If you have not read Part 1, STOP and read it here before continuing.
My Heart Clicks For You - Part 2...
That day was made specially for me, because the ER was empty, a sight that is very rarely seen. It was a Monday afternoon, around 3pm, and if it were not for my heart murmur, the ER receptionist would have had a pretty chill afternoon shift.
Kinda eerie I remember thinking. ER, on a Monday afternoon, felt all too familiar. Insert Deja Vu moment. Oh that's right, we were just here a little over a year ago, on a Monday afternoon too. It was August 11, 2014, but instead of my walking in alone, I had accompanied my 6 year-old son on a stretcher, holding his leg up while tears and screams of agony rang loud and clear throughout the ER lobby. And the ER wasn't empty, like it was now. It was full and I remember seeing so many faces as we went through the ominous double doors that led to where all the action happens. I will never forget that day and here I was again, same day of the week, around the same time, same ER. But instead it was September 21, 2015, and my family was already miles away from me.
THAT day with my son, came rushing back, clear and vivid as if I were reliving it all over again. I was already an emotional wreck, and for this day to be haunting me at this moment was not what I needed. But the memories came back anyway. I remember pulling up to the ER that August afternoon after my husband driving what seemed like hours from downtown to the hospital, my 6 month pregnant body bent over in the back of our minivan, my legs up and around my son cradling him as I used every part of my body to cushion him. I was holding his distended leg with one hand while wiping his tears away with the other, doing the best I could to buffer the bumps in the road.
I could feel my muscles tensing and cramping because I was in that awkward and very uncomfortable position for so long. My back was screaming bloody murder, as my legs and feet began to feel numb and lock themselves in place. Blood was not circulating to my limbs, but I had to keep still, so that my son's leg was not disturbed. I tell my oldest son to keep his sister calm, to talk to her. I tell them everything is ok. Just stay calm. They settle down and seem ok for now. And then I feel his kicks, hard and steady on my bladder and abdomen, and I am reminded of my other child, the son that is inside me. I whispered ever so gently and willed my message to him,
"Hang on little man, your brother needs me right now, ok?"He immediately calms down and I shift my focus back to the tiny thin body crumpled in my lap. He is crying silently, bearing the pain silently but I have my eyes locked on his, willing strength and courage into his small body as I mentally steel myself for all that is to come.
I know it's not good. I can see that his leg has swelled to twice its normal size. The tiniest movement inflicts unbearable pain, so I knew that something was broken and that the break was not a simple one. I quickly feel up his neck, back and head, pressing and massaging as I go. I ask him if any of what I am touching hurts. I ask him to move his head around, and to count to 10. At least it looks like its only his leg. But worry and fear still had me in their intense lock.
But he wasn't going to see any of my worry, or my anxiety or my heart that was breaking with his every bout of pain. All he saw on my face and felt from me, was courage, and strength, and comfort.
Without breaking our locked eyes, I tell him,
"This is nothing! You are OK. Look at me, see? Do I look worried? Of course not. You broke your leg before. This is not new to you. You got this! The doctors are going to fix this and give you medicine for your pain. You are OK. Breathe and smile for me? By the way, nice haircut. You look really handsome with that style :-). Did you pick it out yourself?"Just an hour ago we were at the barber shop, getting haircuts before we went to the park. Meanwhile,
Hurry up! Drive faster! Get out of our way...can't you see we need to get to the ER now? What if he needs surgery? Will he ever walk again? Oh God! My poor son, the recovery is going to be long. And hard. That much I know. He is in so much pain. Please God, be with us, be with him. But why are we not there yet? Hurry up babe...get us there NOW!That is the storm that was raging in my head. But I kept it there, and there it stayed, completely masked by my smile and laughter as I'm talking to my son as if we were anywhere but on the floor of our van. And he continued to smile through his pain. My brave, brave boy.
My name being called from the triage room brings me back to reality. (Note: I will save the broken femur story for another time). And as the nurse quickly assesses me, a flurry of more nurses and aides come rushing into the room. I guess chest pains and heart problems are kind of a big deal in the ER. So I was getting the VIP treatment, and super fast service from what looked like everyone on the floor. At least I'm in good hands right?
The triage nurse asks as he is wheeling me to the back, to an open exam room,
"Did you come here by yourself? Are you alone?"I reply,
"No, I am not alone. For the next couple of hours I'll be here by myself, but no I'm not alone."He either was confused by my response or didn't hear me. Either way, he continued wheeling me to my room.
