Answers.

First and foremost. Yesterday. The spasms. The pain.

I went to Swedish Medical Center last night at 6pm. I was hurting. Feeling just lousy.

After a few blood tests, an EKG. Things escalated pretty quickly.

Yesterday, I experienced, not 1, 2 or 3 episodes. It was 4 total. Those episodes, were heart attacks.

Yes. Heart attacks. I’ll let you absorb that.

More bloodwork. More IV’s bigger doctors starting to take over. I was moved to a “bigger” room. Kept getting a lot of questions. Probably had 7-8 people in the room swarming me. Putting more stickers on. More blood tests.

My troponin is through the roof. It’s a chemical your heart releases when it’s under stress. Another is D-Dimer. Looks for the chemical clots put off, also extremely elevated.

Lactate is elevated. My WBC is at 21 now. I feel like dogshit. Absolute dogshit. But now I’m starting to panic. At first we talked about doing a CTA. Which is a special CT scan that looks at your heart and lungs. The nurses started taking my clothing. Everything off. Gown on. I’m now wearing a 5 lead. I now have defibrillator pads on my back and sides.

That’s when I realized. This is serious. I managed to text Aggie just that when all this was going on. She was right there with me. As she always has been.

The doctor came in with the EKG. Told me that the EKG is extremely abnormal. My labs indicate that I had a major heart attack. I’m in full panic mode. Because I know what’s coming next.

Angioplasty.

They have enough evidence. So the Dr called an audible. I’m going straight to surgery. I didn’t want to tell Aggie. I didn’t want to scare her. It was either cracking open my chest, or angioplasty.

As I was wheeled to the Cath Lab, I knew it was going to be angioplasty.

By 9:30pm I was fully prepared. Shaved. Groin and wrist area. The anxiety took over. This is the first time. And first times with anything, naturally brings out the anxiety.

As the surgeon navigated the tools to my heart from my wrist, waves of anxiety and pain would just hit me, but this surgeon didn’t fuck around. He immediately hit me with plenty of verses and fentanyl. I watched everything unfold on the big screen. I could tell as the procedure progressed, I knew I was in big trouble. I could see the clots. I could see the places blood just wasn’t moving.

After taking out 5 considerable sized clots in the arteries that feed my heart, he placed 2 stents in separate spots. When he deployed the baskets, oh fuck that hurt. I could feel it.

He hit me again with versed and fentanyl. He knew I was struggling with this. But when he was done I turned to him and said, I already know the answer, but how bad was it?

Extremely bad

If I had waited for the next attack, it would have probably killed me. It was just a matter of time.

I was then moved to the Cardiac ICU.

I’m so tired. I’ll write more later.