Confessions of a Starbucks addict

So last Friday I had my appointment for the right heart catheterization procedure. It was quite an eventful day. The day before I had called the nurse to make sure of my appointment time, go over my medications, and we talked about when I needed to stop eating. I asked about setting my basal to a reduced amount because of having to fast (this ended up being a teaching lesson for the nurse, since she had no idea of what an insulin pump was). Lastly, I asked her about my ability to ride public transit after the procedure. I wanted to make sure that it would be okay, as I have a huge aversion to driving in Seattle. She assured me that it would be no problem at all.

I get up early and rush to the bus stop. Because Troy had to get the girls ready for school, I decided to forgo his offer to drive me to Kent Station, and I just walked to the bus stop close to our house. I learned that it takes me longer than 10 minutes to walk to that stop, which is all of four blocks away. The reason I learned this is that I missed the bus that I wanted to take. I had to wait at the stop for the next one. Luckily, this particular stop is serviced by two bus routes, running about 15 minutes apart. This was good because that meant that I didn't miss the express bus up to Bellevue. If I had, I would have been an entire hour late for my appointment!

It turns out that I could have missed the next four buses to Bellevue... When I got to the medical center I had to register, go get lab work done, then go down a floor and find the cath lab. This room is mysteriously hidden. It looks nothing like the rest of the offices on level 2. I walked past it about four times before a hospital volunteer helped me find it. Even with my excruciatingly long walk around level 2, I was still on time. I get settled in to the waiting room, waiting to be called. The tech at the front desk asked me if I had someone there to drive me home. I stated that I didn't, as the nurse said it would be perfectly fine for me to take the bus home. This caused some controversy... you see, apparently you can have a heart cath done with sedation. I wanted the sedation if I could have it. They won't give it if you don't have a ride home. Apparently they don't trust that you'll tell the bus driver where you need to get off the bus, and you'll end up in Siberia or somewhere...now, I don't know of any buses that run from Seattle to Siberia, but hey, there's always a first! At worst, I'd probably end up circling between Seattle and Bellevue or something. So after the disappointing news that I'd not be allowed sedation, I sat down and started a Sudoku puzzle.

Then I waited. And waited. And waited.

People were streaming in and out of the office. Patients who got there much later than I were going ahead of me. I was getting frustrated about it. After about 2 hours, I finally asked the tech at the desk what was going on. (Mind you, the entire two hours I was stewing and panicking about not being able to have sedation.) As the tech came back out, a nurse came out to talk with the family who was waiting for a patient. This nurse tells the family that the procedure is taking longer than anticipated because of some really "miserable" blockages. She muttered something about her being lucky to have come in that day...nice. Great bedside manners these people have, yeah?

So the tech tells me that there were some complications with the patient who was ahead of me, but it should only be a little longer of a wait for me. Gee, I wonder what patient was ahead of me that had complications?!? I sat back down. It wasn't a big deal waiting, and please, fix someone if you have the means and they want the fix! But you know, I have needs too... Remember, I haven't eaten now in more than 14 hours. Haven't had a thing to drink in more than 10. I check my blood sugar...94. Yay, at least lowering my basal was a good thing. I'm stable, not super hungry, I'm good. As an aside here, a lady in the waiting room sees me checking my sugar. She voices that she has to do that to her cat. Here I am thinking that I'm going to get an earful about how cat diabetics are just like human diabetics...it's going to be one of *those* conversations. She then surprises me by actually being knowledgeable, somewhat, about diabetes. We talked about treatment methods, and though for cats it's pretty straight-forward, in humans it's not so much. She actually wanted to know the differences in treatments and such. She was quite a pleasant woman.

Finally they call me back to get me ready. It is now close to four hours since my appointment time. I'm tired, cranky, and hungry. Seriously hungry. I was feeling quite fine, but I knew that I would need to eat rather soon. They get me ready, explain the procedure, apologize for not letting me know that I couldn't get sedation, and stabbed me in the neck to fill me up with lidocaine.

