My Heart Attack

I have not been blogging a lot lately. It is an awful twist of fate and irony that my motivation for writing is directly proportional to how busy or stressed I am. If I am busy or stressed, I am full of ideas, I want to write. I was laid off from my Software Engineer position (that I held for 14.5 years) last July. You think I'd be spending a lot of time blogging, because I don't have a lot else to do, but this just isn't the case. I have about twenty post started but each time I look at them with intention of working on them, I just can't do it. No motivation. When I look at my blog and I see years when I posted about 40 different entries, these are also the periods in my life when I am the most busy or stressed. Such is life. 

Wednesday 1/11/23 started like any other. I got up with the boy, got his snack box ready and walked with him out to the bus. I returned to the warmth of the house, I made coffees, read email, looked at jobs on LinkedIn and listened to my morning podcasts. I ate an egg sandwich for breakfast, fed the dogs and then did some yoga on the Wii. Nothing out of the ordinary. At around noon, I noticed I had a dull pain along the length of my left arm that went across the top of my chest down to the top of my right shoulder. It was an odd pain. I have a lot of muscle pain, always have, but this felt different, like nothing I had ever felt before. I walked into the living room and laid down. I tried to sleep it off which I had zero success of doing. The pain wasn't that strong and never was, just very uncomfortable. I also had a lot of coffee at this point so I couldn't relax much either. 

I started to worry that this might be a heart attack. I remembered a conversation I had with my doctor when he told me that in addition to the pain, heart attacks usually come with shortness of breath. Since I didn't have that, I waited ... but not very long. I called my doctor to discuss. He said "oh oh."  He suggested I get to the emergency room, not to drive, but have someone bring me. If I didn't have someone to bring me, call 911.  I then called my wife to see how close she was to the house. She was about 35 minutes away in Burlington. I called 911. I texted her and she left to meet me at the hospital.

Fairfax rescue was conferenced into my call almost immediately. This is my first experience with 911. I am impressed. I waited about 15 minutes for the ambulance to show up. I live on a dirt road, a town away. This was quite fast. I tried to occupy my time to manage the freak out. Nothing much worked. I put the dogs outside, I grabbed my phone and Kindle, put them in my jacket and sat at the puzzle table looking down the driveway. Doing the jigsaw puzzle was a Herculean task at this point. I didn't get a single piece. 

When the ambulance arrived, they tried to back down the driveway. It has been unseasonably warm lately so when they went into the mud (aka my lawn), I feared they would get stuck and I'd have to wait for another ambulance or a tow truck. But she, the driver, pulled herself out just fine. Four EMTs got me quickly in the ambulance, attached to IVs and EKG machine.  I looked like a borg and still do. Here is a picture of what I look like:

They asked me a ton of questions about my health history. I didn't realize at the time but I'd be answering these same questions, in different forms, for the next week to about twenty different people. 

Other than the bump we hit, that sent everyone off the ground, the ambulance drive was uneventful and I thank all the drivers that pulled over for us. Also, of course, to the EMT crew as well. I felt so much better once they gave me nitroglycerin tablets and felt in the care of true professionals. 

Since that day, I have been in the hospital, pain free five days now. I have a lovely private room at UVM medical, the staff here is amazing. I had a mild heart attack. They did some diagnostics hoping that they would be able to repair the problem with some stents. Unfortunately, there is too much blockage. Perhaps the mild heart attack saved my life because they never would have noticed the blockage without it. I have been in the hospital and I will be here quite a bit more until my bypass on the 20th. Wish me luck. I feel confident in my full recovery.