So. I had a heart attack. February 23, 2018. Most people that I know already know that, it wasn’t a secret. I haven’t really talked about it that much, really, except for a timeline of events right after. I tend to gloss over it, and show one of my exceptionally tiny scars. The one that I can show with my pants on, anyway. Here’s the thing, it terrified me. I’m still terrified.
I never expected anything like that to happen to me. I didn’t know it was happening, when it was happening. I thought I had the flu, honestly. Here’s what happened.
I went to bed early on thursday night, because I was so tired that I couldn’t even think straight. I got up fairly early on friday, and it hurt to take a really deep breath, and the more I tried to breathe very deeply, the more it hurt, my whole chest. I couldn’t stop crying. I mean, I cry quite a bit, but I really couldn’t stop, at all. I called someone to ask to borrow some money to go to Urgent Care, because I don’t have insurance, which hurt me almost as much as the physical pain. People were dying from the flu. Worst flu season in a long time. I kept trying to tell myself just to go back to bed.
Money acquired, i set off to Urgent Care. I filled out the form, and sat down in the lobby. Within five minutes, a nurse came out and knelt down to talk to me. She said that with my symptoms, I needed to go to the Emergency Room. I’m completely alone. Only one person in the world knows that I was going to Urgent Care. I say okay, and get in the car and drive myself to the ER of the small, local hospital. My grandmother is home, alone with my dogs, one in a crate, one she can walk. It’s about 10 in the morning when I get to the ER. I walk in to the nurse at the counter, and fill out the paper. She takes my temperature, and blood pressure, stares into my face for a minute, steps through the swinging doors, and comes back with another nurse, who asks me if I’m okay to walk (uh, yeah, I just walked my ass in here….) and says that she is going to give me an ekg and draw some blood. She gives me the ekg, and I am immediately put in an ER room. No one has really talked to me about anything at this point. A doctor comes in, and tells me that a nurse will be in to do an echocardiogram, so I need to strip to the waist on put on a gown. Sure. Echocardiogram gets done, IV line gets put in. I am somewhere that a nurse can see me at any given moment. The lady in the room next to me is apparently nonverbal, and sounds like she is the beginning of the zombie outbreak. She’s retching and heaving constantly, and I can hear people asking her questions that she clearly can’t answer. I feel so bad for her. The doctor comes back, and says that I am going to be taken to the CT lab for a CT scan (like, WTF else would they be doing in there?) Okay. I’m wheeled around a couple of halls, and into the CT lab, and transferred to the CT bed thingy. I actually stood up and moved myself. The CT technician gets a call, and tells me to hang tight for a minute, she has to step outside. Sure. Like I’m going to argue. Up until this point, I’ve been chatting with everyone, small talk like, being sarcastic and all. I’m chilling, waiting for the CT nurse to come back, and the swinging doors fly open. There are three people standing there in completely different uniforms than anything I’d seen so far, with a huge looking gurney, bed thing. There’s a red headed lady, a tiny, boyish lady, and a dude with glasses and an extremely neat beard. The red headed lady comes in, and hands me a tiny pill to let dissolve in my mouth. She’s super cute. The guy says, “Okay, you might get a pretty severe headache from the nitroglycerin, we’re ready to go now.” I look at his uniform, which clearly says Critical Response Unit. As do both of the ladies’ uniforms. I look at him and say, “Go where?” And for the first time since taking action, I cried.
Keep in mind, at this point in the tale, you actually know more about what is going on, than I did in that moment. No one had said the words heart attack to me. No one had said much of anything to me, about what was going on. Apparently, at that moment, everyone else realized that I had no clue what was happening. The doctor was found, after they transferred me to the big gurney, and gave me another IV port. He told me that I was having a heart attack. Thanks, dude. I figured that out. They are taking me by Critical Care Unit to Rex UNC Hospital in Raleigh, 45 minutes or so away. Okay.