The most painful part of the entire procedure was the pressure they kept putting on my neck. They bore into your jugular vein to get to your heart. It's called boring in, but really it's just like getting an IV line put in. The needle is a little bigger, maybe 12 or 14 gauge, instead of 18. As they put the guide wire in, the sound is much like that of a pipe cleaner wire going in and out of a small pipe, or that of a piece of metal being raked against a metal sander. It's that quick ratcheting type of sound. Right next to your ear. I've never been one who had a problem with nails on a chalkboard or similarly annoying sounds, but the sound of that wire going in was just excruciating! Also, the pressure in my neck was really painful. Though I was anesthetized for the initial stick of the large guide wire, it still hurt a bit. I'm sure that it would have been much worse without the lidocaine.

At first, the surgeons weren't sure that they were getting accurate readings from the catheter. I heard a few comments about low pressure readings and weird RV traces. They ended up drawing blood for labs, directly from my heart. Then they repeated the pressure and RV readings and they came back normal. Remember, they were looking for pulmonary hypertension, and with that it's expected that you'll have high pressures in the pulmonary artery. They were originally getting low pressures...which would mean I'm even more bizarre than most people think! But alas, the pressures turned out to be just fine. They had the cath too far out from actually blocking the artery, so the pressure was falsely low. After the lab draw, they were able to get the cath into the correct position.

The one thing that bugged me was the part where they were advancing the cath in and out of my heart. They told me to expect my heart to flutter. I could have used the sedation at this point. Seriously. That fluttering was bad. It made me start sweating, my heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest. It was awful. If I ever have to do this procedure again, I will have a ride home...trust me on this!

When the surgeons were done, they had a nurse stand by to put pressure on my neck, so as to close the wound. I think I have a permanent kink in my neck from this lady. She was nice though...she just didn't want me to bleed out on my way home. Heh. The "kinky" nurse then bandaged me with a couple folded up pieces of gauze with some tegaderm on top. Next in was the nice nurse from the land of Oz. He told me that my blood sugar reading was 42. That was from the blood in my heart. While I was lying there, I didn't really notice that I was low...just felt really hungry. He was a sweetie-pie. While I was getting back into my street clothes, he went and raided the cafeteria for me. I got a nice turkey sandwich on wheat, and apple, two orange juice boxes, Lorna Doone cookie snack pack, and four Fig Newtons. I then left.

Got out to the bus stop and my bus arrived within a couple of minutes. That was nice timing. I sat in the back of the bus and started chowing down on my food. I got off of the bus in Bellevue and as I was transferring into the express bus to Kent Station, the driver told me to stop letting doctors give me my flu shot in my neck. Funny guy. He's driven me quite a few times over the last month, so he kinda knows what's been going on. He reminds me of my grandpa. :D

Once I was home I slept. It had been a long day. It wasn't until Saturday that I realized what my pain would have been had they not given me lidocaine. Ouch, ouch, ouch! It wasn't easy to move my neck for any reason. I also was able to take the bandage off. Small little hole with a bruise on it, that quite looks like a hickey. Bad, really bad. Hehe.

My cardiologist called me yesterday. The results: no PH, and nothing else to explain the shortness of breath. He would be inclined to do a left heart cath if not for the fact that my problem came on suddenly. If it had been gradual, he says, then it might be coronary artery disease of some sort, but because of the suddenness, he really thinks this is pulmonary. He told me to call my pulmonologist back and get in for a follow-up. Ugh! He did apologize for it not being PH...he knows that it's been a long time since the start of all this. He's glad that it's not PH, but he said that a lot of his patients who have PH are not happy people, and he liked my personality and didn't want me to lose it because of a disease... that was nice, but I still want answers!

I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that whatever my health issue is, it may take years for me to find the right doctor to figure it out. Why is there not a real life "Dr. House"?