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They only need to do some little burns... inside my heart... an ablation....and... guess what?.... I get to watch!

Living the Life of Holly
By Holly Winter
© 2005
Heart Surgery Looming in my Today

My forever friend, Ralph, whispered very softly, “You like him?”

I shook my head silently.

Brenda, a teacher friend from a long-ago school, caught on that Ralph was trying to set me up with the male nurse here in the hospital and blurted out, “Oh, God” which made the nurse doubt the needle he had just inserted into my arm to make a draw, so he pulled the needle half way out. Blood squirted two feet into the air, as if it had been waiting all its’ life to escape from the confines of my body just so it could decorate a Nurse’s uniform.

Brenda covered her face with her hands and moaned a weak, “Oh, God” which sounded more like a prayer this time. Nurse’s soiled uniform resembled the clothing of someone who had survived an aorta snip. You could tell he was a professional by the way he didn’t try to wipe the blood away or clean it up. He ignored it. My gown received only a few red speckles, just so I wouldn’t feel left out. I wondered if they would give me a clean one before I was wheeled in for my operation.

Ralph noticed the doctor that was walking our way wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. He met my eyes and gave the slightest shrug.

I shook my head slowly. No, no, no. I wasn’t in the mood to meet men. Must be the heart surgery looming in my today.

The doctor, ignoring the blood everywhere, sat on a little stool next to my bed to give me the pre-operation warnings. He introduced himself, smiled, then told me in one gulp that I could die, be put on a pacemaker, die, need to be on medicine the rest of my life, die, have far worse heart problems and that the operation might not even work.

I bit my lower lip. “I might need a pacemaker?” I turned to Ralph. “Nobody ever said that before.”

Brenda cleared her throat. “She might die? What kinds of complications could there be?”

Oh. Sure. Brenda cared about whether or not I was going to live. Especially since she was the one in charge of sitting in the hospital all day while doctors messed with my heart, then calling my mother to report the good news when it was over.

I never mentioned to anyone that it might go badly. No. It had nothing to do with positive thinking or jinxing the outcome. I really thought I would die. Just a feeling. Ok. A big feeling. Some might call it fear, but I considered it a huge premonition, which was why I’d eaten a whole pint of ice-cream the hour before my pre-operation-fast started; I wanted to have a wonderful last supper.

After the doctors watched me do another treadmill run, this time in socks, I was shown to my long, hard operating table. Four co-ed nurses got to work prepping me, which meant I was mostly naked while they shaved me, down there, and glued electrodes all over my body.

“You’re not big enough.” A male nurse mumbled.

I had no idea what he was alluding to, but guessed it had something to do with breast size. And. Since I’m always so bent on being ‘enough’ I reminded him that I’d gained eighteen pounds since they put me on the heart medicine.

“It’s not enough.” He said, holding up five electrodes. “Most people we see in here are far bigger.” He turned to the three doctors who would be working on me. “Where should these go?”

I know. It was too late to ask why I had to lay mostly naked in front of a medical team while I waited for an ablation for my Super Ventricular Tachycardia, which made my heart would race up to 180 beats a minute for hours at a time before it would return to my normal 70 beats a minute. Sure. This was the cure. They were going to find the spot that sent the bad signal to beat too fast, and burn that area on the inside lining of my heart.

But. Wasn’t thirty-nine too young for heart problems? Wasn’t I too small? Heck. I ate brown rice and salads and took vitamins every day. And I did killer work outs where I sweated until I couldn’t curse any more. Surely there was a mistake? I wanted to ask, again, if a sedentary donut-laden-life might have saved me, but they’d probably give me the same ‘Not likely.’ answer.

Doctor-1 approached my bed as my gown was blanketed over my body. “It’s very important that you stay totally still during this. You can’t move at all.”

“No problem.”

“If you move, we have to start over.”

“I won’t move.”

“We’re going to keep you awake, if you can handle it. There’s a better chance we can get your heart to race faster if you’re awake.”

Wow. Awake? So I could watch? Here I’d been all mad that I’d be sleeping through such an exciting experience. Who’d have guessed that I was going to be having an entertaining day?

The doctors fiddled with different tools, till they were inserting long wires into the veins at the top of my thighs. I noticed on one of the monitors there was a long thing inside a long thing.

