Being a Publicly Conscientious Health Victim - 2008

Firstly, let me explain that this is not my fault. My daughter cruelly planted the idea in my head one day while I was lying in my hospital bed. And naturally, my accountant’s creative juices began to flow. In fact, one morning while my wife was in the hospital, and I should have been lying spread eagle across my bed snoring away with immunity, revelling in the fact that I was free of the 2 foot strip of bed I am usually confined to, I found myself wide awake at 5 AM composing. It is a heavy burden when you feel the need to exercise your public duty.

I have discovered over the past few years that an angina attack is not when the Roughriders invade BC Place to take on the BC Lions. That’s a Regina attack. It is in fact when you suffer chest pains due to pressure built up from blood forced through narrowed arteries. The effects are often not felt until the blockage reaches about 90%. As a two attacker, I am somewhat of an expert on this and feel the need to share my vast knowledge and provide helpful tips to others contemplating an angina attack.

My wife was scheduled for surgery on Thursday. This was very stressful for me. It would have been cool to say she was getting an operation to fix that bum knee from years of hockey or football, but instead it related to some female parts that gentlemen do not talk about. Telling people she was going in for an operation was always followed by a silent prayer that they would not ask what the operation was for. On top of that, she was getting a lot of attention and I just felt I needed to balance things out. Having my own medial condition before hers was the only solution. That’s where angina comes in.

Firstly, one should always be prepared. It is a good idea to be well dressed and have clean underwear. When I felt the first mild sign of chest pain in the middle of the night, which might have also been attributed to the greasy sausage I ate for dinner, or an awkward sleeping position, I made sure I went to work in a nice suit and tie. I forgot about the good underwear but more about that later. Being well dressed in ER dispels any notion that your problems stem from having spent the night on the streets, regardless of how wrinkled your shirt is. Perhaps people might think I was a highly successful businessman suffering the effects of the current market crash.

My chest pains began on my coffee break at work in downtown Vancouver. Walking caused the blood pressure to go up, which then caused the chest pain as blood began to pump faster through my clogged artery. Sitting allowed the pressure to drop and the pain to leave, making it possible to enjoy a nice cup of java. However, on returning to the office and feeling the pains once more, it became impossible to blame yesterday’s sausage.

When faced with the reality that you are in need of emergency care, you need to make some difficult decisions. In today’s society, it is important that whatever you do is eco friendly, leaves only a small carbon footprint and will not impact too severely on our ailing medical system. With the cost of gas, and the shortage of paramedics, I really had no choice. I had to take skytrain to the hospital. Besides, the station was right beside Royal Columbian hospital, and no one lives near downtown, making visits difficult. The fact that I didn’t want paramedics storming the office and carting me off in a bed in front of my co-workers never entered my mind.

This decision was not that popular with some of my friends and family (OK, all of my friends, family, doctors and one or two of my enemies) but in my defence, with the last similar incident, I continued to work for almost two months before my scheduled angiogram, resting whenever the chest pains started, so sitting on a train and remaining inactive should be OK this time. I did kind of forget that the hospital is up hill from the train station, and my final one half block walk to emergency was a little stressful. I was very comfortable on the train though and calmly called my wife on my cell phone to let her know where I was going. It is not my fault that she called back seconds before the train went underground and we were cut off right after I said the word “emergency”.

When I arrived at ER, I knew it was game on! ER’s are usually full of people all vying for priority in being helped. This place was no exception. Unfortunately I had no blood dripping from my face or other physical signs of stress, but I was the only one in a suit and I decided it would not be a good idea to downplay the chest pains that were now fairly strong and not subsiding, even after I sat down. Perhaps it was the stress of the woman who appeared to swallow one of those exercise balls and was wailing loudly. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t just pull the plug and let the air out of it. Her husband tried to push his way up the list by claiming she was in labour or something for two days straight. A likely story. Meanwhile I had visions of collapsing on the floor in front of everyone. My suit wouldn’t help me there. My chest pains won out over the exercise ball and I avoided the angry glances of those who arrived before me as they wheeled me away.

In ER, you stop being a person and become a pin cushion instead. Nurses who are not too skilled at finding veins use you for practice. They stab you, twirl the needle around in case you did not feel the initial stab, and try again somewhere else before calling for reinforcements. They then take a big piece of tape and try to maximize the amount of arm hair they can capture as they cover up their mistakes. Heart patients are a bonus for these sadists. They paste these contact pads all over your chest. Some showed remorse and shaved a few patches before pasting the pads. I think they then draw straws to see who gets to remove the pads from time to time for reasons unknown. I think the secret is to maximize the amount of hair you pull out while not leaving a flesh wound. The biggest wound I had from the entire operation and which continued to give me pain days after I got home was the removal of one of my first pieces of tape in my arm. The nurse did not go to tape school 101, and not only removed the hair in my arm, but the flesh underneath as well. I was concerned about the open wound but I think they gave me a shot for it.

