Friday morning (11 Feb 2022, around 6:00 am) I became partially awake, and very uncomfortable. I was sucking in air in great breaths, and they were very cold, much colder than my bedroom air is. The image before me was of a stack of tubes, from which the air came. Then I fully awoke - to intense pain in my chest, both shoulders, and both sides of my back. In addition I had pain in my bowls of such intensity as I've never experienced before.
I had a good idea what the other pains might be, but not the bowel pain, which confused the issue. I waited a little while, but decided I'd better take action. As I got out of bed I was struck by an extreme case of diarrhea. I had to make three dashes to the toilet for explosive dumps before I could take time to dial 911.
I dressed quickly, but The Los Angeles County Fire Department arrived so quickly I didn't have time to tie my shoes. The fire guys made a quick assessment, asked some questions, and ran an EKG. One of them then gave me 3 chewable aspirins and told me to chew them. Then he asked me to lift my tongue, and gave me three squirts of nitroglycerin. Meanwhile another inserted an IV Catheter in my left arm, first of 4.
By this time, the Los Angeles County ambulance had arrived. They had me get on a gurney and told me they were taking me to Huntington Hospital, because with something this serious I needed a specialist hospital. So, with sirens wailing, we got on the road. An IV drip was attached to the catheter for the trip.
At Huntington, they wheeled me into a receiving room and took a couple COVID swabs. A doctor came in and looked at the Fire Department's EKG. He advised me this was very severe, and gave two options, but strongly advised surgery for something this serious.
I signed a paper and they wheeled me immediately into the Cardio Lab. Fortunately this was a week day, as the Lab is closed on weekends, and it would have taken longer to get the crew together. Surgery took 1 hour and 15 minutes. They found my main artery was blocked from groin to heart. They reamed it out and inserted stents for the full length.
I was conscious during this whole operation, but feeling no pain. Though fabrics blocked much of my view, I could often see part of one of the screens and could watch wires and stuff traveling up my artery. At one point I could see my hip and pelvic bones.
First Day:
I was wheeled off to a room for recovery. A doctor told me, "Don't even think about checking out".Technicians came by and hooked me up to a monitor checking my heartbeat, and blood oxygen continuously, and blood pressure every 5 minutes. Of course there were IV drips, probably two by now. In this hospital they aren't actually "drips", because the tubes pass through pumps that control the rate of flow.
In the afternoon, a Nurse and assistant came and removed the automatic monitor machine and wired me to a pocket sized heart monitor that continuously sent data to a big screen somewhere. It only lit up the local screen when the batteries were changed, or it was nearly out of battery. I didn't learn how to turn on the local display until my last day.
Then they sat me up and installed a Hospital Gown with a pocket for the heart monitor. They unplugged the drip pumps (they run on batteries for an hour or two) and with one guiding the drip stand (it had wheels) and the other holding the hospital gown closed in back, they marched me a ways down the hall and back. I plopped into the bed.
Nurses:
Every one of the Nurses and Assistants was a guy. I didn't see a single female nurse until the morning of my departure. There were various young ladies, and I do mean young, and small, who wheeled around testing machines, hooking them up, and recording blood pressure, heartbeat, and blood oxygen, about every 4 hours, day and night. They were tightly wrapped in the same dark blue scrubs as the guys.During my stay I was visited by five Vampires, each of whom drew blood. The first two who visited me were of the young ladies described in the paragraph above. The later three were black ladies of larger stature.
COVID:
Patients did not wear masks, but all had been tested for COVID 19 when entered into the hospital. All staff wore N95 or KN95 masks. some of the nurses wore an N95 with a KN95 over it, and eye shields. The N95 is official with elastic straps over the head and back of the neck. A KN95 has ear straps and is considered a little less secure.The Room:
Once wheeled from the Cardio Lab, I was in the same room until discharged. The room was quite nice, spacious, and with windows. It had it's own bathroom. Oddly, my perception of this room in memory is very limited from time to time depending on what was going on and who and what equipment was there. This changing perception solidified into the single complete room concept by the third day.Hospital Gown:
This is one of the most useless and unmanageable misdesigned things ever made of fabric. People would have more dignity going around naked. The heart monitor fell out of the pocket within minutes. The gown became completely tangled with the blankets, I couldn't tell what was what in the dark. Somehow I got it untangled and tossed it.Hospital Bed:
This was a very expensive unit. It could raise from flat to sitting or lift the legs under patient control. Aside from that, it was entirely weird. The sleeping surface was composed of air bags, which it would inflate and deflate to try to maximize comfort. It did this whenever it felt like, and often, and with a loud growling sound. If you moved, it would wait around 30 seconds, then adjust again. If you changed the pitch of the backrest, 30 seconds later it would be inflating and deflating airbags all over the place.This bed had no place to hold heart monitors, phones, it's own nurse call / TV remote unit, or anything else. Everything was either falling on the floor or getting tangled in the mechanism. The hand holds were poorly placed and hard to hold onto. Every time I told a nurse or assistant it had serious design flaws, the response was, "No kidding!". One told me patients are often asking, "How do I turn this thing off". His response, "This thing is incredibly complex and cost more than my car. I don't know if it even can be turned off".