“Is that me on that monitor?” I gasped.

“Yes.” A nurse rushed to my side.

“Really? That’s what the inside of my vein looks like?” It was larger than I thought it would be… about the size of my thumb they told me later. And inside the vein you could see a little tube with the wires in it. It was sort of like seeing a drinking straw with a wire in it inside another drinking straw.

“That’s the inside of my leg, right now?” I couldn’t feel anything. Who would have thought I’d be able to watch?

“Are you ok?” Nurse asked, catching the eye of Doctor-2.

“Great. This is amazing…”

Goose bumps broke out across my body as the monitor showed the wires being carefully fed into my heart. “That’s my heart?”

“Yes.” A nurse laughed.

The wires pointed up in a large, gray space on the monitor. Slowly the tips rocked back and forth, back and forth as if they were grasses slowly swaying in a gentle breeze, but they were wires moving to the beating of my heart.

“How’ya doing?” Doctor-3 stared into my face.

“I can feel them in there.” I closed my eyes. “They don’t hurt, but I can feel them.”

“Are you ok with all of this, or do you need some medicine?” She asked.

“I’m awesome.” I looked back at the screens. “And this is the awesomest thing I’ve ever seen.” Four monitors: My heart with wires. My heart in a 3D mode that kept turning and flipping. My statistics. The veins in my legs.

Doctor-1 turned to a nurse. “Alert Brenda to call her mother. Report: She’s awesome and the operation is awesome.”

I watched as they shot radio waves into the inside of my heart’s lining with the tips of the wires, making my illustrated heart on the screen burst into color. Greens. Blues. Yellows. Reds. They flipped the heart to another direction and continued mapping.

They let me know it when it was time for the burns. It felt as if someone were pinching me lightly inside my chest and quickly grew into pain. Pain. From inside. My moans started quietly, like the sound you’d make if you saw a small, injured animal. Quickly they escalated to the sound you’d make if you watched someone steal your purse. As the burn deepened, likely anyone passing by my operating room might have thought they were near a labor and delivery ward.

It was as if someone were inside me with an ice pick. I couldn’t move or escape the pain, which grew and grew. Their goal was to burn each spot for 30 seconds. Yeah. Might not seem like a long time to the people watching, but to me it was like having to lay politely for a series of one minute cigarette burns. Surely this is the purest form of torture.

Man. There was no stopping till it was finished. If I made them stop, likely my heart condition would continue for the rest of my life. I gritted my teeth. Let them do whatever they needed to do. I wanted health.

But. Even as they finished a burn, the spot continued to pulse pain, which the drugs they dripped into me could only dull, at best.

When they started the next burn and I got to experience the old pain with the new. I almost passed out during the second burn, which showed up on their monitors and made them pull back. I welcomed their pity. How on earth do other people stand this?

In all? Eight. Eight tiny burns. By the end I was ready to kick someone in the teeth. Luckily I didn’t. Never kick the guy who’s burning you.

Later the doctors pointed to the eight round circles on the monitor, introducing me to the burns, and insisted they’d never had anyone experience such discomfort during an ablation.

Um. Not the record I was hoping for.

Well. You might have guessed, after eight hours on the table, I didn’t die. Although. The heart monitor that escorted me up to the room pronounced me dead and printed out the time of my last breath: 4:15 pm. Um. No. And. The heart monitor in my intensive care room pronounced me dead every four minutes all night. I know. I know. It’s hard to trust a hospital that has lying heart monitors. But. I didn’t hold it against them. Cause. By God… I lived.

When Ralph came to pick me up the next day, he tilted his head and raised his eyebrows towards the tall male nurse puttering around my room.

I shook my head violently from side to side, which made the nurse, who kept trying to push a bedpan under me, ask if I were dizzy and needed to stay in the hospital a few more hours.

Ralph assured him that I wasn’t dizzy, just blonde, and that it was time for me to go home.

I was able to walk out of the hospital without assistance. I didn’t jog to the car, though I wanted to. I was too busy experiencing the world of oxygen. The oxygen high I was experiencing would last for weeks. In fact. I’m writing this six weeks later, and I’m still on cloud nine.

I’m pretty sure that’s an indicator of a hearty, healthy heart.

Wanna try another column? How about #220 Scavengers by Choice which is about hunting in downtown Denver.

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