The meanest treadmill I've ever met!

I got stuck in the hospital for one reason. Rule out a life threatening problem! I'm just the same now as when I went in a few days ago. Nothing has changed, I just know that whatever IS wrong isn't going to leave me on the carpet again. I wish I could be grumpy about the useless hospital stay but I can't. I've met the carpet. We've been up close and personal and once was enough. At least the hospital ruled out the scary stuff.

This is how the wonderful people at Thomas do that. Meet the most awful treadmill in the world. I'm pretty sure everyone gives this thing the stink eye. They should! The treadmill of death is designed to make you reach a maximum heart rate. It's a breaker of men and tough little chicks.

Just think about it. You've been kept up all night getting bloodwork done every 4 hours. Your arms are beat and you still have an IV in. There's no food or water for 12 hours before because if you flunk, you get to have surgery. You're wheeled downstairs where they make you take your top off and then tape about a dozen leads to your chest. The tape keeps them from moving around but it's guaranteed to take some skin off to. You get an ECHO (still topless) to see what your heart looks like at rest then you wait like that on a gurney till the cardiologist shows up.

I ALWAYS get the ECHO jelly stuff in my hair. No clue why, but it always ends up there. I also have a bad habit of giggling a little bit when the test starts. Seriously though, jogging on a treadmill in pink pajama bottoms and running shoes while topless with ECHO jelly in your hair is mildly ridiculous. Add in the wires, the hospital gown tied over your chest, and the techs asking how you got your abs and you've got yourself a truly weird afternoon. HOW did I get here?!?

The test starts easy and then gets faster every 15 seconds. Before you know it you're running flat out. Heart rate goes up, misery sets in, and you just keep going. They want to see what my heart looks like under alot of stress. In other words, you don't get off till you're gasping for breath and literally can't go anymore. My first stress test I made it 7 minutes. This time, after five months of rehab, I made it 8. Believe it or now this is great! I passed with flying colors. Whatever is causing my heart to work hard, it's not a blockage. The news is delivered right then and the paperwork starts. I get to go home!!! So there you go. If you ever find yourself in a stress test room you'll know a little bit of what to expect. I hate the test but I LOVE the results! I got breakfast, a ride home, and peace of mind. That's worth any amount of tests. Now we just have to figure out where the problem REALLY is. Doctor in two weeks. Fingers crossed for answers!

Back again.

I have GOT to learn to complain more. Apparently if you chopped my head off it would roll away saying I'm fine. The doctor's words, not mine. This little bad habit of mine has landed me back in the hospital. I'm tired. Exhausted. I wake up tired, take naps, and it NEVER goes away. It's gotten so bad that the only places I've been since Christmas is rehab and the grocery store. Just carrying in my grocery bags leaves me short of breath and I have to lay down afterward. Is that normal? Um, no. Did I complain? Nope, I went to rehab and they busted me.

I show up for Thursday rehab in my hot pink workout pants ready to work and got hooked up to my heart monitor. Busted immediately! During warm up my heart rate hit 150. Whoa that's bad! They pulled me off the floor and after a quick conversation I was leaving and driving straight to my cardiologist's office. Long story short, he wasn't happy either. My heart is working way too hard. It's why I'm so tired and out of breath. Instead of heading back to rehab I was walking into Thomas to be admitted. Great.

At least they let me walk! I hate rolling around in those wheelchairs. Does anyone else ever feel like they're going to crash into something? I'll get into the tests they did in another blog post. The whole deal for staying at Thomas was to rule out another heart attack and to see if I had another blockage in my heart. Luckily for me, I don't! One more hospital stay down and they can't find anything. This picture is just for my blog buddies. I can't just blog and post about the good hair days right? This is me so pissed to be back in there! I'm still in my hot pink pants and holding my rehab heart ball. Grump.

So what to do now? What all heart patients get to do. Wait. There could be a couple of things wrong. I may have a partial blockage they can't see yet or I may have an electrical problem. What that means is that the pump part may be working great but my heart is firing wrong. The good news is that it's not immediately life threatening so they let me go home. Whatever it is, they're going to watch me at home. Corey came and got me today and I get to sleep in my own bed tonight. I'll post more tomorrow. Thanks so much guys for all the prayers and well wishes. You really cheered me up when I was wishing I could be home! Take care guys!