This first night was awful, I got no sleep - and it wasn't the bed's fault. The night staff were running what sounded like a carnival in the next rooms. It was very loud and all night long. In the morning I noticed there was a heavy wood door behind the privacy curtain, and asked that it be closed every night, and told them why. This was ordered. I had to partially counter the order telling staff they could open the door to come through, and that it could be left open during the day.
Second Day:
I was encouraged to order something to eat from the hospital kitchen. I didn't actually feel like eating, but did order 2 multigrain pancakes. They were very bland. I didn't quite finish the second one. A chest Xray was taken, and an ultrasound image of the heart.There was concern for my breathing being shallow. A new IV drip was set up that was supposed to dehydrate me, particularly my lungs. Unfortunately, I was constantly falling asleep due to sleep deprivation from the previous night. I almost screwed up the test because I'd missed that it was already running and discarded the sample before realizing it was live. Fortunately I knew the exact volume of the sample, which was sufficient for staff. The sample was the amount of urine in a urinal bottle.
Breathing did become easier, and I was given a device that measured my ability to inhale. I should have taken that with me at discharge, but I didn't. There was, however, some disagreement among the doctors as to whether I might have a touch of pneumonia. In any case, they provided a heavy dose of antibiotics, by IV drip, of course.
That afternoon one of the IV catheters needed to be replaced. The nurse tried three times, then called in a young woman he said was the best at it. She tried four times and failed. One problem was probably dehydration from the morning event. They called in a guy who had an ultrasound probe, and he set the catheter into a deeper vein in two minutes.
One thing that bothered me a lot was total lack of the communication and writing environment I normally enjoy. I had no computer, editing software, or even paper to record things (I did have a pen). I could do no work. I was also totally isolated from the outside world. I thought of asking for a computer with email, but couldn't remember anyone's email address anyway, I type them so seldom.
Strangeness:
This night there was no loud noise, and I slept, but rather strangely. Much of this I attribute to my isolation as explained above. It was divided into two sections by the arrival of one of the young ladies with a monitoring machine.In the first segment, in a dream state, I was presented with many pages from my Web site, except not from my waking Web site, and not on computer screen, but as sets of documents that could be opened up and examined. Each document, and its sub-documents had a black circular emblem with a complex design in the upper left corner, where my waking documents have colorful photos. The emblem were the same for every document. This whole sequence somehow had a very definite Japanese feel to it.
I opened documents and examined them. They seemed to be in html format. I was finding things that needed to be corrected. I started to realize I could not correct them now, because there was no method to do so, and I could only go on to the next. I could not save any information, and realized I wouldn't be able to remember any of these corrections when I left this dream state. I continued on reviewing documents until awakened for blood pressure testing.
The second section was also in a dream state with an overall Japanese feel to it. Here I was presented, similarly to the documents in the first set, bright red lozenges, about 2 inches long. At this time I was quite aware I could do nothing, so I just watched them pass.
These episodes made me very aware of what it was like for primitive humans, who had no way to preserve information except through story and song. Fortunately, they worked in a waking state and could preserve information in their minds until they could compose stories and songs. I didn't even have that, because in the dream state, each thought erased the previous one.
Third Day:
Some time during the early hours of the morning, the diarrhea returned. Since I was tethered with tubes to an IV rack, to get to the bathroom I had to unplug the pumps from the wall and tow the rack along with me to the bathroom. This was not totally successful, and there was some mess that I cleaned up. This was repeated later in the morning, again with some mess to clean up.Of course there were more IV drips, but for one the tube was too short, so they moved the rack around to the other side of the bed, where it was very crowded. This resulted in disaster. The diarrhea struck again, hard, and I just couldn't get at the plugs to pull them. I ran out of time and could not stop the outpour. This time I called for clean-up. What a mess.
Since the short tube drip was done, I had the rack moved back to the other side. there were a couple more diarrhea events, but they were minor with plenty of time to get into the bathroom.
I was again urged to order food from the kitchen. This time I did order the oven baked fish with some potatoes. It was, again, pretty bland.