The usual ER routine quickly happens once I am settled on the bed. Wire leads get stuck everywhere on my body (sticky little buggahs I tell ya), as monitors (I lost count) get hooked up and an IV line is started. Blood is drawn, filling up what looked like at least 8 vials. Sheesh, that's a lot of blood. The nurses try to engage me in conversation.
"So where do you work? What do you do for a living?"It took me a while to hear and understand what they were asking. I had to remind myself that I was just at work about an hour ago. That it was a regular Monday morning, and I was feeling the usual Monday blues like the rest of the world, already dreading having to finish up my discussion piece for a class that was due later in the week. And now I'm here, in the ER, getting a full work up. Am I going to wake up soon?
An x-ray team comes in and quickly takes pictures. The ER attending makes a brief visit while more doctors and nurses come in to take a listen to the "very pronounced heart murmur" that they were all hearing about. I was fast becoming a celebrity on the floor, or a medical marvel I liked to tell myself.
An ultrasound is set up, and the cold gooey stuff that I usually get on my belly to check on baby, was now all over my chest. Eww. They forgot to warm it up. And Ouch!, the doctor was pressing too hard on my ribs with the ultrasound wand thing. She re-positions it and continues, squinting her eyes and rubbing her forehead as if she was either confused, or frustrated. I couldn't tell. More labs are drawn and more vials filled with my blood.
Everything was just happening so fast, but also so VERY slow. I was still up in a cloud somewhere, back in my soapy bubble, not really registering the gravity of all that was happening. They are just going to run their tests and I will be out of here before the kids start asking for me, I tell myself. I will make it home before dinnertime.
And with that decided, I smiled and continue to ignore all that is being done on me. It was annoying, especially being gawked at for being so young and having vitals of a bacon eating 70 year old. But I was already thinking about what to make for dinner. Maybe a quick stir fry so hopefully there's non-frozen meat at home. Or maybe, just for today, we can get take out from our favorite Thai place or maybe even some Korean bbq. The kids love meat jun. So yeah, Korean bbq will be better :-). And we can pick it up on our way home.
And then I hear my name being called. Again. I am back to reality and my smile quickly fades. The doctor is back in the room now. Shucks, I kinda liked being in my bubble. But I had to come back down eventually right? Before she could talk, I tell her,
"Just give it to me straight. No fuss, no muss, no sugar on top. Please."She gives me a reassuring smile, pats my hand and continues,
"So our initial tests are inconclusive. We have ruled out some conditions, but still need to run more tests. Your chest xrays look good, clear lungs, and your heart does not appear enlarged, which is another good sign. So this is probably a new condition that came on recently. It is most likely NOT a pulmonary embolism, or a pulmonary problem, but we will need a CAT scan to be certain. Your heart rate is still very, very high and your blood pressure is critically low. Troponin levels are through the roof, indicating stress and damage to the heart. So we will need to keep you here overnight to bring all of that under control while we figure out what's going on with you. We are a bit full upstairs but as soon as a room opens up, we will begin ER discharge and hospital admission, OK?."How about NO, its not ok. I have to go home to my kids, my family. My husband is picking up our baby from daycare right now and should be coming back soon to pick me up so I can help with bath time. We are going to get take out for dinner and eat in front of the TV.
"What do you mean keep me here? Just overnight? Like I have to sleep here tonight? Why can't I just go home while you figure out what's wrong? Take all the blood you need and hook me up to whatever, just get what you need so I can go home. I have kids to take care of. Then call me when you have a diagnosis and a plan of attack."Looking incredulous as if I didn't hear a word she said, the doctor gently repeated everything again. And she made sure to let me know that it is most likely going to be more than overnight. And that they can't let me go home. She repeated that part again and this time she added,
"Miss Togiai, what I'm trying to say is that if you walk out of here tonight, right now, you might never walk back. You can die. Your heart is working overtime. And the way you sit here, looking normal like your heart is not racing out of your body, with your blood pressure on the brink of being catastrophic, is baffling us right now. You look normal. Act normal. But your vitals and your heart are saying that nothing is normal."I give her a quick nod to let her know that I heard her. Loud and clear. I pick up my phone and began the process of preparing my kids for a night without me. I text my husband the latest update, and made a long list of "don't forget this and this and that" and "remember to give Mason his fluoride after his bath and that it's olaf (washing hair) day for Zaley but you can skip that tonight given our circumstances", "check homework, especially Matty's because he tends to rush through it", "have Mitchell help you, he is really good with helping around the house". There was more, but I thought I would let that sink in first and then piecemeal it to him later when he had time to do the first batch of instructions :-).
