… in which we meet the cast of characters and discover there’s a problem

Cast of Characters

Patricia: Erstwhile attorney, heart patient. Has braved around-the-world travel and survived a Widowmaker, yet still is uncomfortable with discussing “girl things.” And with spiders.

The Buddhist: Patricia’s longsuffering husband, caretaker and all around good guy. Official transporter of spiders from inside the house to outside.

Dr. Flatline: Patricia’s straight-faced cardiologist, assigned at the hospital the night of the heart attack.

I didn’t really like Flatline that much at first. Flatline, so named because he is the embodiment of “serious as a heart attack,” is all business.  Really, everybody at the hospital failed to respond favorably to my, ahem, lightheartedness about my situation. I’m a reasonably funny girl, particularly after you’ve given me a metric effton of morphine, yet my humor seemed to go right past them, unnoticed. Like when I was in ICU and the alarm on the blood pressure monitor went “ba-Doop, doodle oodle oodle OOP” and I exclaimed, “Hey, I leveled up!”

Crickets.

The only time I ever managed to get Flatline to even crack a smile was when we were talking about some hospital policy that was clearly intended to avoid liability and I muttered, “damn lawyers.”

Perky Nurse:  Patricia’s nurse for the first 7 hours in the ER. Cute as a heart-shaped button on a baby’s footie pajamas. One of the few people over the age of 6 who actually looks great in a pixie haircut with a little barrette in the front.

Weary Nurse: Patricia’s nurse for the final 2 hours in the ER. Weary and apologetic. Bit of an oversharer, but sweet.

Dr. Too Busy for Your Boring Bleeding to Death: ER doctor, asshat, bully. Horrible bedside manner.  Should remember to brush after lunching on curry when he’s going to be breathing in people’s faces at point-blank range.

I. Houston, We Have a Problem

I’ll just get this part taken care of right away because it makes me uncomfortable; in my oddly and selectively Puritanical mind, this is just something you don’t talk about publicly. On a Wednesday in mid-February, I started bleeding. It was not immediately alarming because it was regularly scheduled programming. Normal girl stuff. Only it wasn’t. It quickly became clear that something was dramatically different from what a person would come to expect. I was bleeding a lot. Abnormally and alarmingly a lot. Can’t leave the house a lot. By Friday evening, it was call the doctor first thing on Monday a lot.

Despite my well-known aversions to both using the telephone and speaking to doctors, I did, in fact, call Flatline first thing Monday morning. He’s a cardiologist, so naturally I did not get to speak to him in this first volley of communication. I left a deliberately disquieting message: “I am a patient of Dr. Flatline’s. I recently had a heart attack. I have started bleeding uncontrollably.”  Miraculously, he called me back within 30 minutes.

I explained the situation to Flatline and described the several ways things were not right. I told him that I was having some difficulty standing up and moving around. Even while seated, turning my head quickly would make me so dizzy I felt nauseated. I was unable to concentrate, easily disoriented and I was losing my vocabulary. Forgetting words, I would have to communicate via lengthy caveman-speak: “Sweetheart, can you bring me a, ummmm, that paper you use to wipe your mouth from… dammit! You know… that place where the food happens?”

Flatline told me to stop taking Coumadin, one of the three “blood thinners” I was prescribed, right away. He said if I did not stop bleeding by that evening, I should go to the hospital for a transfusion. I’d already taken that day’s dose of Coumadin, so I didn’t see any reason things would change over the course of the day.  He said at the hospital, they could give me something to counteract it, like intravenous Vitamin K. It was important to get my INR – the measure of how quickly blood will clot – back to a normal level from the pharmaceutically “thinned” state that currently existed.

I didn’t want to go to the hospital. Hospitals never bothered me before the heart attack; I’d actually spent quite a bit of time in them (as a visitor) over the course of my life. I even kind of liked them – they are a place where people get better. For years, in fact, I had intended to become a doctor instead of a lawyer. In retrospect, that may have been a good idea, though it’s not like being a doctor is a stress-free profession, particularly for one prone to overidentifying with clients.

I spent the balance of Monday trying to lower my INR. The Buddhist was fantastic, making me huge piles of things rich in Vitamin K. Kale chips!  Blueberries! Green smoothies!  Spinach salads!  These were all things that I had to cut out or greatly reduce while I was on Coumadin, so it was a real treat to get to have them in as large a quantity as I could eat. More than once I marveled at the strangeness that somewhere in the last few years I became a person who would consider oven-dried kale with nutritional yeast to be a delicious indulgence.

mmm. kaley goodness!

I kept thinking if I could just get my INR down, surely I would stop bleeding and voila! No hospital.  In the evening, I was still losing blood, but opted against a trip to the hospital.  Why pay for an overnight stay when I could just go in the morning and maybe get in and out in one day?

… to be continued