Follow-up

After Mr. Fixit’s trip to the emergency room Thanksgiving evening, we scheduled visits with our family GP and with the cardiologist the following Monday. Our family doctor talked to us about some minor problems found at the ER and reassured us about the possible outcomes of the visit with the cardiologist.

The cardiologist suggested a heart catheterization be performed the next day. I think he thought that nothing much would show up because he scheduled it at the local hospital that can only to the caths, not the corrective procedure that sometimes needs to be done. Every time I mentioned that Mr. Fixit’s lips turned blue, the doctors all looked at me like I was crazy. I think they were looking at his lab work seeing that he had not suffered a heart attack. I knew that something was terribly wrong because the blue mouth means that he was not getting enough oxygen.

The next day after the heart cath the surgeon told me that Mr. Fixit should have a procedure to put a stent in one of his arteries because he found 99% blockage. When I asked how soon it should be done, he said right away. I asked, “Does ‘right away’ mean today, tomorrow, next week, or next month?” He said that he wanted him transported to a Greenville hospital that same day with the procedure scheduled for the next day. He said that Mr. Fixit could have a heart attack at any moment. They put him in an ambulance and took him to the bigger hospital. They said they didn’t want me to take him in case he had an attack in the car.

The next day the stent was put in place, and he seems to be doing very well except for a sinus infection that is causing headaches.

We did have a few little problems with the heart surgeon. I suppose that he is entirely focused on doing his thing and he forgot that we were sitting in the waiting room. We had been told that the procedure would take an hour or an hour and a half. Two and a half hours later we were still waiting to hear that Mr. Fixit was okay. Finally, we were told we could call the recovery room to check on him. He had been sent back to his room without any instructions to the floor nurse or without any word to us by the doctor or anyone else. I was on the verge of losing it, imagining that he was lying in the morgue. The doctor also seemed at sea when we asked him a few basic questions.

We will go to the follow-up appointment, but we have asked our GP to recommend another specialist for any future problems. I have no doubt that the heart specialist did a good job, but he needs to remember the human factor.

A statin and blood thinner was prescribed and he is carrying nitroglycerin in his pocket. We are now eating a low salt, low cholesterol diet that I should have been on years ago. It’s boring and unappetizing, but it’s better than the alternative.

Mr. Fixit is going back to work tonight.