I text my sisters and brother next, and bring them up to speed. They didn't know anything until up to this point. So it was a very long text conversation as you can imagine. And as usual, they rally to my side and offer to come to the hospital. And of course, I tell them to stay put, that right now they are running tests and nothing much is going to happen except waiting. And that I was ok. Save their trip out to the hospital and their time, for if and when I really need them. Right now, its for the kids that I will need them, so its best to just be on standby for now. I tell them not to worry about me. As long as the kids are taken care of, I will be ok. They ask if I'm hungry, that they'll bring food. Hunger was no longer a feeling I had any association with. So I turn down "outside" food and figured that I could stand to miss a meal or two at this point.
I send an email to my boss, letting him know of my condition. I don't know how I was going to continue to earn money because all of my PTO and vacation time had been exhausted by my maternity leave 6 months ago. I let out a big sigh, quickly banish away the furrow of worry that was starting on my face, and move on. I leave that problem for later.
And then I sit and wait. And reply to the volley of texts that were coming in, fast and furious, from family and friends. More tests and more people poking at me. The clock says I had been there for only 2 hours. That's it? Felt more like 10 hours. I text my husband to check on them. And tell him to not come, to stay there with the kids. They need him more than I do. But he insists on coming back to stay with me for an hour or so, while the kids stay with his mom. We go back and forth, until he wins. He was on a roll with winning yeah? Lol.
I don't tell my parents yet at this point what was going on. A diagnosis still had not been made, so why worry them when I really didn't have anything to report on. So I leave that problem for later too.
I was told that an ECHO would be the most definitive assessment, but that procedure won't be happening until the next day. They also wanted to schedule a TTE (Transthoracic Endocardiogram...pretty fancy eh?), a procedure that will involve anesthesia and a camera going down my throat to get a better look at my heart. Oh great...I have to swallow a camera...awesome! Not! I'd much rather be in labor than having someone stick a camera down my throat.
So again still no diagnosis and more waiting. More IV bags get hung, as the heart monitors continue to beep loudly and out of control every 5 minutes, causing nurses and doctors to run in to check on me. They move me into different positions hoping it would help my blood pressure stabilize, all the while looking very confused as to why I didn't look sicker than I seemed. I'm ok, I keep telling them. No, I don't feel anything. They try running the fluids open wide to boost my blood pressure. It helps. But only a little. I ignore the monitors. And pray.
Then my husband walks in. And everything just stands still for me. Not much fazes my husband or at least that's what his stoic expressions always portray. But in that moment, I knew he was struggling. I could see right through him, knew full well that he was trying hard not to show any emotion at finding me hooked up to wires, with my monitors going crazy and my room full of people trying to stabilize my vitals. I knew he was broken down inside. And being the strong man that he is, he is fighting to hide it from me. Our eyes finally meet, and we are both in tears even before his face catches mine.
Everything quickly changed in that moment at seeing my husband. There he stood, the physical manifestation of my life outside of this nightmare, reminding me that I am a mother to 4 incredible kids and a wife to a great man. And it begins, the slow realization of just how serious of a situation I was in. In other words, shit just got real (pardon my french).
I start to feel constriction in my throat as if someone or something was choking me. My heart rate climbs dangerously high, higher than it ever did when I first came into the ER, beating at over 200 beats per minute. My monitors and nurses were freaking out!
My husband rushes to my side, holds my hand and squeezes. I screamed at myself, kicking and clawing at the darkness that was threatening to come. I needed to get it together. I didn't want to black out so I had better snap out of it...Now! I think about my babies. And I breathe my way out of it as my heart slowly calms down and my monitors finally shut up, lol. A moment of weakness came and it went. Thank God! But that is all I was going to give it. Just that moment, nothing more.
I spend the next precious hour with my husband, enjoying every second with him as I knew he had to leave soon to go home to our babies. I didn't want him to leave, but the kids needed him more. He tries to stay longer just until they move me upstairs but it was taking longer than they expected to clear up a room for me. I reassure him that I will be ok; that we will talk again once he is done putting the kids to sleep.
"I'm a grown woman I said...I can take care of myself..."And put on the best smile I could muster (which was not much of a smile at all lol).
"The kids need you more babe. Go now."He reluctantly leaves after we hug for a very long time. He fights back tears as do I. He kisses me one more time on my forehead and quickly walks out of the room and to the car to get home to our kids. And just like that, I am alone once again.
With the sounds of my monitors beeping and nurses shuffling in the background of my ER room, I close my eyes and steady myself again with prayer.
To be continued...in Part 3
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