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

[scleroplex at gmail.com (scleroplex)]

dear herbert,
congratulations and best wishes!
you are extremely lucky.
a 6 second pause is indeed scary.

your tale reminded me of my first month as an intern at the Boston VAMC.
the ER doc had admitted a woman late at night who had been brought in for
passing out.
she weighed 160 kilograms (352 imperial pounds) and carried a diagnosis of
multiple personality disorder which immediately led everyone to assume
she passed out when she switched from one personality to another......
till the holter strip was looked at the next morning which showed numerous
8-10 second pauses.
she had her pacemaker by noon.
bharani







Message: 23
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2012 13:54:55 -0700
From: Herbert Kanner <kanner at acm.org>
Subject: [Leica] OT My night and three days in the hospital
To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
Message-ID: <p0624081fcc277e8ca0f9@[192.168.1.103]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"

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.