DAY 3
January 29, 2009
Thursday
12:46 am
Still tired but too wired to
sleep, many thoughts were going through my head. The doctors and nurses had been very clear
that the only reason Ed survived was because of their new “Cath Lab” – because he was able to go
straight from the Emergency Room to the Cath Lab to have the balloon and stent
put in place. The nurse tonight said that before the lab was in place,
the patients were air-lifted to Billings (about 200 miles away). She said they would have the
ability to keep shocking his heart and performing CPR, but as long as that
artery remained blocked, no amount of CPR or shocking would do any good, even
with clot-busting drugs. There was just no way he could have survived –
and that is also why they firmly believe he would not have survived had he
collapsed outside of the hospital “even in the parking lot”. And even
then, it took 11 (12) shocks to keep him going. His heart just did not
want to keep going.
We were “lucky” that all the right conditions fell into
place for us as far as getting him rapid treatment. I wondered if he would ever know how truly
lucky he was to have this second chance. I also wondered if he would ever
know the heartache this family had gone through over these past few days—the
pain and emotional strains are something I never want to go through
again. I don’t know that I can
go through this again. I wondered if he would ever know the trauma and
turmoil Alex went through and the impact it would have on him. I had been
a distraught mess and the kids had been put through hell – Ellie being the most
impacted – nobody deserves to go through that. Of course, I vowed, I
would never mention this to Ed, because my only concern was for him to get
better.
I could
only hope and pray with all my strength that he would see this as a new life, a
second chance, to do things right and to want to live. I prayed hard that
he would come home and get the rest he needed. I wanted his strength to
return. I wanted him to be healthy. I wanted him to appreciate this
rare chance, to appreciate life. My
thoughts also turned to the business, the business that sustained us, but I now
hated. Running a business is extremely
stressful. I wanted him to get out of the business. Maybe he could
reduce it to something much less strenuous and that does not determine our
livelihood.
Same day
5:00 a.m.
I slept for
maybe a few hours before giving up on sleep again, and turned the TV on to watch
CNN for my fix of the morning news—all the while wondering how Ed was doing
and whether there had been any change in his condition.
***************************************************
In regaining
consciousness, Ed saw a black frame around an even deeper black rectangle—
the darkest black possible – a never ending void. He opened his eyes, and the first thing he
saw across from him was a day calendar which read in big, bold, black
letters: JAN. 29. It
was two days later than he remembered.
It wasn’t until he looked around and at himself in the hospital bed that
he realized he must have had a heart attack.
***************************************************
Same day
9:30 a.m
I called the ICU in the
morning to see how Ed was doing, and I could hear the commotion in the
background. The ICU was buzzing with
excitement and chatter—the happy kind. I
spoke to the nurse who said Ed was awake and cheerful. So I grabbed the kids, and we headed out the
door. Alex said he would going to meet
us there, and Shelby said she would come as soon as she could, having just
gotten out of the shower.
Apparently
he had fully awakened at about 5 am. He
had somehow communicated the question “Where am I?” and when the nurses told
him “Intensive Care”, he wrote down “sounds expensive.” Ed was back. They removed the breathing
tube, though he was still hooked up to the oxygen. Most of the tubes were
gone. He still had the heart pads in place (for the defibrillator) which
they continued to keep there for most of his hospital stay. And as
always, he was being closely monitored.
***************************************************
Though the memory of his first
several hours awake are only fleeting images and sounds, he did remember the
first time his family walked into the room.
The room seemed to be dimly lit with monitors and medical equipment, and
yet Katie and the children were glowing.
They were full of life. The rest
of the room appeared dull and out of focus, and yet the family was vibrant and
surrounded by an energetic aura of some kind.
***************************************************
When we
first walked in to Ed’s hospital room, I led the kids (just in case
something had gone wrong), and he looked our way. He was sitting up, propped on the bed, and he
reached outward to us. He seemed
different—almost as if it wasn’t really him— I couldn’t put my finger on it at
the time, and it actually took a couple more weeks for me to realize what it
was. He had help – and I mean help of
the “divine” kind. It was as if angels
were holding him up, giving him back to his family. Though I was not sure what I was sensing at
the time, I could later swear there were others in that room, others that we
could not see.
