[Leica] OT My night and three days in the hospital

[dlridings at gmail.com (Daniel Ridings)]

What a story! I'm glad it ended on a happy note and hope you feel
better every day.

Daniel

On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 10:54 PM, Herbert Kanner <kanner at acm.org> wrote:
> Sorry, no photographs. I am the proud owner of a brand new pacemaker. Here
> is the story:
>
> Ever since April, I have been having some bad days where walking a block 
> was
> a problem; I'd get painfully out of breath. The evening that I met Richard
> Man at a gallery was the third of three consecutive days when this problem
> got severe--I barely managed to stagger from my car a block to the gallery,
> though by the time I had been there for a few minutes, I felt fully ok.
>
> The following Monday morning, I saw my pulmonologist on a scheduled
> appointment. (Now I have to decide whether to fire him for extreme
> inattention to a possibly dangerous situation.) I described the increase in
> my symptoms in detail. One of them was missed heartbeats. It started months
> before, when I noticed that after activity, I would lose one heartbeat out
> of ten. I had already mentioned this to the cardiologist and got no
> reaction; an internet search indicated that if not accompanied by chest
> pains, not to worry. But it had worsened to where, after any moving around,
> it got to where, after two beats it would skip one, then maybe after a bit,
> three beats then skip one.
>
> Well, especially since it could very well have been partially due to a side
> effect from a new drug he had prescribed, he wrote out an order for blood
> tests and for me to come back the next morning. When I took the order to a
> lab, they pointed out that he had forgotten to put his name on it (!!!!!)
> and they had to call him on his cell phone to get authorization.
>
> The next morning, July 10, he looked it over, saw anemia--again yet another
> one of the myriad side effects of this drug--suggested stopping it for two
> weeks and seeing him them. What bothers me is that he was not in the least
> alarmed.
>
> I had a standing appointment for an annual physical that very afternoon, 
> did
> not feel up to it and phoned to cancel it. About an hour or so after that, 
> I
> decided that I was getting scared, called back, told what was going on, and
> the doctor's nurse said to come in--that they'd fit me in and would do an
> EKG.
>
> I cooled my heels for a while after the EKG. The doctor was not happy with
> it and took it to a cardiologist, came back and told me that sending me 
> home
> was too risky and that she had arranged for me to go right to the emergency
> room. I phoned my wife, who had a bit of trouble absorbing this startling
> info in a hurry over the telephone, but eventually got it and ferried me
> there--I had an ok on leaving my own car at the doctor's parking lot.
>
> After a relatively short time, considering that it was an emergency room at
> Stanford Hospital, they told me that they were admitting me to the 
> hospital.
> That was Tuesday night. All day Wednesday, the electro-cardiologists were
> trying to make up there mind whether or not I should get a pacemaker. I
> wound up making the decision for them. Around noon on Wednesday, my wife 
> was
> visiting while I was eating lunch--hospital food has sure improved--and 
> just
> as I leaned forward to pick up a shrimp by the tail and bring it to my
> mouth, I felt dizzy for just two or three seconds. Thought nothing of it.
> Didn't even remember that I was supposed to tell the nurse if I got
> dizzy--got mildly chewed out for it later. Early that evening a 
> cardiologist
> walked in with a printout in his hand, asked: "Were you dizzy today?" 
> showed
> me a monitor printout that indicated that my heart had stopped for about 
> six
> seconds. He said: "You need a pacemaker".
>
> One was installed the very next morning. The amazing thing is that it's all
> done with local anesthetics and extremely mild sedation. The procedure took
> about an hour. I didn't get out until late the next afternoon because it
> took all day to arrange a couple of ten minute procedures: an x-ray to make
> sure the pacemaker wires were where they should be, and a session where an
> expert nurse-practitioner who tested and reprogrammed the thing by 
> inductive
> coupling to a specialized computer program.
>
> That's how I spent a week. No photography.
> --
> Herbert Kanner
> kanner at acm.org
> 650-326-8204
>
> Question authority and the authorities will question you.
>
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