This week, on Dec. 21, the world is supposed to end. At least, that's what some people think the Mayans predicted.
I'm pretty confident it won't, but precisely six months earlier, on June 21, my world nearly ended. I was literally about a few hairs' width away from death.
That would be my guess as to how much blood flow was going through a 99.9 per cent blockage in the left descending artery in my heart. That, my friends, is the largest artery in the heart. When it gets plugged off, it's game over. They call such blockages "the widow maker," according to my sister, the registered nurse.
I was within days, or hours, of having such an event.
Over the previous month, I was having what I would describe as "flutters" in my chest -weird sensations, nothing dramatic. But I would be a little winded running up the stairs from the basement.
Then one night I had sharp pain in my left wrist and deltoid. I drove myself to the hospital as my very worried wife, also a nurse, stayed home with the kids. The overnight stay showed nothing amiss on the ECG, and nothing wrong with the blood work. Go home, I was told, but come the next day for a stress test.
It was unnerving sitting there with several other men, all older than I. The doctor said half of the people earlier that day had been sent to Regina. I would be the next one.
The stress test revealed that by the time I was at the running stage, seven out of 12 heartbeats were wonky. I needed to see a cardiologist right away. Unfortunately, it would take another 12 days to get in to see him.
When I did, he sent me straight to the cardiology unit at the Regina General, and was told to not waste time getting there. When I got there, again the ECG and blood work were good. But that night, the blood work started showing the early signs of a heart attack.
The angiogram the next day revealed an almost complete blockage in the largest artery in my heart. They would be commencing with an angioplasty and stent right away. However, an ambulance had just arrived with a woman in the middle of a heart attack, and they needed to work on her first.
I spent the next hour or two with the computer screen, 16 inches from my head, showing the repeating loop of the swooping scan of my heart, and the obvious blockage. It was like watching an endless loop of a car wreck on CNN as the commentators spoke, except you are the one in the wreck. I couldn't move an inch due to the placement of the tube into the femoral artery, lest I bleed out.
"You strike me as a stressful person," the long-serving head nurse said. Gee, I wonder why. Thankfully, she got some drugs for me and had me put out.
I awoke later to an entirely new reality. Yes, there had been some damage to my heart. It would take several months to bring myself back up to where I was. Don't lift anything over 10 pounds for several weeks. Take your meds. Never miss them. Change your diet and get regular exercise. Reduce stress. In six months, you should be as good as new.
For the first few weeks, I could hardly walk a block. I took six weeks off work and basically rested the entire summer holidays, which is not as much fun as you might think.
Six months later, I am, for the most part, good as new. It's been extremely hard to change my diet, because, frankly, EVERYTHING is full of salt and fat. I did a lot of walking until the snow flew, but now I have to get on the exercise bike or use the walking track.
When you've had such a close call, you end up second-guessing everything. You frustratingly find yourself in the same patterns. Why am I yelling at the kids for not cleaning their room despite me asking them to do so for the past three days? Am I being a bad parent for letting them get away with it, or am I going to die next week and the last thing they will remember is Dad was screaming at me about cleaning my room? Why are we still buying the same foods at the grocery store? Why am I finding myself driven to work more, not less? Why can't I go to sleep at a regular hour? Am I afraid that I won't be waking up the next morning?
Will everyone get along this Christmas, or will there be the usual squabbles? Will this be my last Christmas, or do I have another 20, 30, 40 to go? My dad is turning 70 in January. I'm 37 now. Will I even see a pension check at 67? Will I walk my daughter down the aisle? Will I see my son off to university?
Have I been a good enough husband for my wife, who has stood by me through all this?
My daughter had to write a narrative in her Grade 3 class this month. So, through three drafts, she detailed over three pages exactly what I wrote above, except her timing was a little off. "It was the only thing I could think about what happened over the summer," she told me.
"When my dad had a heart attack," was the title. "It was night time when my dad had chest pain. He drove to the hospital and he stayed a night. The next day, we went to the hospital and me and my mom and Spencer went to my auntie and uncle's house. Me and my cousins played. My cousins' names are Abby and Cali. I love my auntie and uncle and cousins we stayed (with). My dad came from the hospital and we stayed two or one nights and we went back home. He came back from the hospital and we went home."
The Mayans may not have predicted the end of the world, but neither had I predicted the (near) end of my world. I just hope that, with the Lord's help, I can avoid any such end for a long time, and be a better man, husband and father in the meantime.
Merry Christmas.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected]