They start wheeling me to the CRU ambulance, the tiny lady is telling me that everything is okay, I have the best crew possible. They are going to take care of me. I’m in the ambulance, seeing my commute to work facing backwards. I pull out my phone to text my Mom. I text her that I’ve had a heart attack. Yes, text. That’s how much I hate talking on the phone, in general. The red head suggests maybe I should call her. So, I do. By now, I have four IV ports in me. One in each hand and each elbow. They have injected me with something that makes me feel kind of warm and fuzzy. I call my Mom. She asks what is happening. I still kind of don’t know, other than that I’m in an ambulance. So, I ask. The red head and the dude start explaining what’s going to happen, and I relay it to Mom. I’m on the way to Rex UNC Raleigh. When I get there, I’m going directly into the cath/stent operating room. There is a doctor waiting for me to get there. I tell Mom I’m fine, and ask her to go to my house after work, because one of my dogs is in his crate, and I don’t want him stuck there, and Gramma can’t open the crate, and can’t walk him, anyway, because he is a bit of a tasmanian devil on a leash. He can’t be loose in the house when I am not here, not because of him, but because of her. She’ll just let him out of the house. If I’m not here, he might not come back. He’s my baby, I never said he was perfect. I learn during the rest of the ride that they were there, because the small hospital is part of the network, but always has CRU from the big one during some of their operations, just in case. If they hadn’t already been there, I might have gotten to ride in a helicopter. Yeah.
I completely flip off somebody who is tailgating the ambulance. I’m still joking around. The guy says I look familiar. We start talking about my favorite gay bar, where he might have seen me at some point. We hit a bump, and the red head ends up partially in my lap. I tell her it’s fine, she can stay if she wants.
The tiny girl is the driver. When we get to the ER driveway, there is a landscaping truck partially blocking it. I hear her yell for someone to move it, and hear a male voice saying to give them a minute. Then she simply says no, and tells the two in the back to hold on. There was no hit, and no rocking, or violence, but she did slide the ambulance across the front of the offending truck. The guy asks if there was contact, the tiny girl says not to worry about it. Apparently a giant heavy duty ambulance can move a parked landscaping truck back a bit, if necessary. They wheel me in to the operating lab. Just, straight in. There are a team of people, standing there waiting for me. I receive the most epic de-pantsing of my life. One moment, I’m wearing my baggy jeans and panties and the hospital robe, the next moment, I’m just wearing a hospital robe, like a magic trick. Ta da!!! I’m transferred to the operating table, and the room goes mostly dark. A very tall man who is all mask and glasses tells me that he is the doctor, they are going in through my wrist. He is on my right side. There is a huge flat screen on my left, almost as long as I am, with numbers and stuff. This mechanized box thing over me moves closer to the doctor. The table raises up, until I’m chest height to Dr Jobe (I find out later that he’s 6’4”.) He tells me that he’s going to insert a stent. I honestly don’t look at the giant screen, I just watch the reflection of it in his glasses as he stares at it. I have no clue what kind of anesthesia, if any I’ve been given. I’m pretty calm. At one point, while getting a stent, it’s possible that you will have a lag between heart beats. This happens. Beep, beep, beep……. Everyone in the room says “you’re okay, it’s okay”.....beep, beep, beep. The box thing over me moves, I guess it is how he sees what he’s doing, from my wrist to my heart. He stands for a moment, watching, his hand touching mine, but not over it, and looks at my face and says that I did so well, he’s going to do it again. So, he puts another stent. That’s two. My heart stops again during placement. I’m a little better prepared this time. They withdraw whatever the fuck alien tentacle is in my arm all of the way to my heart. They slap a bandaid on my wound, and I’m off to cardiac ICU.
Mom is still at work. I’m still completely alone. I told her not to come, and no one else knows where I am at this point. I meet the cardiac ICU nurses. I am told that I have the best male cardiac nurse on the ward. He’s the only male nurse there. He says it’s good that they could go through my wrist, it’s a little easier to heal from. He’s talking to me, asking me how I feel, because I should immediately feel better. I don’t. I actually feel the same. He stops and looks at me. He makes a call. And I’m going back to the cath lab. Honestly, I don’t remember this part as well. But I get a catheterization for a small pulmonary embolism, and a small artery expansion catheter. Back to cardiac ICU. At this time, I’m exhausted. I talk to Mom. I am freaking the fuck out. About money. About how long I will be there. Because of money. I haven’t eaten today, the nurse says I can order something. I don’t. Money. I’m really freaking out about money. I text the special person friend that I had then. I tell him what happened. I make a casual facebook post. I completely break down. It’s about 7pm now. I’m terrified, and crying. My cousin says she is coming by, her boyfriend was on the way to visit someone in the same hospital. She comes up, he is in the car with their daughters, because that is easier. She is supposed to report to Mom as to how I really seem. She’s there for about twenty minutes. My special person friend visits later. He seems completely at a loss. I feel like I have to keep reassuring people. He hangs out for a while, but there really isn’t anything he can do.
