My Night in the Hospital
Men go to the hospital for treatment for one of three reasons: pain, fear, or a nagging wife. I went because of pain. Then fear showed up.
I have checked into a hospital for an illness for an overnight stay only three times in my adult life. Once was in 1961, when the city of Riverside got salmonella poisoning because of the local water system. I was in a university hospital for a couple of days. The second was in 2002, when I had a gallbladder attack, also on Thanksgiving. It was the worst pain I have ever experienced. I told my wife I wanted her to take me to the hospital. They removed my gallbladder. The third time was this Thanksgiving. I did stay overnight in 1999 because of an infected cat scratch, but I don't regard that as an illness. In short, the American Hospital Association has not made much money off of me.
Because I'm on Medicare, it probably made a pretty bundle off of me this time.
I began having symptoms on the night before I checked in. My left shoulder was very sore, and the soreness began to spread into my left chest. I took two Advil, and I slept in one of our spare bedrooms. I didn't think I would have a very good night, but I did get through the night somewhat fitfully. I got up at my usual time, around 3 AM, in fact exactly at 3 AM, when I woke up automatically. I felt OK. I went downstairs, produced four screencast lessons for the Ron Paul Curriculum, and one screencast for this website.
At about 9:45 AM, my left side began to hurt, and I found that I could not breathe well. The pain of breathing grew intense. As it turned out, my mistake was this: I did not take two Advil when I woke up.
My wife drove me. I went to the emergency room. There were not many people there. I gave them my insurance card and my driver's license. They recognized that I was in extreme pain, and very shortly the woman who gives EKG's took me into the small room just next to the ER's waiting room. This is a good policy: fast testing. I was very glad to get on that machine, although I could not stay motionless because of the pain. She took the EKG reading. She looked at it, and she said it looked normal. She escorted me a few feet back into the waiting room. Sitting in a clinic's waiting room under these circumstances is one of life's greater pleasures. The alternative would have been this: "Get a gurney!"
I got into the main ER room pretty fast. They ran a lot of tests on me. I was in terrible pain. I could barely breathe. I was in there for about six hours. I got a portable X-ray. I got several blood tests. By 4:30, nobody knew what was wrong with me. One physician had guessed pneumonia, but he was not sure, and the second physician thought it probably wasn't. So I spent the night in the hospital facility upstairs.
The pain kept getting worse in the afternoon. About 4 o'clock, I finally asked for two ibuprofen tablets. Over the next couple of hours, the pain began to subside. There were more blood tests upstairs. No physician came, but nurses came.
One of them, in her mid-to-late 20's, told me that she had had something that seemed identical a few years before. She said she had excruciating chest pain, but after about two days, the pain went away. She never knew what it was. That was exceedingly good news.
About 8 o'clock, I had two more ibuprofens. I decided I would go to sleep at 8:30, because I was going to be visited by the usual midnight rounds, and I figured I'd get whatever sleep I could. I slept pretty well until they came in to take my vital signs. By the way, "vital signs" is a wonderful phrase. It means there are signs to monitor.
I woke up about 3 AM, and I decided I would sleep in for a change. I didn't turn on the light until about 5 AM. It's the holiday season. I figured, what the heck? It was the first time I had missed a posting on my website in 9 years, and I figured nobody would be too upset. Besides, I was in no position to post anything on a website.
MOTIVATION
I had motivation: pain. I also had this motivation. Sometime in the 1990's, I read Jim Lehrer's autobiography, A Bus of My Own. It is a great autobiography. I liked it so well that I got permission from him to post it for students taking my freshman English course on autobiographies for the Ron Paul Curriculum. He has several chapters on his ordeal as a heart attack victim. This section stuck in my mind. I strongly suggest that you take it very seriously.
He had awoken in the middle of the night with what appeared to be heartburn. His wife grew concerned, and she insisted that they go to a local hospital. Like most husbands, he protested. But the pain didn't go away, and finally he consented. They went to the hospital. The staff sent him to the emergency room. They gave an EKG. It didn't show anything.
The cardiologist and my doctor decided it would be good for me to spend another night at the hospital as a precaution. Eventually night came, and Kate went home to get some rest. I went to sleep with no trouble, and I slept until just after five in the morning, when I awoke with something crushing down on my chest. It had the weight and ferocity of a truck. My left arm was throbbing with pain, as if a knife were being scraped across and through it.I sat up straight in bed.
I grabbed my left arm and doubled over. A nurse was there, and another nurse came. One stuck something in my left arm, and the other stuck her fingers in my mouth and forced something under my tongue.
I moaned and rocked back and forth. I heard one say something about morphine and nitroglycerine.
The truck kept rolling back and forth over my chest, and the knife continued to slice into my left arm. Sweat was pouring across my eyes and face. One of the nurses wiped it away with a rag. I felt heat and moisture all over my body.
I put my head down between my legs and threw my arms around my knees, and held on and squeezed and squeezed. I did not know what was happening, but I was sure it would never end.
I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. The nurses kept mopping me and talking to me.
And then it was over. The truck drove away. The knife disappeared. So did the heat and the sweat and the nausea. I lay back down on the bed.
"You made it," said one of the nurses. They were both women in their thirties whose names and faces I do not know now. Made it? Made what?
One of them said: "You just had a heart attack."
The lesson here is clear: it is better to be in a hospital when you have a heart attack than at home, worrying about the throbbing pain in your shoulder and chest cavity.
MY NEW TREATMENT
The third physician who saw me just before I checked out told me that the medical treatment he advised was to take Motrin every few hours. That was it. I had spent at least six hours in the ER wing, and overnight in the brand-new hospital, and the solution is Motrin. I hope.
I recommend that if you get that terrible pain in your chest, and you find it almost impossible to breathe, that you get your wife to drive you to the hospital. Don't wait for her to nag you. She may wait too long.