My broken heart

Well, yesterday was interesting. 

For years I have had ingrown toenails on both of my big toes.  When I worked for that large airplane factory down in Renton I went to the foot doctor and they tried to kill them with a chemical injection.  I got to watch, it was fun. The nails fell out and stayed away for a few years.  Florence, Paris, Marseille, and 15 trips to Hawai’i all were wonderfully free of foot pain.

It did not last. You will recall from reading this little blog that I was attacked by an ancient Sumerian demon named Bimbozula on Oahu a couple years ago.  We were renting this Brady Bunch like house on a canal just outside of Honolulu.  Bimbozula had come along with an old friend that I invited to join us for the week.  At dinner on our first night she and I kind of got into it as I explained that as an atheist I do not believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny, or ancient Sumerian demons.   She disagreed violently, ate most of the food that I had cooked, and then retired to her room to sulk and boink my friend. 

As head chef on all my trips I do not do the dishes, ever, so I went outside to look at the stars and ponder the void that is my worldview.  Outside, alone, at night, looking at the stars and standing on a cement wall overlooking the canal l I could hear Bimbozula growling as they went at it.  I frowned and put my fingers in my ears but then saw these long back tendrils of energy coming at me from their room.  The energy hit me in the feet and knocked me down the stairs and almost into the water.  Fortunately I have a good relationship with the positive energy force that lives underneath the volcano on Maui. Beams of sparkly green light came shooting across the Kai’wi Channel. They snatched my feet just as I was about to plunge into the canal, pulling me back onto the cement landing, then turned and smacked into the black energy tendrils coming out of Bimbozula. There was a brief battle but finally the black energy tendrils retreated.  The green energy beams from Maui paused and seemed to look at me for a moment before they disappeared.

I crawled up the stairs. I hurt all over and knew I was bleeding.  I won’t recount the rest of that trip here, but suffice to say that all of the toenails on my feet had been knocked off, expect for both of my big toes.  Where there had been no big toe nail before there was now a big black claw on each foot. This was odd.

The big black claws on my feet remained there, growing slowly, until 2 months later when I went to Maui. I arose from seat 1A and stepped onto the jetway at Kahului Airport.  The moment that sweet warm Maui air hit me I felt a tingle and heard some pops.  My feet were glowing with green energy.  When I got into the terminal I took off my shoes  and yes, claws were gone.  Thanks Maui!

But as you know from watching Buffy, if you use magic there are always consequences.  Within days of leaving Maui the nails started to grow back.  Not black of course, but kind of green.  They would grow down, sideways, sometimes three or four different claw-like nails per toe.  Now a boy can only afford to go to Maui so often for foot repair, so follow-on trips to Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Naples, and Delhi, have been marred by foot pain.  There have also been 10 more trips to Maui for magical mani-pedis, but now that I am unemployed and will never be able to go to Maui again I thought it would be good to get my toes fixed before my insurance runs out.

So I met with my old foot doctor in Renton and we scheduled the appointment to have my big toe claws cut out for good.  This is surgery, not the chemical treatment.  They told me they would need to put me out for this.  I hate that, being put out.  I was certain I would not wake up.  Little did I know…..

……….

The procedure was scheduled for a day surgery place across the street from Valley Medial Center in Renton. 

Some lesbian nurse named Gwen prepped me.  She was from Arkansas.  Heavy accent. She wanted to tell me all about all the experiences she has had encountering bears in the forest.  Trying to not be unkind, I told her about a news story I saw on Canadian TV this week about a bear in north Vancouver who went swimming in someone’s pool and then sat in their hot tub.  It was all on video.  We laughed, me and Gwen.  I could not help but be reminded of the Margaret Cho stand up bit about being in the hospital and having a lesbian nurse named Gwen who says, “My name is Gwen and I am here to wash your vagina.”

Anyway, after they put me under and started trying to cut out the claws, my heart started beating super fast.  Like bad fast.  Residual impact of a demonic attack?  Each time they stabbed at a claw my heart would just jump.  They almost stopped the whole thing but the anesthesiologist decided to give me some drug to get my heart rate down. Fortunately it was green.  

I did wake up. Someone was shaking me.

Gwen: “There is something wrong with your heart!!!”  

Me: “Couldn’t you just wash my vagina instead of saying that?” We laughed. Then she got serious and hooked me up to an EKG machine.  

Gwen: “Ooh. That is not good!”

Yay.

They tell me I will need to walk across the street to the ER.  I look down at my feet.  Blood is seeping out of the bandages.  Lots of blood. I’m like, walk, me, outside?  They explain they could call an ambulance but I would need to pay for it and it is only a block away.  I am still pretty groggy so I don’t put up a fight. I walk.  I leave a trail. A bloody trail of American Health Care Shame all the way from the Valley Medical Center Day Surgery Center to the Valley Medical Center Emergency Room.   Fortunately there is no line to get into the ER.  The nurse up front looks at my EKG reading and rushes us back.  Is this because I am white or because I am dying? Oh yes, Mark got to enjoy all this as well, figuring out from context that my heart is broken as no one stopped to explain anything to him.

My bloody foot print trail crossed the ER as we walk to a triage room.  I asked the nurse if I was dying and she explains that she could not answer that as it’s against policy.  Where is Nurse Jackie when I need her?   

...........

Sigh. I'm laying in a hospital bed now. I have never been in a hospital bed before, ever. Will I die here, in Renton? 

