My parents and I had to wake up very early this morning in order to make it to my scheduled heart biopsy at Northwestern hospital in downtown Chicago.
Fortunately, I was still very tired and was able to sleep most of the way to the hospital. My dad, who would rather whittle away minutes from his ultimate Time of Death by taking all of the side roads into Chicago rather than paying a couple bucks by taking the tollway, was able to get us to the front door of the Feinberg Pavillion shortly after 7:00 am.
My mom and I jumped on the elevator to the eighth floor where I was greeted by name by the secretary there and given my typical blue placard with the letters, “H1” on it. Holding room 1 was my typical spot during these outpatient procedures.
I was met with some new nurses this time. One was a really short, old
Chinese woman, extremely pleasant and nice, (nevertheless, I’m sure she’d be a shoe in at a casting call for a rice field worker). She had the hardest time with my veins, fumbling around with needles in my left arm, while I just lay there gritting my teeth, grabbing the bedsheets, and trying not to squirm. After what felt like an eternity, she asked, “Does it hurt?” (For the life of me, I still can’t figure out what clued her in.) “Very much, so, YES!!” — She graciously apologized and said she would let me rest and let someone else give it a try. It was obvious that today was just not her day when she just stood there for several minutes scratching her head in wonderment while trying to shove a thermometer down my throat. It was obvious she was not getting the reading she wanted, and then I snickered and just waited for her to pull the thing back out before telling her, “You just put an ice cube in my mouth and then stuck the thermometer there 2 seconds later.” She laughed embarrassingly as she realized why my temperature was only 95 degrees.
The nurses from the lab came in and I could tell they were in a rush. After getting myself settled on the skinny, cold operating table, they were able to get an IV fairly easily into my right arm, and get a more accurate temperature reading.
Per my request at every one of these procedures, I was sedated throughout the whole thing.
After it was all over, Susan Tafini, (my new nurse practitioner), came into my curtain cubicle and started asking me about my meds and such. She said that I needed to lay off some of the steroids since my white blood cell count was TOO low, meaning, I’m very susceptible to infection. I also had a high percentage of potassium (where the heck I could be getting too much potassium is beyond me, — OOOH Shoot! My banana just broke off onto my keyboard, brb.)
My echocardiogram, for some reason, occurred much later than usual. At 11:30, the guy peeked in and said he’d be back in half an hour to take me. Starving, I instantly called my mom and asked her to go down to the cafeteria to get me something hot to eat. (It was either that or have one of the dull sandwich’s the hospital serves.) My wonderful, dutiful mother delivered the perfect little lunch to tied me over for a couple hours.
The echo guy told me that my heart was actually pumping better than it should (the ejection fraction rate was about 70%), which meant that I was basically dehydrated. As he put it, “My heart was thirsty.”
I could tell it was finally October. The weather was cold, wet, and dreary — I loved it!
Thank God for another day on my second lease on life!