Hospital gowns are an interesting piece of work, carefully designed to maximize a patient’s discomfort. One size fist all apparently. Despite their length, which goes from loose on your shoulders to just above the knees, the designer felt that two strings was all that was needed to hold these babies together. Nurses on the other hands, being sadist by nature, have never really figured out the purpose for these strings, and generally choose not to tie them at all. The gowns are made of linen material. This is done so that a patient getting out of bed, and throwing back the sheets, can’t tell the difference between the sheets and the gown, creating a 75% chance that he or she will throw back the covers, including the gown, and lie fully exposed to the world. I think it is also for this reason that the bed is situated so that the unit staff down the hall can watch and laugh.

This was not good enough for my nurse. I don’t want to question her motives, and I know she wasn’t married, but the day before my angiogram, she decided it would be good to “prep” me. She removed my underwear so she could shave in places that strangers should not go. Not having adhered to the “wear your best underwear” rule, or perhaps in anticipation of the get out of bed procedures, she took my underwear and I didn’t find them for two days. This added an extra dimension to getting up and walking around. That evening, as I stood in front of the window to wave goodbye to my family who were parked outside, she came to check on one of the chest contacts that were not sending messages. So, there I stood, in front of the window and in line with the unit clerk desk, while she checked under my gown. Had my children looked up at me at that moment, they may have been traumatized for life.

The actual angiogram and angioplasty (where they insert the stent) was very interesting. While shaved and ready to go, the cardiologist instead chose to enter my body via my wrist rather than groin area. The subsequent itchiness from hair growing back was all for not, but at least the nurse had her fun. One is fully conscious during the angiogram/plasty. This is good and bad. Good in that it is fascinating to watch on the monitor as the scope enters you arteries and you see your heart beating and the fluid flowing through the arteries. Bad if you are being operated on at the end of the day, and you hear the discussion among the attending nurses about who had a long day and may leave early, before the procedure is over. “Hello, I kind of like your full attention!”

The wrist entry procedure was wonderful in that you are only required to keep that arm still and the wrist above your elbow for a few hours after the surgery, and treat it as though it is broken for the next day. This is much better than having to lie on your back with the one leg that was used as the insertion point being held completely immobile for 6 hours following surgery, plus the comforting threat that if the plug inserted into the artery should pop off, you could bleed to death. Even better, you should not do any dishes, write e-mails, or do hard work for several days. While they didn’t say it specifically, I believe you actually shouldn’t do dishes for at least a week or two.

The final shot the hospital has on you before you leave is the removal of the contact pads on your chest. These were torn off with great delight prior to the surgery, and then replaced with new ones afterwards. You have so many of these that when you come home, you may find extras that were missed. They look like the push buttons on a western shirt, and can be arranged in a line so you appear to be wearing a western hairy shirt. One word of caution though, shave underneath them first or stay away from your spouse when she is mad.

My wife entered a different hospital, Eagle Ridge, the morning after I returned home. This allowed for a good comparison of the two facilities. We both, as elitists, and under the care of Her Majesty the Queen, had private rooms. She was issued knee high socks to wear, while I had some confusing paper slippers. They had two holes in them, perhaps so that if your hands are cold, you could put them inside your slippers. She walked to the operating room, like a lamb to the slaughter. I rested in bed. She got free TV, I did not, even though she is on my medical plan. She received blenderized soup, which I did not know even existed, while I got turkey and mashed potatoes. One meal she got was beef macaroni and a cracker. If you lay the cracker on top of the macaroni, it would be completely covered. However, the best difference was that I got the Striker 1, while she only got a GoBed.

Striker 1 had it all. Full bed lift, knee raising button, full sitting position, forward tilt in case you want to dump the patient out of bed, and, while we never got a chance to take it out for a test, I’m sure it was the fasted bed on the floor, much better than Striker 2. Gobed on the other had, did not have a master control button and wasn’t built for speed. Next time you are in an ER, ask for the Striker.

My final discovery about visiting a hospital is that, despite my age and lack of long or short term memory (except for some great Grey Cups I remember), hospital care workers are no better, even the young ones. The first thing you do once you are admitted, is to answer a number of questions about your health, current condition and symptoms, and how you got to the hospital. Within an hour of completing the interrogation, the assigned ER nurse will again ask many of the same questions. “So, how did you get here, by skytrain?” Once a room is secured for the overnight stay, (I asked for a room with a view but Striker 1 was a bonus), the new nurse again asks the same questions. This continues with every shift change. Does no one read the reports? I was getting very tired of answering over and over again, until I got to the OR prep area, and the nurse there looked at my chart and said, “So you’re the one who came here on skytrain!” Luckily she was nearing the end of her shift and planning to go home before it was over.