Thanos Denied!

Through the window in the back, I watched traffic fall behind us as the ambulance flew down the freeway. The young paramedic next to me was telling a joke, but I was having trouble paying attention . . . morphine is a powerful attention disrupter.

My day had started normally, although I did notice during my morning constitutional that my neck felt a little stiff.

[No big deal, maybe I just slept wrong.]

Breakfast didn’t sit real well, and soon after I began to feel a heaviness in my chest and weakness in my arm that wouldn’t go away. By afternoon, I realized it wasn’t just an upset stomach, and the pressure in my neck had intensified, so I had my oldest son drive me to the local hospital.

The doctors and nurses in the local ER are great people. Well, most of them are. There is one old nurse who seems to think that if you aren’t a victim of a car accident, you are just a whiner. Luckily, she wasn’t in charge of my care. The young doctor who was, hardly looked old enough to be out of high school. He ordered an EKG test, and although he didn’t see anything unusual, he decided to have the lab run a workup on my blood.

It took about a half-hour to get the results back, and when they did my room become a flurry of activity. Doctors and nurses rushed in, popped nitroglycerin under my tongue, gave me four baby aspirin, and hooked me back up to the EKG machine. The young doc came in looking gravely serious and said, “I need you to relax as much as you can. You are having a heart attack.”

[A heart attack? I can’t be having a heart attack . . . I’m only 49!]

He ordered a huge dose of morphine for my IV; once they pushed the plunger down, the whole thing seemed a little out of focus, and almost comical. It certainly didn’t seem bad enough to be worried about, but they started talking about life flights to the big hospital in the city, about a half-hour away. When they found out it would take almost an hour to get a helicopter there, they called for an ambulance, and I found myself riding on a gurney, with a comedian by my side.

Between bad jokes, he seemed to know what he was doing; he was on the radio with the hospital off and on the whole way. I could feel pressure in my chest, but it didn’t really hurt. I remember when I was a kid I got the mumps, and my throat swelled up. It felt a little like that, but the morphine kept sending my thoughts off on tangents.

[Maybe that’s the whole point.]

We pulled up to the hospital, and suddenly I found myself in what seemed to be an episode of a reality show, with white gowned figures rushing me into a prep-area. They stripped my clothes off me, grabbed a razor, and draped a huge paper sheet with a large square cutout across my naked body, exposing my nether regions to the cold bright world. The razor was applied to the spot where my leg joined my abdomen.

I remember joking with the no-nonsense nurse wielding the clippers. I told her she should at least buy me dinner, since we were now such intimate friends. She winked, looked down at her handiwork and said “It’ll have to be a little snack.”

[Great. Comedians all the way around. At least she’s cute.]

They wheeled me into the Cath-Lab, and after transferring me to a steel table, the cardiologist came in and sat down. I could see part of the bank of monitors above me; they would have made the crew of Star Trek jealous. The doc made a small incision in my freshly shaved skin, inserted a tube, then guided a catheter up through my artery and into my heart. I remember watching the screens, like it was happening to someone else, and thinking it was the most awesome thing I had ever witnessed.

He inserted a small stent—a wire mesh tube that most closely resembles the little Chinese finger trap toys we had as kids, but much, much smaller. He then used miniature balloon to blow up the tube, opening up the blocked part of my coronary artery.

[Ahhhh!]

The relief was instant. The weight disappeared and breathing was much easier than it had been only seconds before. I asked if he could do it again, and he just smiled and had the nurse give me more morphine. After that, it all went a little blurry.

I woke up in a room the next morning, with the birds singing outside, and a large bandage covering the incision on my groin. When the doc who saved my life came in, I asked him how serious it had been. He told me that I probably would have survived another day or so, but I should keep in mind the rest of my life was now mine to enjoy, and that I had to start taking daily medications, and start taking better care of myself.

Death had knocked loudly, but—thanks to modern science, a great doctor, and a couple comedians—he hadn’t made it through the door.

It’s been five years since that day. Truth be told, I’m actually a much happier person now. I enjoy the little blessings more, and don’t take anything for granted. Life is short, and it is as sweet as we want to make it, while it lasts.

[I’ll have the rest of mine with a smile, thanks.]