Moving on, or trying to

I've spent the week NOT responding to people who emailed me, asking how my cardiac catheterization went, or just sending them very short messages, because my right arm still hurts and I can't use the hand fully yet. It's getting better, but I still have a little ways to go. I have a lot of things to say today, though! I want to write down everything I remember. Maybe I'll just take a lot of breaks, work on the post throughout the day.

So, let's see. Last Sunday when I blogged I was still freaking out over Rocket Boy's latest illness, hoping he would be well enough to drive me to Loveland on Tuesday. He got steadily better and did drive me, but he's not out of the woods yet -- even though he's back in St. Louis now.  

The question of which of us was the patient was an issue all week.

We had planned to cook Easter dinner on Sunday -- a plan that I was not onboard with, but which I was trying to be onboard with, on account of the fact that Rocket Boy had been in the Emergency Room on Saturday night. But I finally told RB that I just wasn't up for it, at least not my part (I had planned to make a vegetable tart from The New York Times cooking section). And surprisingly he agreed that it might be better just to go out. So we drove out east to a Village Inn -- not very special, but it was fine. I had fish & chips, which perhaps was a little too greasy for me. In any case, I got very nauseated the next day (Monday) and after we got the kids off to school, I went back to bed. I seem to have this new condition: Monday morning nausea. 

But I felt better in the afternoon, and we cooked our Easter dinner on Monday night -- I made the planned vegetable tart (this is the NYTimes' photo, but mine looked somewhat like this) and it was good. I also made a tasty salad, and RB cooked the salmon. I was very nervous about my procedure, so it helped to have something to do, even though cooking is usually pretty low on my want-to-do list.

Tuesday, we got the kids off to school again, making sure they brought a house key, and also texted one of the neighbors to be sure she still had a key, so she could be their backup. I packed a little overnight bag, in case I had to stay overnight, and all my meds, and a few other things I didn't end up needing, like a book (Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass). We left around 10:40 and drove to Loveland -- I drove, because it gave me something to do besides be nervous -- and even though our exit was blocked due to construction, we arrived before 12. Definitely easier than driving to Aurora, which would have been another possibility.

UCHealth has a huge installation in Loveland. We entered the main building, checked in on the first floor, and they sent us up to the cardiology department on the second floor, where we checked in again. Then we were sent to a little waiting room, where we sat for a few minutes until they took us back to the pre/post-op area and I met my nice nurse, Dawn. The first thing I had to do was take all my clothes off and put on a gown and some gigantic yellow socks that they let me take home (I'm wearing them now -- cozy!). Then they hooked me up to a blood pressure cuff and put the thing on my finger that records respiration and pulse. Different people came in and talked to me -- I told them about how I throw up after anesthesia, and they agreed to give me something to prevent that (I think Zofran and benadryl). One young woman came to shave off my pubic hair, in case they ended up putting the catheter through my groin. I said to her, "Oh, you're the shaver," and she said, "Esthetician, by training." And I thought, oh right, this is something that some women have done by choice, not for surgical reasons but for beautification. We had an interesting conversation about that. 

Rocket Boy was horribly embarrassed by the shaving, and the next item of business was going to be inserting an IV, so I told him he didn't have to stay any longer, I would be all right. He left with alacrity, off to have lunch in the cafeteria, and I felt a pang that was not just from hunger -- like, now I'm all alone and they're going to put a wire in my artery. But what could I do? I'm a big girl, an old girl, no crying allowed. Dawn put the IV in, very expertly, and soon it was time for some other nurses to push my bed into the cath lab. I tried not to feel a sense of doom.

In the cath lab, I had to scooch over onto an operating table that seemed too narrow, and then they painted my arms and legs with iodine and stuck an oxygen cannula in my nose. The terrible thing about a cardiac catheterization is that they don't put you to sleep -- they give you Versed and maybe fentanyl to make you dopey, but you're still awake. I could feel it when they stuck the wire in my right wrist. That's the one part of this experience that I would really prefer not to repeat, so I hope I never have to, but once you're on this train, I'm not sure you can get off. But after I got the first dose of Versed in my IV, I closed my eyes and was able to zone out to some degree. It seemed as though the doctor and nurses were doing nothing but telling jokes, but then I heard someone mention a "lesion," which I thought sounded bad, and then I heard the doctor reading off numbers to a nurse, and the numbers sounded good, all in the 90s. At one point I felt more awake and I heard the doctor say something about my arteries closing up, so they gave me more Versed and I calmed down (and presumably the vessels opened wide again).

