Hello from the Mt. Sinai Hilton. I’ve got a view of the inland waterway from room 691. I’m groggy, but it is from what they are doing, not any illness. I spent the morning in ICU (Intensive Care Unit) wondering where all the sexy TV nurses were. My guess is the nurses were wondering where all the handsome rich patients have gotten to. ICU is a glass room where you have no privacy and they make sure you don’t get more than two hours of uninterrupted sleep for any reason.
Mind you, the staff must not get many people like me in there, meaning someone who knows his left ventricle from his right, and where his femoral artery goes. I’m on an unnecessary sedative, I was awake when they went in and knew instantly they found the blockage. I was in limbo, remembering all kinds of people poking me in the thighs, after the operation. Who knows? I was alert on waking up today. Thank goodness I brought a book to read in case I had been left in the emergency waiting room again. (It's pure coincidence, but the book was “In Cold Blood”, Truman Capote.)
I called Rhonda, chatted with Ernie. They’re going to get HR to help until I return. My guess is back next Monday, the 29th. Everything is fine medically, they are observing me to see what might have caused this attack. I have remembered everything, and unless related to before I quit smoking, I can’t help them out here. No herbal supplements, no Viagra, no nothing.
[Authors note: the stay in intensive care had the strangest justification. They were looking for something that had caused his heart attack and there was nothing. No family history, no stress, no high cholesterol, none of the traditional causes so they were taking no chances. There was quite fine but under constant surveillance, reading my book.
It turns out there really wasn't a blockage. The theory is that the blood vessels on the outside of my heart, well not plugged or clogged, weren't straight enough. Although I was groggy, I was awake and watched the whole procedures on the overhead. The stent did not spread open my vessels but quite visibly straightened out what I could see was a nearly 90° turn. They very rapidly go in through an incision on your inner thigh and it's all over in a moment. The pressure is gone. I could breathe again. I was good to go.
Then they placed me on a series of very expensive medication that I could tell had very little purpose but to cover all the bases. Nobody knew what the cause could be. Two new words entered my vocabulary, Plavix and Lipitor. That turns out to be one expensive regimen if you don't have Medicare. After a day in the classroom and a lot of head scratching over normal ratings of all my vitals, they transferred me to room 691, and that was one of the worst places I've ever experienced.]