I'll never live it down.

You know that embarrassing moment that makes you want to sink into the floor? Mine was waking up in ICU after my heart attack. I'm never going to live it down. It's five months later and I still turn beet red whenever someone brings it up. What happened? Well...

I had a really bad reaction to the drugs. I was on quite a bit of morphine so they gave me finagrin to combat nausea. Alot of finagrin. It worked alright but it also caused extreme paranoia. I started to "wake up" from the drugs to find a nurse applying hard pressure to the femoral artery bleed in my leg. How did I respond? By trying to play Whack-A-Mole with her head. There I was bleeding all over the place and I'm trying to swat her nose off of her face. Jeez.

Oh no, it didn't end there. Apparently if you were within a 10 foot radius you had a target on your forehead. I took direct offense with my father and Corey and blamed them both for "tinkering" with me. Ding, ding, ding! Let the games begin! This was THEIR fault! How could they let this happen?!? Who said it was okay to put stuff in my heart?!? Corey's comment that he would have let them crack my chest open if it meant saving my life was NOT well received. Talk about ungrateful.

I called my poor brother and cussed him out. He drove all night to see me and he and my gorgeous sister in law brought me presents. They were met with stink face and a world class pout. I had somehow thought that he was coming to "rescue" me and when I realised I wasn't going anywhere I was pissed! Betrayed again!

I also screamed at my cardiologist (Who had just saved me from heart damage.) that I wanted a cigarette. I was so convinced that I was being kidnapped that they warned the nurses that I might make a break for it. Can you imagine a crazy heart patient trying to bust out of the hospital trailing an IV stand?!? How's that for bad behavior? Corey rode to the rescue yet again and insisted they take me off everything. I was hell on wheels and I bet after two days of bad behavior he was ready for a break. Wonder of wonders, insane, crazy, kidnapped Gillian went away and I came to my senses in my hospital room. Just like that I was my normal sweet, Southern self.

I'm telling you I'll never live it down! I was a crazy person! I think I owe the ICU nurses a fruit basket or something. Especially the Whack-A-Mole one. I had to apologise to my family and friends that I fussed at. I acted like such a butt that I have a new allergy on my chart. Never again will they give me finagrin. I don't think they want to deal with me either.

Home!

The first thing I saw when I got wheeled out of the hospital was smokers lighting up by the entrance. "My people!" Oh, wait, not anymore. It's the first of many nagging reminders that I am now officially a nonsmoker and if I smoke another cigarette it may kill me. Isn't it insane that I would still want one?!? Sadly, I do. I really do. Corey drove around to pick me up and I got my car ride back to the marina. Why the marina you ask? We thought about it. Kind of. For a while moving back into the house to rehab was a very real option. Here's why we decided against it.

1. I love living on my boat in the marina. It's calming and peaceful and that's just what the doctor said I needed to be. Calm and relaxed.

2. It's my own people aquarium. At the house I'd be very cut off. Here there are always people milling about and things in motion to see. I love the sailboats and the wildlife watching.

3. The said people act as unofficial babysitters. I'm never really alone here and help is yards away if I need it.

4. The boat is smaller so I don't have to walk far if I'm feeling bad and my rehab walks outside are beautiful. Who doesn't love a stroll through a beach and marina? If I'm lonely or bored I can cruise by the shipyard or the shrimpboats. There's always someone there to share some mariner's gossip.

5. I'm not in any shape to handle a move right now. All of the things I love are on the boat. You need more to run a house and frankly I don't want to be unpacking and dealing with all of that. Corey has more important things to do to so why bother?

See what I mean? I could go on but really, why? I want to be on the water so the water is what I got. I wish I could say I was in great shape for my homecoming but I was a bit of a mess. The only way I can describe how my body felt would be to say I went to sleep in the body I had had my whole life and woke up in a different one. Me and my new body have not made friends yet. It's sore and tired and blooming with bruises thanks to all of the blood thinners. I have needle marks everywhere. I lost 5 pounds in 5 days and now weigh in at a whopping 98 pounds. When I went into the ER I was a healthy looking adult in great shape. When I see myself at home now I have to laugh. I look like a crack addict or an abuse victim. I look sick and frail. How did this happen so fast?!?