I knew this
visit was especially important for the children. This was their time. But it was also a very important visit for
me. I needed to see my husband again—I
needed reaffirmation that he really was back.
He had a very innocent quality about him— an endearing, childlike nature. He seemed very happy to see all of us, and
Alex had brought his former girlfriend and family friend, Kristin, who we had
hired during the past summer. It was difficult for him to talk because he had inhaled some of the blood from his mouth wounds, and so they continued to have
him cough in order to better clear his lungs.
He had one
of the Star Trek books in his hand that I had brought the previous day—it had a
picture of Dr. Beverly Crusher and a couple of other characters on the cover. He pointed to Dr. Crusher and told the nurses
that his wife looked like that—“She’s the pretty one” he told them. All the nurses were loving this, of
course.
He reached
out to touch each of the children, counting them to make sure they were all
there—perhaps his mind wasn’t clear enough to determine whether any were
missing, but he seemed to know there should be six. He was moving his hands and arms very slowly,
but that was good enough for me. He was making sense and seemed coherent,
albeit a bit fuzzy and confused on a couple of things (he thought he missed a
band concert—but the band concert was actually the week before—which he
attended). I assumed this would go away as his head cleared.
“How long
has it been?” he asked, and when I told him today was the third day, he seemed
a little concerned that so much time had gone by. But Alex and I assured him everything had
been taken care of at work. Alex and I
had previously agreed not to tell him about the phones that had been shut off
that day—in fact, we were purposefully trying to avoid the subject of work.
During that
first visit, Ed kept grabbing my hand and kept telling me how sorry he
was—several times I noticed a tear at the corner of his eye. While we
were there, I got a call from his brother, Ben, on my cell phone. I was able to relay messages between the two
of them because it was difficult for Ed to talk, particularly with the
oxygen mask on, and with an extremely sore throat. But he very much enjoyed the conversation.
I had to
excuse myself at that point so that I could continue to talk to Ben. I went to the ICU waiting room for a few minutes
and explained to Ben what had happened and what was expected to happen. I then returned to Ed’s bedside where the
rest of the family was talking and spending time with him. The spirit of love was strong in that room
that morning.
He kept
asking if this was real. I thought that perhaps because he had been in an
induced paralysis, he was probably hearing people and things and creating a
dream-like trance.
The visit
was a very successful one, and made us all feel better. We did not stay too long because the nurse
said he had been wide awake since 5 a.m. and it was now almost 11 a.m. by
now. So we promised him we would be back
in a few hours, and let him rest. What a
blessing it has been to have him whole again.
Same day
3:00 pm
Ellie refused to go into the
room at the next visit. She said she
didn’t feel good, and wanted to wait in the ICU waiting room. I wasn’t going to force her to come in. Shelby could not come with us because she
was at work. When the rest of us went
into Ed’s room, he counted and wanted to know who was missing, and of
course, it was Ellie and Shelby. He
wanted to know where Shelby was, and I told him she was at work, but she had
been here earlier, though he did not remember.
He seemed
really disappointed that Ellie wouldn’t come into the room and asked me to go
get her. He said “Tell her I won’t
bite.” So I went out and persuaded her
to come in. She sat in a chair near the
bed, and he touched each of us again, almost as a reality check—to see if we
were all real.
Though he had almost no recollection of our
previous visit (Ben’s conversation, Shelby’s visit, his apologies to me, and so on), it was still
good to see him talking and moving again.
He continued to get some words mixed around, and we hoped it would clear
in time.
He was
talking very slowly, the oxygen mask was off and he had a nasal cannula instead. His movements were still very slow, but he
was paralyzed for over 24 hours, and so this was likely just the traces of the
medication.
***************************************************
With each visit, Ed became more and more able to move and to communicate. He remembered almost none of the family’s
earlier visit, but by that second visit, he noticed Ellie was not there. After some coaxing, however, Katie was able
to bring her out of the ICU waiting room, and she remained somewhat hidden
behind her mother. Ed pointed to her
and said “You need to be baptized.” And
she smiled shyly, understanding.
***************************************************
Same day
5:00 pm
How mobile Ed would be in
the future would be determined over the next few days. The nurse told him
he would need some physical therapy before he goes home. She later told me
she just wanted to get him up and walking.
