The Week From Hell

So, my Father had a heart attack last Thursday night. He was in the process of checking into the hotel (he works in the Tacoma area during the week and comes home on the weekends), took out his credit card to pay for the room and collapsed. The check-in-guy called 911 and paramedics showed up.

For a while they tried to get his body to work properly. His heart was in Atrial Fibrulation. ===as far as I know, that�s when your heart is spasming rapidly. It shows a pulse of between 230 and 280. This is generally considered to be not a good thing.===

Anyway, they used the de-fib paddles on him, that whole scenario you see in the movies and on ER where the doc says �Clear� and they press the paddles to your chest then your body levitates briefly. Heh.

So, after they try shocking his heart into obedience, non-successfully, they ask Dad if he wants to go to the hospital. He says no. This doesn�t surprise anyone in my family.

Because the paramedics can�t get his heart to cooperate, they take him to a hospital in Auburn (Dad was in Fife, a little less than half way between Federal Way and Tacoma, at the Motel 6). The docs in Auburn tried to stabilize his heart without success. They shocked his heart with the paddles another few times. I think the total was 14 times, but I don�t know for sure. Dad�s account is rather unreliable.

The docs in Auburn don�t have a bed� at the first hospital that is� so they send him to Auburn Regional Medical Center. He gets placed in the critical care ward (rather than ICU, they call it CCU. *shrugs*)

He was finally admitted there at about 2am Friday morning.

Dad called Mom Friday morning at around 9:30 or so to tell her that he had a heart attack and he wasn�t planning on being home for the weekend. *laughs quietly, shaking her head* I think I learned my skill in �understatement� from him.

Anyway, Mom called me immediately and we packed everything up, jumped in the car and drove from Long Beach to Auburn with a little less than $30 between the two of us. We made it to the hospital by about 2:30 or so in the afternoon. Dad was sitting up in bed, as if nothing had ever happened.

Well, okay, so he had all these wires and things attached to him, but I mean, really� he looked like he usually does. He was talking and energetic for the most part. He looked as if he didn�t have the foggiest idea why he was in the hospital.

Then the tests happened. Bad, bad tests. Bad doctors for prescribing the bad tests! The docs did some E-something-or-other-G tests, ultra sounds� and, well, other stuff.

Eh, I�m going to irk myself if I continue in this way. Suffice it to say there were many and varied tests.

At the Auburn hospital, they decided that the tests showed that Dad had to have a by-pass. Not just that, but possibly he needed a quintuple by-pass.

Over the course of four days at the Auburn hospital, the docs successfully medicated Dad nearly to death. They couldn�t find a way to regulate both his blood pressure and his pulse. They tried cartizam or something like that, in IV form. They lowered his blood pressure, in the hopes that it would regulate the Atrial Fibrulation. Yeah, it stopped the Atrial Fibrulation, but it lowered his blood pressure so much that he was at below 30. His pressure reading, on average, was 70 over 30.

===I�m not exactly sure what the numbers mean, I just know that they�re numbers and that the docs thought they were bad numbers.===

Dad asked them to please stop giving him medication to lower his blood pressure. Wonder of wonders, as soon as they stopped, his blood pressure rose once again and he was feeling much, much better.

The docs still said he needed a by-pass, as their tests revealed that he had a significant amount of blockage in a few different arteries. They said that Angioplasty was not an option as the blockage was too severe.

So, he was transferred to Swedish Hospital in Seattle.

At Swedish, his doc was going through the by-pass spiel, talking about how this would happen and that would happen and this would make that happen better. Yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, Doctor Miller excused himself to go look at the films from the Auburn hospital. When he came back, he told Dad that the by-pass was off.

Another test was ordered and Dad was going to have to wait a day for the results of the 24-hour test. This test, don�t remember the name of it, was one where the docs inject radio-active isotopes (sp) into his heart and see what lights up and what doesn�t.

From the films and the preliminary results of that big test, the docs said that Dad didn�t seem to be a candidate for by-pass surgery as the large part of his heart (I think it was one atria) was completely necrotic AKA dead. There was 100 percent blockage in the front Atrial artery and three other arteries were between 70 and 90 percent blocked.

The docs said that Dad was in really bad shape and it really surprised them that he hadn�t had any symptoms of heart attack. *shrugs* That�s Dad though, he�s not all that observant, especially about his own body.