So. I’m alone again. Freaking out about money, and not having insurance. I lay there, all night, staring at the tv. I have no idea what was on. Nurses check on me every thirty minutes. I don’t even talk to them most of the time, I just smile. The sun rises, eventually. A nurse helps me out of the bed to pee. I learn that I pee a lot more than the average person, at one time, over the next days. They make me order breakfast, I’m not hungry. Of all the things I can do to keep costs down, food seems my only controllable variable. Mom comes. She hangs out for five hours or so on Saturday. I get moved from ICU to the regular cardiac wing. They threaten to not send me home if I don’t order food and eat when I’m supposed to. I hate hospitals. I don’t even like visiting them. So, I eat. Special person friend visits again. He brings me flowers. He leaves. I stare at the tv for another overnight. Mom comes back Sunday morning. She leaves for a bit to pick up a couple of things. She hangs out until I am released. She watches me tell a cardiologist that I have checked the prices of every drug they are giving me and that there is no way in hell that I can afford one of them. He tells me that there is a new generic. I tell him that the generic is $197 per month instead of the $450 a month for the name brand. We agree on a completely different drug. I am discharged. I go out to eat with Mom. I pick up the one drug that I have to have immediately. We go to hospital number one to get my car, and I drive it home. There is literally no one else to do it.
I get home, and I’m still the caregiver, here. I’m the sane one. I take two weeks off of work. Life goes on.
Now. I wrote all of this out to ask some questions. I am not looking for any flattery, or any pity, or any guilt, I honestly want to know some things. I did start a go fund me. I am beyond appreciative of those that could donate, there, and just through paypal. I didn’t raise enough to do more than one follow up with my cardiologist. I could not do cardio rehab, at all. I simply could not make it work. I have a part time job, as it is, because my grandmother got herself in a fuckton of debt before anyone realized how bad off she was. I’m doing everything I can to stay afloat. I don’t know how to say the next thing that I need to say. So, I guess I’ll just go for it. I know that I am loved. I really, really do. I know things are shitty, everywhere. I started making jewelry again, while I was recuperating, just for something to do with my hands. People told me that I should sell it. Cool. I ripped back BattyCatty from my former partner, which caused me days of crying, even though he said it was okay. It was mine before it was ours. I followed every avenue offered, to seek help. I know that I am a background person in most people’s lives. I’m not loud. I don’t stand out. That’s okay. I’m an observer, by nature. I am also hella supportive. If you are in a band, and you are on my friends list, I have seen them perform (except for one. But I will.) If you are a DJ, I’ve danced while you mixed or spun or whatever. If you are an artist, I have shared your work, or own your work (again, one exception.) If you are a burlesque performer, I’ve probably seen and tipped you many multiples of times. I have been to innumerable benefits for sick people, even those that I don’t know. I support art. I support my friends. When I needed people, and help, I felt almost completely abandoned. Again, I really appreciate those that did give me monetary help. I feel horrible writing this. I started writing a blog again, because I don’t really talk to anyone anymore, and I’m just really afraid that no one will know some of the things in my head. I feel that I must be a horrible person, because me nearly dying didn’t bring anyone together to help. It didn’t even bring visitors. I did have one offer of a visit, I didn’t forget. As at a loss as I was after the big, crushing, split in my life, I now feel completely worthless. I’m pushing the jewelry thing as hard as I can, and there is minimal interest even. I want to grow. I want to do better, to be better. I’m trying really hard. This isn’t a suicidal thing. I’ve recently done something, completely unlike me, that I would really, really like to do again. This is the opposite of me giving up. This is me fighting. Please tell me what I can do to be the kind of person that people want to support. How can I improve my jewelry? How can I market it better? I’m starting with less than nothing, dangling over a giant pit. I am begging for any input. Please.