A few weird sensations that I remember: when they flushed my IV with saline they told me I might taste it, and I did -- so weird. Later, when they put dye or something in the catheter, I felt a brief burning sensation in my arm, almost unbearable, but then it was gone. And later, something else went through that gave me a warm, wet feeling across my whole trunk -- I felt like I'd just peed myself -- but a moment later that feeling was gone, too. I look at my body now and think about how connected every part of it is, how quickly, how immediately connected it is. So strange.

Then they took the wire out, bandaged me up, and pushed me back to the room I'd been in before, returning me to the care of Nurse Dawn. The doctor came by and said it was good news -- I hadn't needed a stent and my coronary artery disease could be treated with meds. Rocket Boy was brought back in at one point and told the good news, and he called my sisters and told them. 

(Later I read the results of the procedure online and they were a little more complicated than just "Good News!" My LAD artery is 50% blocked -- that's that "lesion" they were talking about -- but the other arteries are all clear. This is about as good as it could be, given the results of the stress tests.)

It took hours before I was ready to leave, because we had to wait to see if my artery was going to burst open again (it had started leaking when they moved me back to the main room). Nurse Dawn told me a lot of horror stories about people whose arteries burst open -- I think mainly so I would be careful with my arm. Her warnings were effective: I was very careful and my artery has not burst open since we left Loveland. 

While we waited I slept some, but even after I was awake, my vital signs were crazy low. Perhaps that is normal after Versed? I kept setting off alarms -- my pulse was too low, my blood pressure was too low, my oxygen was too low. Dawn would come back in, frown, and push buttons. At one point she observed that I was "very Zen." I kept wanting to say that maybe they should have taken me off my blood pressure medicine before the procedure! At one point when Rocket Boy was there, I was getting cross with him because he kept leaving his backpack in the waiting room, which I thought was a really bad idea -- someone might steal his wallet, or for that matter MY wallet, which I had given to him for safekeeping. "There are so many thieves in a medical center," he said, teasing me. "There could be!" I said. This had no effect on my heart rate. It varied from the mid-40s down to 39, all of which set off the alarms. I couldn't understand why my pulse was so low if I was angry! My blood pressure kept going down to 90 over 50. My oxygen level got down to, I think, 87.

Finally, around 5 pm, we were allowed to leave. Dawn helped me get dressed -- Rocket Boy found my bra terrifying -- took me downstairs in a wheelchair and put me in my little red car. Rocket Boy drove us home, where the twins were waiting, on their stupid devices, pretending? to be unconcerned. I can't remember what we did for dinner -- it must have been leftovers. One of my book group friends had offered to bring us dinner, but RB objected because he thought she would bring something with meat. I didn't want to have to mediate between a helpful friend and an ungrateful husband, so I told her we didn't need meal help. I was cross with RB about that all week.

I think I spent most of Wednesday resting, but by Thursday I was pretty much back to normal, except that I still couldn't use my right arm very well. This photo shows the lovely bruise on my arm as it looks today (and the tiny pinprick at upper right where I think the wire went in). I have never been so aware of having an artery before! I don't seem to be aware of the one in the left arm, but oh boy, that right arm artery is my new buddy. Or something. I think it was on Thursday that I made dinner (which I was already cross about, see above), but it required that I open a can of corn and I realized that using our handheld can opener was very painful. I had to get Rocket Boy to do it, and this upset me terribly, partly because the pain weirded me out and partly because I kept thinking about how my friend had wanted to bring dinner but instead I had to make it and I couldn't even get a can open!

All week I kept getting upset because I felt as though I wasn't being cared for. And yet, who was going to be doing this caring? The twins? They were anxious, they needed me to be there for them. As for Rocket Boy, fresh out of the Emergency Room, here are some of the things he did this week: replaced the three burned-out lights in the kitchen (none of which I was capable of fixing, all of which required weird bulbs from McGuckin's), unclogged the bathtub drain (it was full of my hair), and not just unclogged but actually replaced the bathroom sink drain, which was at least 50 years old and in bad shape. He also worked (at his job) quite a bit, and took Teen B to his orthodontia appointment on Wednesday.

That's how he shows his love and caring: by fixing things. And I really appreciate everything he does. I just wanted more. Life's tough.

