Heart Attack!
By
Stuart Macmillan
Copyright 2011 Stuart Macmillan
www.cepnz.com
Smashwords Edition, License Notes:
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ISBN: 978-1-4581-6530-5
Published by:
Character Education Programmes of New Zealand (CEPNZ)
PO Box 20-616, Glen Eden, Auckland 0641, New Zealand
INTRODUCTION
As you read this true story, keep a look out for all the things I did wrong and learn the right way to identify the symptoms of a heart attack and what to do if someone you know is having one.
HEART ATTACK!
It was at the end of the evening meal, a nice dish of stir fried vegetables and noodle, when the pain came on. "I think I may have eaten that too fast. It feels like indigestion coming on", I said to my wife.
I had been getting "indigestion" for about 6 months prior to this but this pain started getting worse. It started as a stabbing paid in and around my left arm pit and then right across my chest. It felt as if all the muscles in my rib cage started to get tighter and press against me.
I reached for a Quickeze and started chewing but the pain persisted so my wife suggested taking an aspirin just in case, which I did, but "nothing was wrong, it would go away". The pressure eased a bit so perhaps the indigestion was easing so I went outside for a smoke to relax.
I walked around a bit rubbing my chest and stretching my arms because it felt as if by muscles in my chest were stiff or were just coming out of a cramp like you feel in your leg. That was helping. Perhaps another smoke and it will all be gone. After all, it was a bit of a fright to get suck painful "indigestion".
Half way through my cigarette the pains started coming back on again. This time it was a bit stronger and it was starting to get a bit harder to breath with the tightening of the chest muscles. I was also starting to feel a bit light headed and dizzy but that was probably from the second smoke I thought but why was I getting a pain in my throat and neck and now even a tooth ache right across my lower jaw?
My wife told me to sit down and stop walking back and forth. She didn't know what it was and nor did I.
I looked at the portable phone on the table in front of me and wondered if I should call my neighbour or something. Then I remembered the free health line, 0800 611 116. I thought I'd call them to put our mind at ease. Surely they would tell me it would go away soon.
No easy way out. After briefly describing my symptoms and answering a few question the registered nurse on the end of the line told me to sit down and hang up the phone. She had rung an ambulance for me and it was on its way.
"What!", then, "Thank God", I thought. I was scared and so was my wife. We had known of others who had died at the same age as us, 48. I will never forget the blank look of shock on the face of my wife and my personal feeling of terror and the suspense of waiting for the ambulance to arrive or what was going to happen next.
Questions were going through my head as the pain persisted and I waited for what seemed like an eternity: Was I going to die? What would my wife do without me? Will I go to hospital or will the paramedics fix me here at home? When will this pain stop!?
I heard the siren of an emergency vehicle up the road. Will this be my ambulance? Please God, let it be for me! Yes, I could hear a familiar sounding vehicle pulling up outside. My wife went out to guide the ambulance to the right door as they hand parked next door.
The two medics came inside carrying all sorts of equipment but they were calm, polite and straight to the point right away. By this time I was a bit light headed and out of breath but I tried to answer all their questions as I knew they would need to know every fact as clearly as possible in order to do their job. They connected me up to a portable heart monitor by placing round stickers on my chest connected by wires to the small machine with those familiar heart beat lines we all see in medical dramas on TV. Then one gave me a spray of GTN under my tongue (no, not another tax from the government but a harmless chemical that helps to immediately open up the arteries more to help the blood flow), put a face mask on me to give me oxygen and inserted an intravenous needle (IV) into my left arm. After listening to my symptoms and monitoring my heart rate and blood pressure I was told that it sounded as if I had suffered a heart attack but they wouldn't know for sure until they got me to hospital.
One of the medics had by this time brought a gurney (a type of metal stretcher on wheels) to the front door. I looked at my wife again. She was standing in the background with a worried look on her face and I told her not to worry as I was now in good hands and the pain had subsided from a 9 to a 6 out of 10 (the ambulance medics always asked how the pain was on a scale of 10 with 10 being the worst pain I had ever felt in my life). For her sake as well as mine, I asked if the medics knew how long I would be at the hospital and which one it would be. They replied that they couldn't say and that would depend on the examination at the hospital, which was going to be Waitakere. At least it was going to be local.
