the tent.  The old “I’ve got to go tell my boyfriend something real quick” didn’t work.  They would have been responsible if something happened after I left the tent, they explained.  So they put me in an ambulance.  They said they would be low key about it, as to not draw attention.  Unfortunately, there was a handful of little silver-haired ladies standing nearby, watching me be put on the gurney and into the ambulance.  I could just imagine by the looks on their faces that they must have thought I was drunk or hopped up on drugs or something.  They didn’t put the siren on, but they didn’t have to.  The extremely loud beeping sound of the ambulance backing up caught everyone’s attention!  “In case no one is looking, right over here!  Look at this person being hauled off.”  

In the ambulance, they hooked me up to an Electrocardiogram, or EKG, to take a look at my heart.  They said it looked normal, but gave me some aspirin to chew up and a nitroglycerin tablet.  I immediately felt better.  After they moved me into the emergency room, they hooked me up to another EKG.  They also took my blood.  They checked my blood pressure and said that it was a bit high, but said that they EKG looked okay.  The technician said, “You’re EKG looks good.  We’ll wait until your blood work comes back, but we’ll probably release you.”

By now, I am starving, so I’m planning where I’m going to go after I get out.  Should I get steak and a beer?  Maybe a little cheesecake for dessert?  When the other technician brought in my results, the first technician’s face changed.  “I did not see this coming,” he said.  “You’re enzymes are elevated.  You’ve had a heart event.”  Heart event?  What does that mean?  I asked if he meant that I had a heart attack.  He said, “A small one.”  A small one?  That’s like saying, “You’re kind of pregnant.”

He then went on to tell me that they would have to run some more tests.  I asked, “Okay, when do I need to come back for that?”  He said, “Oh, you’re not leaving.”  I was then admitted.  I was floored.  How could it be a heart attack?  I was only forty years old!  Only old people had heart attacks, I thought.

So I got settled into my room, not really sure what to expect.  The next day, they wheel me into the ultrasound room.  It was just me and the ultrasound technician.  He was a very meek, quiet fellow.  He was not much for chit-chat, so I tried to break the ice.  The only time that I had ever had an ultrasound is when I was pregnant.  While he was performing the test, I made the comment, “I think I see the head.”  I didn’t even get a smirk from him, and that was funny!  That is when I knew it was serious.

The next test they performed was an arteriogram.  During this procedure, the doctor inserts a catheter into an artery in your leg.  The nurse came in to shave me before the procedure.  What I thought would be my leg ended up being my groin.  As she was shaving me, I said, “I think I owe you dinner now.”  At least, she laughed.  After the catheter is inserted, they shoot a dye into your arteries to monitor the flow of blood.  This will allow them to see any blockages, as well as revealing any damage or narrowing of the arteries.  I will have to say that was the most action that I’d had in a while. 

Once that was finished, they wheeled me back into my room to wait for the doctor to review the findings.  A few hours later, the doctor entered.  He was a handsome, young surgeon, but super serious.  “He couldn’t possibly be old enough to know what he was talking about,” I thought to myself.  He introduced himself and began to make a crude drawing on the dry-erase board.  He drew a heart and pointed out where I had three blockages:  two were ninety-percent and one was eighty percent.  Everything that he said after that became very muffled, like Charlie Brown’s teacher in Peanuts.  He said that I would need to have surgery:  a triple bypass.  Again, I asked, “When do I need to come back for that?”  Oh, I wasn’t leaving.  Surgery was scheduled for Wednesday.  I didn’t even have time to worry.  I asked him how many times he had done this operation, and he retorted, “About two thousand times.”  At least, that had made me feel a tad better.

All that I could think about were all of the things that I had put off or had not done yet.  But at the same time, I felt helpless to worry.  What would worrying accomplish?  I would be lying if I said I was not nervous and scared.  I was petrified, but at the same time, oddly calm.  There was absolutely nothing that I could do about this situation.  I had to put all of my faith in this Indian Doogie Howser.  This man was clearly well-learned, well-trained, and well-prepared.  I had to put my faith in his abilities.  I didn’t have a choice.