I have cable, but no BBC News Channel.  What kind of hell hole is this?  But I do have wi-fi, which is nice, but I am too focused on dying to play on my phone.  Should I film a quick video to say goodbye to the kittens? 

Finally after a few hours a doctor comes in to explain that the top part of my heart is beating faster that the bottom.  Typical Atrial Flutter.  He checks in with a cardiologist several times and prescribes me some drugs for the flutter and to help prevent blood clots.  Could be that I have had this for a long time, say since Oahu, and just did not know it?

After several more hours I am set free, told to get my drugs and to get an appointment with the cardiologist.  Still bleeding, I leave another bloody trail of American Health Care Shame as I exit the ER. 

I tried to get my drugs at the pharmacy but they send me away three times asking me to come back in 20 minutes each time.  My initial blood stains on the floor in the pharmacy are now black and crusty, but I add more to the pools each time I return.

I try to call the cardiologist for an appointment, but the meanest most rude woman in the history of health care will not book an appointment for me.  I need a referral from my primary care physician. I explain that I have just been released from the emergency room for heart problems, I was referred by the ER doctor, that my insurance does not require a referral, and that I am currently bleeding out through my feet.  She tells me to call back after my primary care physician has referred me and she hangs up on me.

This is my moment of truth.  Go postal or stay calm so my heart does not explode. I stay calm. Yoga breathing.

I call my doctor.  Voice mail.  I page him.  He does not call back.  I call again.  He answers.  He does not remember me.  Calmly I explain that I am a large orange clove headed middle-aged man who has seen him frequently over the last several years.  I can tell he still does not know who I am but he says he can fit me in at 11:15 the next day.

Wow.  Fucking wow.

We drive home.  I take my drugs.  We make Chicken Tikka Masala for dinner as what else are you going to do on a day like this?

My feet continue to seep blood but I do not feel any pain.  Percocet.  Mixed with blood thinner and heart medicine.  Yum.

……………

The night was fine.  Still no pain.  I slept on the couch so I could keep my legs propped up.

In the morning I decide to take a shower.  I wrap my feet in plastic vegetable bags from Metropolitan Market.  I seal them with two rubber bands on each bag. 

In the shower both bags fill with water which creates a lovely foot size bubble that is the exact color of that really good rosé wine from Corsica.

When I get out of the shower, the left bubble starts leaking.  I get bloody water all over the bathroom.  Mark is at work and I am not sure how to get downstairs to resolve this.  I grab a number of towels and hopscotch across the carpet and stairs to get downstairs.  With each hop more blood pumps out and my rosé has taken on a sinister Merlot tone.

I prop myself up on a chair in the laundry room and manage to remove the bloody sacks from my feet only getting blood on the linoleum instead of the carpeting.  I dry off my feet, stick them in new plastic vegetable bags from Metropolitan Market, and  then proceed to Oxy Clean a large number of towels and a bathmat before I start a bleachy load of laundry.

So much drama.  So little elapsed time.  Off to the primary care physician now. What is his name again?

…………

Apparently his name is Dr. Dick.

I was wearing wet bandages in a plastic vegetable bag and he refused to put on new bandages, explaining as he is “moving away from primary care and focusing more on helping deal with stress.”   You could help me deal with my stress by putting new bandages on my bleeding feet, ass-hole. 

Grumpy and rude, Dr. Dick could hear the problem though his stethoscope.  Irregular heart beat.  Then he told me this whole heart problem was my fault for being fat and drinking coffee.  Maybe that is true, but I fail to see how that is helpful or in any way works to reduce my stress. He referred me to a cardiologist and then walked me out. Yes, another bloody trail of American Health Care Shame.  I hope I stained his carpeting.

Driving home, really angry at Dr. Dick, I am reminded of the horrid woman at the cardiologist’s office in Renton who hung up on me yesterday.  Why do people go into health care if they genuinely don’t care about helping other human beings? 

Sigh.  Yoga breathing. Gonna need to just move on.

Got a cardiologist appointment for tomorrow at 9:30 AM.

……………

So the cardiologist awesome.  She is about 4 feet tall, 12 years old, and you can actually see thought bubbles form above her head as she thinks though things.  And they are good thoughts!

She’s actually funny, not judgmental, and seems very focused on getting to the route cause of all this instead of just yelling at me, pumping me full of drugs, cutting me open, or shocking my heart with electricity.  She also subtlety suggested that my old primacy care physician in a bit of a quack.

She was not aware of ancient Sumerian demonic energy causing once part of the heart to beat faster than the other, but then she paused and said, "You know, in my experience demons do tend to try and destroy people's hearts.  This all is all starting to make sense."

I love her.

She tweaked one of my prescriptions, set me up for an echocardiogram next week, and a sleep apnea test in September one I get things with Cobra figured out. She offered up that I could do that in Maui if I want to. 

I left the Polyclinic not bleeding and feeling optimistic.  I will take it.  

Later we were watching reruns of Star Trek on TV and it occurred to me...

I support this. More after the echocardiogram next week. 

..................

Occurs to me that I sort of left things hanging here.  No, I am not dead, yet. The echocardiogram results were good.  No physical damage to my ticker.  The plan is to remain on the drugs, lose weight, and check in again in a month.  I can go the gym and do pilates like normal. I am very relieved. 

No more updates to this blog post, but look for something new soon.  Something mid-century modern and expensive. 

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