As they wheeled me out to the ambulance I told my wife once again not to worry and tried to smile. I said not to bother coming with me as she wouldn't have a way to get home. "Don't worry; I'm not going to die yet. I still have a lot of work to do before Christmas and we're still going down to see my Dad next week", I said. "You better not" she replied with a blank look on her face. I took my mobile phone with me and said that I would call her or get the hospital to call for me.
It was the 18th November and my Dad was turning 79 in just over a week and we had already made the arrangements to go down to see him in the Bay of Plenty. Plus we had a lot of work to do before the schools closed up for the end of the year. Nothing can happen to me with plans in place, I thought.
In transit to the hospital the medic in the back of the ambulance with me kept asking me how the pain was. He had given me a "baby dose" of morphine for the pain earlier. It was easing a bit but every now and then it came on with more intensity and he gave me another spray of GTN under my tongue. I just wanted to get to the hospital and hoped that they would send me home with some pills or something. Time flew but by this time it was about 9 in the evening, I think.
At Waitakere hospital I was taken into the examination area and transferred onto one of their examination beds and surrounded by nurses all doing their jobs, connecting me to other monitors and an electrocardiogram (ECG for short. It produces a graphical recording of the cardiac cycle on a paper chart through electrodes stuck to the chest and back) and a female doctor asking me questions. When asking about the pain I recalled how I thought I had been having indigestion every week for the last 6 to 8 months and that earlier that morning I had a pain under my left arm pit and an indigestion attack when I was out at the shops earlier in the day. When asked what my Doctor had said this was, I replied that I had not been to a Doctor in almost 20 years. The Doctor and all the nurses looked up from what they were doing for a moment and exchanged glances. Had I done something wrong? I was proud that I had not been to a Doctor for so long.
Therein lied problem number one: It became evident that had I been to a Doctor 6 to 8 months ago when I first started getting these pains, he would have told me that I was suffering from Angina (Angina is chest pain or discomfort that occurs when your heart muscle does not get enough blood) and they could have put a stop to it way back then if I hadn't been so silly!
The staff took blood samples from me and wheeled me out to a private waiting area on the bed while they waited for the test results to come in. During that time I was also taken for X-rays. Within an hour, I think, another examining Doctor came over to me with a nurse and told me the whole story. The blood test had shown a specific protein that only shows up after a person has had a heart attack and therefore, that was what I had suffered. I would be transferred to the Cardiac Care Unit (CCU) for further observation and a Doctor would see me in the morning. I asked if someone could phone my wife to explain and they did. By this time the pain had eased to a 3 out of 10.
The nurse that wheeled me on the bed through the hospital explained that 50% of heart attack victims never make it to hospital alive because they don't call an ambulance. I told her that I saw an old friend also wheeled into hospital by the ambulance staff while I waited before. Although he was in his late sixties he had always taken part in the Round the Bays Fun Run and I had overheard him telling a nurse this when he was admitted to a cubical next to me. My nurse said to me that they had had a fitness instructor younger than me admitted with heart attacks before, it could happen to anyone. I admitted to her that I was worried having to go to a cardiac unit instead of just a regular hospital ward. Her last words to me were, "Unless it is written that this is your appointed time, you will not die". Well, that made me think for a while!
The staff at the CCU transferred me onto one of their beds, connected me to their oxygen through a tube under my nose to relieve pain and settled me in for the night after giving me an ECG and regularly checking on me and doing everything to ensure that I was not in pain.
Early the next morning I was given medication, another ECG and blood pressure monitor (this would be regular for every day I was there ad everyone else in the CCU). I said the pain had subsided and that I would no longer need the oxygen. The doctor would be coming to see me soon and my wife had phoned at 1am to see how I was. Ah, I thought. After he or she has seen me I'm sure I'll be sent home. I was brought the phone so I could ring my wife and talk to her to explain what had happened. She would be coming in later in the day to see me and the kind nurses had given her a direct phone number to call to ring straight through to the CCU.