The twins had Friday off, so we went to the Denver Botanic Gardens, just so we could do one fun thing during a very un-fun week. As we drove toward the US36 entrance, we saw great clouds of smoke -- the vegetation next to the on-ramp was on fire! And a fire engine was parked there and a firefighter was spraying the fire! We just drove right past it, and as I looked back, I saw the fire engine turn on its lights and siren. It was a very windy day, but to have another fire start just as we were leaving town -- I was nervous the whole time we were gone. But it was nice to go to the Gardens. There was a wedding taking place that day, as there often is, and it was a two-bride wedding. Both of them were in fancy long white dresses. I pointed it out to the twins -- seemed like a nice thing for them to see.

I was wiped out when we got home, but I was glad we'd gone. We ate leftovers for dinner, watched the 1935 film of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and then it was time for Rocket Boy to start packing up to go.

I always hate it when he goes back to St. Louis, even when I know he'll be back soon, even if it's been a nice long visit. I always get irritable, so I try to stay out of his way. I did some errands in the morning -- went to the library, the grocery store, the gas station. His flight left at 5:05, the last flight from Denver to St. Louis that day, so we would leave home at 2 pm. I was nagging him about what he was bringing, or forgetting, and finally I got annoyed with both myself and him, so I said I would wait in the car. Teen B came too -- he likes to see Dad off at the airport. He and I waited in the car and eventually Rocket Boy came out with his last bag, and off we went.

Around the time we got on Pena Boulevard (the last leg of the trip), Rocket Boy remembered that he had forgotten to bring his antibiotic, the one he'd been taking since Monday. I got very upset -- how could you forget that, you need that, etc., etc. While I was yelling, he remembered something worse -- he'd forgotten his phone. Which had the effect of silencing me, it was so horrible. Without a phone, he was very screwed. Though not as screwed as he would have been if he hadn't driven himself to the airport the previous Saturday. He couldn't have ordered a Lyft home without his phone.

I still feel guilty about this. If I'd gone on nagging him, if I hadn't gone out to sit in the car, I think I would have asked him if he'd had his phone, and maybe his meds too.

But he gets himself to the airport with everything he needs when he's alone in St. Louis! Why did he need me to nag him that day? His excuse was that one of the cats, Sillers, had thrown up in four different places that morning, and he'd been busy cleaning up the vomit right before he left. Maybe that was it.

Teen B looked up FedEx places in Boulder on his phone and discovered that one was open until 6 pm. So after we dropped Rocket Boy off at the airport at 3:15, we hurried home to mail RB's phone to him. Oh, but first we stopped at Starbucks, as we almost always do, as a little reward to Teen B for accompanying me. That turned out to be important later.

On the way home, on 104th in, I think, Thornton, we drove right by another fire. It was burning a shed in someone's backyard and the fire trucks weren't there yet. They showed up about half a mile later, sirens screaming as they zoomed past us toward the fire. It was another high wind day. I swear, this string of fires is freaking me out.

At home, I gathered up the phone, charger, and bottle of antibiotics, and headed off to FedEx Office, where a nice man helped me get them ready to mail (for $132). Only thing was, I'd just missed the pickup -- thank you, ill-conceived Starbucks stop. And there's no pickup on Sunday. The phone will go out on Monday and Rocket Boy will get it on Tuesday morning. He'll just have to manage until then. We did manage to Skype with him this afternoon -- he's doing OK. He picked up a new prescription from his St. Louis doctor, so I didn't really need to send his Boulder prescription via FedEx. It's a different drug, so he'll just start this one and take all of it, forget the Boulder drug.

So here (and there) we are. We survived our week. My arm is getting better, though I keep having mild chest pain -- they told me I would -- the whole artery is a little bit irritated and is probably spasming. I'm having a problem with nausea, though -- not sure what from. Maybe it's because I had to stop taking metformin for four days and then restart it. The only thing I want is cereal and milk and tea, plus the occasional piece of chocolate. I've got to get back to normal cooking soon. My book group was supposed to come here tomorrow evening, but I finally put them off, asked if we could do a zoom call instead (which we also did last month, when I was sick and had just gotten my braces and was in pain). This month we read the novel Pachinko, so I really should have served Korean food, and the thought of even ordering takeout and having it in the house made me want to vomit. Hopefully by next month, I won't be having this problem (and maybe we could read a book with a less spicy/fragrant cuisine). 

I don't see my cardiologist until late May, so I'll just go on taking the same pills until then. I hope he takes me off the beta blocker, but he probably won't. I'll just have to get used to it. Rocket Boy is going to try to come back in a few weeks, be here for the twins' middle school graduation in late May. We'll see. Meanwhile, there will be lots of things that need doing. Mostly I'll need to pull myself together and stop being the patient. Maybe just a couple more days.