Hospital Food:
The problem with hospital food is not the skills of the kitchen staff. The food they prepare must be acceptable to everyone, which means bland. Further, dishes must meet requirements of the various diets. In my case I was assigned to the "Heart Healthy" diet, For this the kitchen adhered to the AHA salt recommendation, which salt metabolism experts consider dangerously low. The experts don't worry about it, figuring that only a few nut cases would ever be able to get their salt intake that low, but the hospital is trying, so super bland.The doctors were indicating I'd be discharged on Monday, the 4th day, but in the evening it was found my heartbeat had become erratic, so this needed to be fixed. The preferred method was with an IV (what else), which would take 24 hours and might or might not work. A small bag of strong medicine was dripped in within 10 minutes. Then a large bag was put up to drip a dilute solution to replenish the medicine in the body for 24 hours.
Strangeness:
This night, in dream state, I had a very odd concept as to how sleep worked. I conceptualized it as a series of tasks to be completed going around a clock face. I had completed maybe half the tasks, but further progress was halted by a small pile of pictures blocking the clock face. Yes, once again, the strong Japanese overtone - the pictures were Japanese. I tried to move them out of the way, but couldn't.I remember only the one picture that was completely visible on the top of the pile. In the foreground there was a sand dune with patchy vegetation. Playing in the sand were a bunch of rather plump Japanese babies. In their diapers they looked like miniature sumo wrestlers. In the midrange, just down from the dune, there were trees. In the far distance, visible between clumps of trees, there was a mushroom cloud. I was given the title, "Never Again", and the name of the woman artist, but I failed to remember her name. This was at about 2:00am. I was able to reconceptualize sleep to get past the photos, but I did not sleep well the rest of the night.
Fourth Day:
This was not an eventful day, as I had nothing to do except lie on my back until about 8:00 in the evening. I did order a tuna sandwich, with multigrain bread. The lady told me "No. Multigrain has salt, it'll conflict with the rest of the tray". When I finished my order the lady asked, "That's it? nothing else?". I said "No", and she responded, "Since there's nothing else I can put back the multigrain bread". The sandwich was, of course, bland.At 20 hours, heartbeat was still erratic, and doctors were discussing using a less desirable electric method to do the job. At 21 hours, my heartbeat stabilized.
I really wanted to sleep this night, but was prevented from doing so by the bed. Every time I felt myself sliding into sleep, the bed would wake up with a growl and start pumping air around, "to make me more comfortable". It seemed to have the timing down perfectly.
Fifth Day:
In the morning, a cardiologist came in and said, "Well, look at you. You came over all by yourself, so we don't have to zap you". I was now to be discharged that day, after a visit from the hospital cardiologist. He didn't show up until the nurse made a phone call around noon.This morning was the first time I had seen a woman nurse here. Her name was Taylor (but not Swift). She did the usual quick checks, a bit more thoroughly than any of the guys had, and then pretty much ignored me, as I was now a done deal.
Also, Vampire #5 came by to take a sample. She looked at my badly bruised and battered left arm and said "Oh my, lets see the other one. I don't want to take any bad news to the head vampire downstairs, they get a little crazy". The right arm was not as badly bruised and battered so she drew blood from there.
After the hospital cardiologist came by, the nurse came by to to finish things up. I had removed the portable heart monitor because one wire had come disconnected and it wasn't working, so I gave that to her. She checked a couple other things, and then as the last task removed the two IV catheters.
The Volvo Key:
On day two, an assistant named Orlando came into the room, and said he'd forgotten to inventory my posessions. They were in patient property bags on a chair. He tallied them, then showed me the list he'd made and asked if that was all. I told him there was also a Volvo key and described it. He searched the property bags, pants pockets, and inside my shoes. No Volvo key.He tried for days to locate that key. The last place I'd seen it was on the floor of the Cardio Lab, being picked up by a woman. He couldn't check the Lab, as it was closed during the weekend, but he did ask there Monday morning. No key was found.
I got dressed to get ready to go. Finally, I picked up the two property bags, and there, on the chair cushion, was the Volvo key.
I was asked by the nurse if I had my car here at the hospital. I replied, "No", so she asked me if I had a car at home so I could go out and get my prescription meds. I replied, "Yes". The staff there said they'd fetch an Uber. A nurse assistant accompanied me down to the main lobby, and we waited. The Uber never showed up. We went back up, and the staff there called a Lyft, which did show up.
I was concerned about the house, because I knew the fire guys wouldn't be able to lock it, and there would be newspapers in the driveway letting people know I wasn't home. I found that someone had tossed the newspapers up onto the porch, perhaps someone who had seen me being taken away. The house was all OK.
First Task was to make the bed, as the sheets had been somewhat soiled by the initial diarrhea attack. After getting to sleep, I was delighted to have a short but normal dream time sequence with no Japanese overtones at all. It featured a minor auto accident on an almost deserted freeway.
And, after all this, they tell me February is "Heart Health Month".