In my own defense, this won't last long! No self respecting 30 year old is going to go down looking this bad. Break out the eyeliner! I get to walk for exercise and to stretch out my leg. I refuse to miss one. I do my little workout routine to try to stop muscle atrophy. Most of the bruises I can cover up and so what if they're there? I survived to earn each one thank you. If it upsets someone to see them, trust me, it upset me more to get them.

I can't even begin to explain what it felt like to arrive home. For a moment there I didn't think I would see it again. Driving up and smelling the water felt like taking a big fresh breath. It was relief, and peace, and a little elation. How did I celebrate? I went inside and took a nap. My new body has a short shelf life. It likes to sleep more then I do. Hopefully we can compromise sometime soon and both get what we want.

The Attack

The day I had my heart attack started just like any other. I live on a boat docking in a pretty little marina on Mobile Bay. I sent my husband, Corey, off for the day and went out to lunch at one of my favorite local places. Panini Pete's makes an amazing turkey sandwich. I ate the whole thing and started to feel a little dizzy and tired. I thought maybe I had eaten to much or maybe it was the sweet tea. I'm a healthy eater and sweet tea with real sugar is so rare for me now it's a treat. I drove home and laid down for a quick nap.

I woke up 3 hours later. I'd slept through the whole afternoon. The 5pm news was about to come on so I grabbed a Diet Coke and lit a cigarette. That was the cigarette the almost killed me. What happens next gets a little hazy for me. I'm sorry about that but when I look back on that day I have a lot of blurry memories. I'll do my best to explain.

I was smoking on the sofa, watching the news, when several things happened at once. It felt like a bomb went off in my body. I felt a sharp pain in my chest like when you swallow a potato chip. I staggered to the bathroom and threw up but instead of feeling better I got much worse. I broke out in a cold sweat and became very dizzy. Everything was greying out and the pain in my chest got much worse. It took everything I had to get off the floor in the bathroom and make it to my cell phone. I sat down hard on the floor, still pouring sweat, and my body just quit. It became harder to breathe and I was trying hard to get in enough air. Every part of me weighed 100 pounds. I couldn't lift my head off the floor or move. I was getting confused and I didn't think I could speak. I can't tell you how scary this feels. I didn't know I was having a heart attack. All I knew was I was very sick and I needed help and I didn't think I was going to be able to call anyone. One of the last things I remember clearly was pulling myself together enough to send this text message to my husband. It saved my life.



Text - Come home. Sick. Chest pain fainted. Hurry. August 7th 5:15 pm

I was taken to the ER that Friday night and was diagnosed with a heart attack. At 30. I was in serious trouble. I spent a few days in the ICU and had to have a procedure done called a cathe. They punctured the femoral artery in my upper thigh and inserted a wire like device that traveled up to my heart. Dye was injected into my heart to get a clear picture of what was wrong. To make a joke, they should have been looking for what was right. My husband was called and informed that I had to have a stent put in. I recovered from the narcotics to be informed that I had two new implants.

The first is my new "heart jewelry." I have a Xience V coronary stent in the left anterior descending vein in my heart. The stent was placed to open this vein and save my life. The second is called the StarClose vascular closure system and was used to close my femoral artery. Basically, it kept me from bleeding to death and enabled the doctor to use just a tiny incision. As that said incision is in my bikini line, I can't complain. I'm told I won't even have a scar.

Unfortunately for my husband, father, and anyone in my radius, me and heavy narcotics don't get along. I had no idea what was going on and placed the blame for waking up in the ICU with implants squarely on my husband and father's shoulders. What were they thinking letting this happen?!? Who authorized this?!? Once off the drugs I felt awful about it but I'm sure I'll never live it down.

I spent a little over 4 days in the hospital. Heart patients must be monitored and so I was. I carted around this heavy little heart monitor everywhere I went. I was told that no, I could never smoke again. It most likely would kill me. Yes, I am very rare. As of yet I have no idea how rare. I can't find any statistics. They also have no idea yet WHY I had a heart attack. We have the broad strokes. Smoking. But would that take down an otherwise healthy 30 year old? They don't think so. I'll get more tests later but we may never know. Whatever was wrong is now fixed so who knows. All I can be is grateful.