The next morning, as they prepped me for surgery, I had to rely on my humor to stay sane and not breakdown crying.  I had a song stuck in my head that oddly gave me strength and serenity:  Blue Oyster Cult’s 1976 hit “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.”  “Seasons don’t fear the reaper, nor do the wind, the sun or the rain, we can be like they are.”  There was no sense in fearing what was about to happen.  It was out of my control.  The song gave me a sense of solace.  I found it ironically comical to be singing that song to myself.  It was a matter of laugh or cry, or in this case, laugh or die.

As they wheeled me into the holding area, I tried cracking jokes with the orderly.  They gave me a lovely blanket made of what looked like bubble-wrap and readied me for anesthesia.  The orderly rolled me toward the surgery room, and I was still joking about the situation.  I asked him if he ever had patients joke as they were being carted off to surgery, and he said sternly, “No, never.”  I’m still not sure if that was a good thing or not on my part.  I was not in denial; I just saw no need in fighting it.  My life was literally in their hands.  I had to put my trust in their abilities.

On June 12, 2013, I had a Coronary Artery Bypass Graft, also known as a CABG (pronounced:  cabbage).   In layman's terms, I had a triple bypass.  This is referred to as open heart surgery.  That is a very serious surgery that is done to treat people with severe coronary heart disease (CHD).  Basically, plaque builds up inside the coronary arteries and can cause heart attacks and even death.  The surgery is intended to improve the flow of blood to the heart.  During this procedure, the blocked arteries are bypassed with healthy artery or veins that are grafted from other areas like the arm or legs.  The surgery takes several hours to perform and the opening of the arteries can last ten years or more.

I woke up several hours later in the recovery room with tubes coming out of me and wires everywhere.  The only way that I could communicate was a feeble attempt at sign language with my flailing of the arms.  It is hard to convey “Get the fuck away from me!” without using words. 

The surgery was a success, because I was still alive, however, I could barely move.  Just moving from the bed to a chair seemed like an insurmountable act.  Just the thought of coughing or sneezing was excruciating.  My chest had literally been split open and sewn together with metal.  Pulling the drainage tubes out of me was just as horrible to feel as it is for you to read.  Imagine pulling off a band-aid that is inside you, and you will have an idea of what it was like.   

Blood vessels from my leg were removed and used to connect to other arteries to bypass damaged arteries.  This is called Coronary Bypass Artery Grafting.  Nearly 500,000 CABG procedures are performed each year in the United States.  It is one of the most common major operations.  That did not settle my nerves at all.

Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States, and it accounts for nearly one in every four deaths.  It tends to be more prevalent in men than women, but is the leading cause of death in both genders.  According to the Center for Disease Control, heart disease is responsible for over 600,000 deaths in the United States each year.  That is nearly the current population of my home town, Nashville, Tennessee.  The first couple of times that nurses told me that I almost died, I ignored it.  Then, a few more nurses and doctors told me that I almost died, I still brushed it off.  But after a few dozen people tell you that you almost died, you sit up and take notice.  These statistics could have included me!

They had me stay in the hospital for several days for observation and rehabilitation.  Needless to say, I was the youngest one in rehab.  The other patients were primarily elderly and some with pacemakers, but we were all in the same boat now.  The walk from my room to rehab, which was just a few doors down, felt like miles.  They had us get up on the treadmill and walk for just a couple of minutes at the pace of a snail, but it felt like torture.  I kept my spirits by singing Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” as I made the trek.  In addition to rehab, I was now on medications that they informed me that I may be on for the rest of my life.  But I was alive!  Now, I’m a lifetime pill popper.

I had a lot of time on my hands for the next week as I waited to be released from the hospital.  I posted pictures and updates on Facebook.  One of my friends appeared alarmed by my post announcing my stay in the hospital and upcoming surgery by asking me if I was serious.  My reply:  “I’m serious as a heart attack!”  I do love a good play on words and irony.  This picture freaked people out online.  I had to unplug myself to go to the bathroom, and it looked like I was flat-lining.  I posted, “Oh, no.  I’ve flat-lined.”  Someone asked me, “Really?”  How can I type this if I’m dead?  Some people online aren’t super smart. 