He seemed to be pretty alert when it came to business matters and seemed to recollect at least the current work that needed to be done.
He remembered
everything before the heart attack – he said the homeowner had given him some
mixed nuts and he thought he was having bad heartburn because of the
nuts. He thought maybe they were bad or something. It also happened
to be that the homeowner was a paramedic (later he said he meant to say Search
& Rescue). When the pain started, he was asking Ed all kinds of
questions (pertaining to a heart attack) but
other than the heartburn feeling, everything else seemed okay.
He
remembered getting to the hospital—I don’t know how much he remembered after
that but he says he remembered the pain, or at least the intense squeezing—it hurt like
nothing he’d ever experienced before. I was sorry that he had to go
through so much pain, but
my thoughts continued to remain on how lucky all of us were. Someone was definitely watching over him and
watching over us.
Though
anxious to go home, he wouldn’t be going home any time soon—at least for a
couple more days. All I could think of was that by all accounts, he
should not be alive (having flat-lined 12 times). One nurse told us he
flat-lined 15 times, and another said 9, but the doctors told us 12, so we
figured that was the final number.
Several months later we came to realize that he hadn’t really
‘flat-lined’ because that would mean there was no pulse. In reality, his heart was simply not
producing a viable beat—the rhythm was unable to sustain life.
Most of our
work contacts were been very supportive, but whether they would hire him in the
future would be questionable, after all—they have to go with the guy that is
going to get the job done—and Ed would likely be out of it for some
time. We knew the the owner of the local
Domino’s Pizza and he had offered us free pizza whenever we needed it – we received a great deal of support.
The stent would
remain permanent, due to the damage to the arterial wall. The blockage was
gone, getting reabsorbed into the body. He would be on blood pressure
medication probably for the rest of his life, and on cholesterol reducing
medication as well.
The phone
continued to ring almost continuously at home, and there came a point when I
had to stop answering it just so I could get something done. In spite of all that was happening in my
family, I still had an assignment awaiting my attention that had to be
completed (getting my bachelor's degree in Business Administration), as well as a test done by Sunday, and here it was Thursday evening already. And as if that wasn’t enough, employee W-2s
needed to be in the mail.
But in
spite of all that, Ed was alive. That
was my primary thought. Everything else
seemed secondary or unimportant. I slept
almost like I normally do, a couple hours here and there.
***************************************************
With the full
realization of the events over the past few days, Ed experienced a range of
emotions: physical pain, sadness with
regard to having a heart attack, embarrassment at the loss of dignity which
often comes with hospitalization, and happiness that he was alive and got to
see his family again. He was also
fearful—fearful that if he closed his eyes he might not wake up again. He might not see Katie and the kids
again.
***************************************************
Same day
10:56 pm
Once the kids and I were home again, I straightened up the house for a visit by my sister, Karen. We were all pretty excited about her visit,
and I felt it would be a wonderful diversion for everybody. At the same time, I was forcing myself to
work on my school assignments, and I found this extremely difficult. My attention was just not there. I felt like I was unable to do my best
work. I was still trying to keep both
sides of the family informed on his condition, as well as his friends through
emails. On top of that, I was doing the
chores around the house that Ed normally took care of: emptying the trash,
cleaning the litter box, and shoveling snow.
I was also trying to keep on top of the housework for the never-ending
stream of surprise visitors and well-wishers.
His
brother, George, called while we were eating dinner—we didn’t answer because we
didn’t know who it was and we were tired of being on the phone all the
time. But George left a message and so
later in the evening I returned his call, but had to leave a message. I had never met George in the 26 years we
had been married, and he had never visited and rarely kept in touch. But I was excited to tell Ed that he had
at least called.
With each
visit today, he seemed a little more alert and better coordinated physically,
although he tended to repeat himself and ask the same questions each time we
visited him— as if he had trouble recalling and separating our visits. This would later become a recurring theme in the future. But I didn’t care any more. The only
important thing was to get him home and well.
Tonight he
told us that tomorrow they were going to start physical therapy to help improve
his coordination. They continued to leave the defibrillator pads on his
chest, and he was still hooked up to all the heart monitors, etc.
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