Well.
... Well...
Imagine me sitting at the computer right now, interlacing my fingers and then stretching my arms forward, palms rotated out, as eight knuckle joints synchronously pop.
Snap, crackle, and pop. Have I got a story for you!
I will preface this post with, "Patrick is okay." He is home and resting. Not moving. Inanimate, which goes against everything he believes in. (More on that later.)
He had a rough night, the night before last. He had alllll the symptoms - chest pain; chest pressure; extreme nausea. He couldn't sleep. He would lay in bed because he felt being close to me was safer for him than if he passed out on the couch, alone.
Also, laying flat is terribly uncomfortable for him in times like this. He can feel every single skipped beat, extra beat, and flutter. When he sleeps on his stomach he says it feels like his heart is pumping hard enough to wake me up beside him. And his c-pap? That machine that is supposed to deliver life-giving oxygen to his lungs so his heart doesn't have to work ten times harder during the night when he stops breathing? It quadruples the chest pressure, making him feel like his chest cavity is filling with air.
He is in an untenable position. How can he not use the machine that greatly improved his quality of life for so many years, because now it makes him feel like he's dying?
Yesterday morning he woke up feeling at about a 5 or 6 on his uncomfortability scale, when the night before he had been hitting 8 and 9 all night. So, that morning was okay. Slow. We had plans. He woke up at 7:45am and we snuggled and played with the 3-year-old for fifteen minutes. Then we got ready for the day, and Patrick had an egg and a piece of toast for breakfast. He took his morning medicines at 9:00am and sat at the table, calling a friend.
In the middle of that phone call he suddenly called my name, and honestly, the events surrounding that approximately sixty seconds are a bit of a blur to me. He called my name and grabbed his chest, and scrunched his face up in pain. I ran to him, aware that the 3-year-old and the 11-year-old were across the table.
Be calm. It will pass. Don't panic. I tell myself these things every single time.
I put one hand on his back, one over his heart, and stood with his shoulder against my chest, desperately wanting my physical contact to comfort him while he goes through what most of us will be blessed to never face.
All this time I was watching the phone on the table, seeing our friend's name on the screen, knowing the call was still connected. He could hear what was happening. I didn't know what to do.
The episode needed to pass. Why isn't it passing?
Patrick was moaning, saying it hurt, saying it was happening, that it was coming. I was so scared that somewhere around this time I remember saying something to our friend and jabbing the End Call button, as though that was an important use of a half second of my time. It wasn't.
"Oh, God. It's coming," Patrick ground out through clenched teeth.
I knew what "it" was but I am still never prepared for it.
When the defibrillator shock came his entire body jolted. His legs extended, kicking the space beneath our table. His arms flailed out, one connecting with and grasping for my arm and the other... It's so hard to describe. His hand sought something to hold onto and I watched as time after time it came into contact with nothing but hard table. Pat, pat, pat. Reach. Slide. Clench. Unfurl. Pat, pat.
I panicked. Was this a lack of awareness? Was the blind groping a sign that I was losing him? Had his heart started to fail, his body losing control, and his mind losing its grasp on reality? Was I going to have to drag him off the chair and start pounding on his chest, probably agonizing the entire time if I was going to break through his sternum, weakened and wire-bound from his bypass in 2007?
Oh, God, I thought. And Lily is watching.
Just as those thoughts hit my consciousness his hand found a box of my sign making supplies off to the side, and I watched as he grabbed onto the top edge, his white-knuckled grip screaming at me that he was in agony.
"Call 911! Call 911. Oh, God."
He barely got the words out as I scrambled to turn on his phone screen and find the keypad. I hated to take my hands away from him, and just as I dialed, he felt a pain in his heart that made his body jump. When his arms squeezed together to wrap around his torso, the box of supplies went flying, scattering everything at my feet.
The event slowly began to subside as I spoke with the medic, who could hear all of Patrick’s pain-filled sounds, answering questions I had answered countless times before.
Yes, he was awake and aware.
Yes, he was having trouble breathing.
Yes, he was having trouble speaking.
I was already getting the chewable aspirin when the dispatcher asked me to wait. He said, "I'm not really familiar with implanted devices."
That's okay. I had done this before.
As Patrick chewed four baby aspirin, the dispatcher gave the go-ahead for Patrick to take them.
The 11-year-old had taken the 3-year-old upstairs, so when the dispatcher hung up I unlocked the front door, locked the dog upstairs, and brought out a phone charger. The medics arrived in record time, which seemed like a miracle.
Patrick was able to walk out of the house, and I watched from the front door as they rounded his truck. Then I went back inside, locked the door behind me, and stared at the ceiling.
What a life. What a way to live.
I'm sure Patrick wondered what life with advanced heart failure would be like, and so did I. But that didn't prepare me for the reality of it.
The tears. The discomfort. The fear for his life.
"Remember the overflow pipe on the back of the washer needs to be pushed back down every couple of months. And don't forget to change the filter (on the lift station)."
"... Are you preparing me for you dying?"
"Sort of."
The conversations.
As I'm writing this, it is 3am on Thursday morning. Patrick woke me up at 2am, indecisive about whether he should call 911, drive himself in, or just sit and wait while his heart betrayed him from inside his chest.
So far he has chosen Option Number 3.
Seattle. Oh, the thoughts I have about that mythical place I've never seen.
Mistakes were made last week. We made mistakes. Porter Heart made mistakes. The insurance company would refuse to admit they made mistakes.
We could agonize over the Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda's, as Patrick calls them, but what good would that do? What good does it do to think about how, if we had managed to get a plane ticket at the last minute, all of this would have happened in Seattle?
There is no point in dwelling on it.
Right now Patrick's quality of life is nearly rock bottom. But he is here, joking and laughing between painful pangs of angina and the throbbing of a heart that's struggling to do its job.
Today I give thanks that I'm covering him with a blanket because he is always cold.
Today I give thanks that a couple weeks ago I found a 3-pack of bottles of chewable aspirin.
Today I give thanks that in Patrick's greatest times of need, I can be there when tears fill his eyes and he reaches his hand out to me for the comfort of physical contact.
So many unexpected blessings. We need a positive outlook.
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