That much time on your hands in a confined space gives you a great opportunity to reflect and plan.  I realized that life is not only too short, but it could end at any time.  We are only here for a finite period of time.  We need to make the most of it.  Tomorrow is not guaranteed.  Life is so precious and fragile.  These phrases may sound very cliché, but nonetheless true.  I was given a second chance, and I needed to do something with it.

We need to make the most of this time, because we do not know how much of it that we have.  We do not need to spend a single second being unhappy.  Now that being said, we cannot possibly be happy all of the time.  We will experience sadness, anger, or stress from time to time.  It is our reactions to these things that determine how long we will be unhappy.  Life is too short to be in a relationship, job, friendship, or anything where we are not happy.  We either need to change the situation or change how we react to the situation.

Before I could be discharged from the hospital, I had to have a bowel movement.  Their rules, not mine.  I sat in the bathroom for a while trying to make nature call.  I had to drag my machine and all of its wires over to the door, but even on the other side of the door, I could hear the incessant beeps of the monitor.  I brought in my phone and pulled up music to drown out that noise.  I thought that Pantera could block the beeps, and I chose “Cemetery Gates”, because I thought it would be creepy but still get the job done.  Sure enough, mission accomplished.  Music and humor got me through another tough situation. 

According to a report from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. and that number has stayed the same as the prior year.  Heart disease is the number one killer in America, followed by cancer, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  In 2016, 633,842 people died from heart disease, followed by 595,930 from cancer.

There are a number of risk factors for heart disease.  These risks can play a role in developing the disease, as well as, increasing your chances of making the existing disease worse.  Among the various risk factors for heart disease include:  genetics and stress.  One risk factor is if a person is genetically disposed to heart disease.  There is not much that can be done about heredity, but knowledge of such a predisposition can allow you the opportunity to take preventative measures.  However, there are risk factors that can be altered, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, an unhealthy diet, being overweight, and being inactive.   Also, women after the age of 55 are more apt to get heart disease (and keep in mind that the heart attack symptoms in women can differ greatly from men).  According to the Mayo Clinic, about half of all Americans have at least one of the three key risk factors for heart disease: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and smoking.

Stress is also a significant risk factor, because unrelieved stress may damage your arteries and the heart itself.   With today's busy lifestyle, coupled with inactivity, stress has become a common element of our daily lives.  As we have learned, stress is the number one killer today.

There are several symptoms of heart issues, which may include:  chest pain, sweating, a feeling of pressure or burning in the chest, irregular heartbeats, shortness of breath, and/or pain in the arm, back, or chest.  But not all people experience the same signals.  For instance, I felt the “elephant on the chest” and shortness of breath.  I did not experience any pain, per se.  Women typically have varying symptoms from men in regards to heart attacks.  But any related symptoms should be taken very seriously, especially while participating in physical activity.

Measures that a heart patient may take to prevent and to improve their health would include proper exercise and diet, as well as getting regular check-ups with a medical professional and taking the proper medications.  There are also other actions that the patient may take to aid in their health (of course, these alternative methods DO NOT take the place of medical assistance, but are advised to be used in conjunction as a complementary therapy). 

Now having this surgery does not mean that I am out of the woods.  I have to do check-ups each year and stress tests every few years.  But research done at Aarhus University in Denmark shows that mortality increases after eight to ten years.  According to the Mayo Clinic, most people may remain symptom-free for as long as up to ten to fifteen years, however, other arteries or even the new graft may become clogged.  This would require another bypass or angioplasty.  That is scary!  I almost died, and I may die again.  (Well, we all die, but ten years comes quickly!)  Along with a healthy diet and regular exercise, the Mayo Clinic suggests that patients manage their stress.  That hit home!