When the doctor came to see me, he told me that he was a cardiologist (cardiology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the heart) and that he would be looking after me. In no uncertain terms he told me that unless I quit smoking, I would die. Well, I had heard people say in movies, "Tell it to me straight, Doc". This doctor did not mince his words and he proceeded to tell me what I am doing to my heart and my life. I had heard it all before on TV adverts but had never taken any notice of it but this was different.
I was now lying on a hospital bed, connected up to monitors through these wires and had a big shock the night before and here was a cardiologist standing over me telling me to my face that I was going to die! I'm not afraid to say that this doctor made the tears run down my cheeks a couple of times while I was under his care but I am glad that he "told it to me straight".
Well, to cut a long story short ... I was in hospital for 5 days. I had been given an ultra-sound type of x-ray of my heart and I was booked in for an angiogram on Monday 23rd November 2009 and my doctor was going to perform it himself. My wife and I watched a DVD made by the hospital the explained all about what a heart attack was and what the angiogram and angioplasty procedures were (you can read all about the procedures if you like online at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angioplasty) and we were also given many booklets to read to every aspect of heart health and recovering after a heart attack. All staff were really helpful and supportive.
The angiogram that I had was carried out at by North Shore hospital. I was transferred to and from there by ambulance from the CCU. This procedure was carried out by having pain-killers administered through an IV drip in my left arm while the cardiologist inserted a tube through my right wrist that travelled all the way up my arm and to my heart. A large x-ray like machine was moved all around different positions pressing against my chest and neck taking internal pictures as dye was injected through the tube into the arteries around my heart.
First, a heart attack occurs when one or more of the arteries that supply blood to the muscle of the heart become blocked and part of the heart muscle dies. I was told that there would be three outcomes from the angiogram:
The blockage to the artery would be small enough to use a "balloon" on the end of the angiogram tube to inflate it and press the blockage out of the way.
They would find a blockage and then perform an angioplasty (see above) to insert a tiny tube called a stent that would support the walls of the artery.
The blockage would be so severe that they would need to give me a by-pass. This is when they would operate and take a small piece of artery from my arm or leg and insert it on the artery on my heart in order to let the blood flow around or by-pass the blockage in my existing coronary artery (coronary just means relating to the heart). You may have heard of someone having a double or triple by-pass, well this is what it involves but two or three coronary arteries need to have this same procedure in these cases.
At the end of my angiogram, my doctor came over to me to explain the results. The blockage I had was in a tiny branch of an artery on the surface of my heart and it was too small to get in there with a stent at this time and they would prefer not to try. Instead he would recommend a course of medication over the next 4 months to try and clear the problem naturally but this would only work if I quit smoking and changed by diet.
This was great news!
The next day the admitting doctor came to see me and gave me the great news that I was able to go home. My wife came in to pick me up at 11am and I was off.
I was still quite weak when I left hospital and I had to take it easy for about 10 days but I had been given my medications to take (5 pills every morning and one every night – now down to just 2 in the morning) and my own GTN spray in case I had chest (angina) pains again. It has been 19 months now since the heart attack that I am writing this and I have not had a cigarette since the day all this happened.
At last I have given up those "death sticks" for good and I am already feeling much healthier and fitter. I promised the nursing staff at the CCU that I would get this message out because I don't want others to go through what I went through. I am glad to be in the position to get this message out through this, our latest resource on health education for schools. If you gain nothing else from this message but that you should either stop smoking or decide NEVER smoke, then I will be happy and so will your family for generations to come. Feel free to take a copy of this true-life event and give it to others.
Don't wait until you have a heart attack. Don't start smoking or you will go through something similar or worse! If you are a smoker, give it up now! The pain is very frightening! The feeling of being scared and looking at the faces of helpless family around you when a heart attack occurs is not very nice at all and it stays in your mind forever. Don't smoke and if you know someone that does, get them to quit.
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