Matt and the Possible MI

After going to a local doc-in-the box with the symptoms of racing heart (tachycardia), palpitations (feeling of pounding heart in the chest), and catching in his breath when taking deep breaths, and getting an artifact-y and questionable 12-lead EKG with some possibly bad signs on it, Matt was admitted to the ER Sunday morning. Admitting diagnosis that we knew about was possible inferior MI (heart attack, for folks who don’t do medical jargon).

Other admitting diagnosis—the one we did NOT know ended up on the chart…”Chest Pain.”

“Chest Pain” was a CFU (clerical fuck-up). Someone—ER doc, triage nurse, ER nurse, admitting doc, ward secretary…—SOMEONE who wasn’t listening put that on his admitting diagnosis in spite of the fact that Matt had never had chest pain, had never complained of chest pain, and was at the time of admission not experiencing chest pain. This would prove to be a problem in what was to come.

I stayed at the hospital. Did not go home to get things—just stayed. Hospitals were my gig before writing was, and one of the things I know as an RN is you never leave someone you love alone in the hospital in the hands of strangers. You stay. Period.

All day Sunday and all day Monday, we ruled out heart attack with bloodwork, chest X-ray, EKGs, and an echocardiogram. By Monday night, all of his tests were negative for any sort of heart attack, but he still had the atypical symptoms that had taken us to a walk-in clinic on Sunday morning.

Palpitations. Tachycardia. Occasional catching in his breath.

After telling us Sunday night that all Matt’s tests were normal, and telling us that he was going to write the “clear to discharge” order, the cardiologist went out to the nurses’ station, checked the chart, and spotted the “Chest Pain” admitting diagnosis. And instead of writing “clear for discharge,” ordered a cardiac stress test (treadmill test) for 9:45 the following morning “because your chart says you were admitted with chest pain.”

Matt again emphasized that he had never had chest pain. Palpitations. Tachycardia. His breath catching sometimes on deep breaths.

Too bad. It was on the chart. We were told by the cardiologist and several nurses that our two options were for Matt to have the stress test, or to leave the hospital AMA (against medical advice).

We were there self-pay (no insurance), and having a treadmill stress test to check further for the MI he hadn’t had was like having a doctor order a fetal stress test on a woman who had been admitted for possible pregnancy AFTER she was found to be not pregnant, because her admitting diagnosis was “complications of pregnancy.”

You ruled that out, assholes. Move on. Patient is still having symptoms, and it isn’t what you first thought…so stop checking what it isn’t, and figure out what it is. But that wasn’t going to happen. This was socialized medicine in action.

We left AMA around 11:30 PM, and the next morning made an appointment to see a doctor recommended by his mother, who also goes to this guy. Yesterday, Matt saw him in his office, talked to him for about an hour, and is now being treated for stress. By about 3 PM, no more palpitations, no more tachycardia, no more catching of his breath.

So we’re all good, right? Life will resume its normal routine.

Not so much.

What happened next

About 10 PM last night, we got a call from Matt’s folks, who were in the ER of a different hospital with my brother-in-law, who was admitted with aphasia (inability to speak), loss of motor control, and a couple of other things.

Our first news was that it could be nightmare blood sugar (very high). We were sitting in the ER with the rest of the family for the next news, which was was that it was malignant cancer of uncertain origin which had metastasized to his brain, and which included one 9cm tumor.

Third news was that it was probably benign, and related to previously diagnosed hemangiomas.

And that’s where we are now. Up in the air, waiting for something definitive.

I’m taking the rest of the week off from everything, in order to be available for family. If things go well, I’ll be back Monday.

Monica asked where I figured out how to drop my blood pressure from 160/100 to normal in just a few weeks, and others have expressed interest, too. Comments have also addressed the issues of weight and Type II (or Adult Onset) diabetes.

I’d love to be able to claim credit for figuring out how to get healthy on my own, but in fact, having been forged and tempered in the crucible of traditional medicine, I was as much of a nay-sayer as the rest of the medical establishment. I believed the origins of Type II diabetes and primary high blood pressure were “idiopathic,” (which is the medical establishment’s baffle-’em-with-bullshit word for “we don’t know what we’re talking about”).

About seven years ago, Matt found a book by a guy named Anthony Robbins (yes, he of the bad hair and infomercials), and read it, and tried to convince me to read it. It was about losing weight and getting healthy. I wasn’t having any. He did talk me into buying a program Robbins did called “The Body You Deserve.” I still thought it was bullshit, but I’d been on other stupid diets to lose weight, I was post-partum, and I had a lot of weight to lose. So, scoffing, I went ahead and ordered.

Within six weeks of starting the program, Matt had lost seventy pounds and I’d lost about fifty. I lost sixty overall, and both of us saw our cholesterol levels drop from the 200s to considerably less than our ages plus 100. My resting pulse went from high-eighties, low-nineties to the mid-fifties, low-sixties. My blood pressure was steady at 90/60. I looked great, I felt great.

(Then I had two miscarriages, and used depression and grief as excuses to eat crap, and to gain back everything I’d lost. It’s taken me this long, and a health-related gun to my head, to stop making excuses.)

The problem with the Robbins program is that it’s damned expensive. You can learn the same info (though without Robbins’ admittedly very good motivational techniques) by reading three books. The first is The China Study, the second is Fit For Life, and the third is Juiceman’s Power of Juicing.

The first is for the science behind eliminating milk and meat for health reasons, and why, in doing so, you don’t have to worry about getting enough calcium. It will also tell you what your current diet is doing to your body, and what changing your diet will do to your body, and back both up with massive studies conducted across thousands of villages in China (and with other corollary studies). The second tells you how to get quick and lasting results by eating without milk or meat, and includes such useful information as what foods to buy, how to find them, and some recipes. (The recipes are a life-saver.) And the third is about juicing, which you may or may not want to get into, but which I recommend with lunatic fervor.

DISCLAIMER: I cannot claim that these programs will work for everyone as well as they have for me, my family, and my friends. I can prove my results and I stand by them fully. However, your results will vary based on the choices you make, how well you follow directions, how willing you are to change the foods you eat, and on underlying health problems, either known or unknown, that you may suffer from. Due to the litigious nature of society, I also have to state that you assume full responsibility for any changes you make in your diet, whether for better or for worse, and for the outcomes you receive as a result of making either better or worse choices. Such disclaimers suck, I hate them, but the world is not a friendly place, and I am not a fool.

If you decide to get healthy, let me know how it goes for you. I’ll be cheering for you.

Oh. I scoured the internet trying to find a printable blood pressure chart on which to graph my blood pressures. I found nothing. I ended up making one for myself. If you need a chart sheet for blood pressures and want to copy mine off and print it for your own use, click through the link, save the full-sized JPG to your hard drive, and print off copies whenever you need them.