Still Ticking

I collected another stent on Thursday. That makes 8 total, so far. Then on Friday, I had an ablation in my heart's upper chamber. Nobody really told me everything that was involved with that. I assumed it was a lot like the ventricular catheterization angioplasty. I was wrong.

A cath takes about 45 minutes, give or take, absent complications. The ablation procedure is more like 4-6 hours. I was in the lab for 5.5 hours. Second, they knock you pretty far down, anasthesia-wise for an angiogram. Not so with the ablation. I got a lot of lidocaine (a numbing agent) in the entrance points: they poke a hole in your right and left femoral artery and insert the catheter. However, they can't give you much sedation or it masks the arrhythmia. So I was concious and in a good amount of pain for the entire procedure.

In an angiogram or similar procedure, they close off the artery with a stitch, so you are up and around alot faster. With the ablation, they just lean on the two wholes they've poked in your very, very upper thighs until the hole they punched in your femoral artery forms a clot. In my case, that was another 30 minutes. Then, because you don't want to throw that clot or cause the hole to re-open (you can bleed to death very quickly if you start bleeding out the femoral artery), you have to spend another 6 hours lying flat. By flat, I mean almost completely. They do let you elevate your head about 30 degrees.

Once the small amount of versed and sometimes phentynal they give you wears off, you are in pain. A lot of pain. My nurse kept me waiting about 90 minutes before she gave me my first dose of pain medication. I lay there, actually wanting to die, I was in so much pain. Finally, she comes in and asks me if I want a pain pill or a shot of morphine. I said "Yes." It took her a second to figure out I wanted both. By that time, a couple of other patients had heard me moaning and crying and come in to see what was wrong. One of them actually called the charge nurse on my behalf.

So. Now I have dead heart on the bottom and dead heart on top. And yet my body keeps on going. I take that as a sign that there is more instore for me. I just wish I knew what my second act was. And all the cardiac issues are getting rather old. I wish those would either kill me or go away. Selah.