My Wake-up Call

Introduction

It can’t be argued that it is a stressful time. The stress is all around me, us, our community, our planet. We are enveloped in a world-wide health crisis that will henceforth forever be known as the COVID-19 Pandemic and the stress it induced brought to the forefront of my consciousness a personal health concern that I had been ignoring for years. It also brought forward a resolve to work on reinventing myself to be the best version of me that I could.

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The Incident

I wake up at 5:30 a.m. I feel strange and sense something is wrong with me. I sit up and put my hands to my chest. My heart is beating faster and more noticeably than normal. I touch my face. It feels warm even though the air conditioner is blowing at its full capacity. I won’t lie, I am scared.

I think maybe a trip to the bathroom will help things calm down but it doesn’t; if anything my heart is beating still faster (of course it is – I’m moving!). By this time, my husband has been awakened by the alarm and he is sitting on the side of the bed. I walk over to him and he looks up at me with the look of a man who is still not fully awake and confused by my close proximity and panicked look. “Put your hands here,” I say to him. I take his hands and direct them onto my upper chest. “Can you feel it?”

“What the hell?” his look tells me that he feels what I do. “Your heart is beating out of your chest! What do you want to do?” He knows my felling on hospitals. I have always maintained that after fighting cancer, I will never fight for my life again. It sounds tough and resolved but honestly, I am a coward who fears death. This is a no-brainer for me and the hospital it is.

“We are going to the ER,” I respond. ”I’m not prepared to die just yet. Did you really think I wouldn’t?” I see relief in his eyes. He’ll support whatever decision I make but he’s not a fan of heroics in the light danger so my decision pleases him. I really love this man.

By this time I am sitting on my side of the bed. I have strapped on my Fitbit to check my heart rate. It’s 116 beats per minute (BPM). I get up to get dressed – I’m not going to the hospital in my pajamas! I glance at the Fitbit. 127 BPM. My fear is getting worse by the second. I finally make my way to the main floor and put my shoes on and glance at the Fitbit once more – 136 BPM. What is happening to me??

Experiencing the Emergency Room (ER)

I walk through the door of the ER myself. My husband goes to park the car and will join me later. I approach the attendant who is dressed in PPE from head to foot. I am given a sterile mask and am told to discard the one that I have on. I am asked a series of COVID-19 related questions. My answers must be appropriate as I am instructed to proceed to the waiting area. I ask about my husband joining me and I am told that he is not able to come in right now; “He can come in when you are in a room.” I take this to mean that he will be able to come in when I am admitted. I don’t ask for clarification and none is offered. I make a quick call to relay this information to my husband; there is no sense him coming in just to be turned away at the door. “I will keep you informed,” I tell him.

I make my way to the designated area. I am told it is where the asymptomatic people are to sit. I adjust and then re-adjusted the mask. Clearly I am paranoid about walking through presumably symptomatic people. Do any of them have COVID-19? What if they do? Will I get the deadly disease? Will I die from it? Why aren’t these people sectioned off instead of the asymptomatic? My fear ramps up 10-fold and it is made all the worse by facing it alone without the one person that grounds me.

I am finally in the designated area and I take a seat as far away as I can from the other people in there.

“Julie Buchy!” My name is called quickly. I guess when you indicate issues with your heart people stand up and take notice. I describe my symptoms and the attending nurse, I assumed it is a nurse, takes my pulse. He tells me. “Your heart rate is at 99 BPM.” He also tries unsuccessfully to get a blood pressure reading. I should tell you that I am a plus-size person with an over-sized upper arm and normal blood pressure cuffs don’t work on me. “That’s okay,” he says. “We’ll get that later.” He dismisses me back to the waiting area.

Another short wait; my name is called again. Another male attends to me and indicates he will do an ECG to get a picture of what my heart is doing at that present moment. He leads me behind a flimsy curtain and instructs me to disrobe and then leaves me. I am alone, thankfully. I don’t like to be naked at the best of times, let alone in front of strangers, but the events of this morning press on and implore me to do whatever is asked of me. I lie down on the bed or gurney, whatever it is, and pull the sheet up to my neck. The male returns and pulls the sheet back. I close my eyes as I feel his hands on me, moving parts of my body around to attach the sensors. I am humiliated but there is no time for humiliation. Several minutes pass as the machine does what it’s supposed to do. Next the male instructs me to dress and I do. I am not comfortable but this is no place for modesty. At least that is what I think. He dismisses me again to the waiting area and as I exit I hear as he is admonished by a supervisor for not fully closing the curtain when requesting I get dressed. This pleases me; my humiliation is at least somewhat warranted.

***

It’s not long before someone comes to the waiting area and calls my name. A rather pleasant female voice says, “Follow me.” I’m scared so therefore obedient. I notice a clock as I pass through what appears to be a nursing station. It’s 6:50 a.m. How is it possible that so much has happened and I have only been here for less than 30 minutes? I am shown to a small room with nothing more than a bed and monitoring machines. It’s quite dimly lit and there is a hospital gown draped over the end of the bed. I’m instructed to change into it so I do and then I wait.

Someone comes in and says they need to take some blood samples so I offer my arm. She gets what she needs and then something goes slightly awry with removing the needle. Blood spatters the bed and the floor. “Oops,” she says. “This sometimes happens.” She cleans up the spatter off the floor and changes the sheet on the bed and then leaves me alone. Again.

Another person comes in. This time I am pretty sure it is a nurse. She tells me she is going to get my blood pressure reading. She tries the upper arm cuff – they all do – and it pops off. She tries again on the other arm with the same result. “I have a different cuff,” she tells me. “It will go on the lower part of your arm. Let’s try that one.” She put it on and it works. I feel the cuff inflate and my hand goes numbs and then the grip releases. The numbers on the monitor are unbelievable – 201/103.

The nurse looks at the monitor then says, “Let’s try the other arm. This seems awfully high.” The other arm offers a similar result – this time the monitor reads 199/101 and my heart rate is still at 98 beats per minute. No change since I got here but not as high as it was earlier. I guess that’s a good thing. “Ok,” the nurse says. “The doctor will be in as soon as he’s able. We’ll leave the blood pressure cuff on. It creates an automatic report. I will be in to check on you later.”

The time is 8:00 a.m.

I try to get comfortable; I fidget and reposition myself often and I finally settle on sitting on the edge of the bed. The time moves slowly but I busy myself letting work know I won’t be logging on this morning and why. I also send messages to family and close friends. The outpouring of concern is heartwarming. I keep my husband informed of what is going on. He is patiently waiting in the car hoping to come and be with me. No one has told me that he can come in so he doesn’t. I really need his strength right now.

I watch the flurry of activities outside my room. Frontline staff move from room to room, from curtain to curtain. They are constantly changing in and out of sterile gowns. Every single one is wearing a surgical mask and many also have shields on. I am glad there is an obvious concern for the protection of the patients in the facility.

Time ticks on. The clock on the wall opposite my room tells me that I have been here for well over two hours now. There has been no doctor in to see me yet. I don’t even seem to be on the radar of the nursing staff, and haven’t even been offered a glass of water. The only thing that is regular is the sound of the monitors and the inflating and deflating of the blood pressure cuff that is constantly showing me my blood pressure is very high. It seems to have stabled at 169/98. This is not good. I don’t really know what the numbers mean but I know that this is far from normal. I reflect on the number of times my family doctor told me to do a 24-hour blood pressure monitor and I refused because I didn’t want to take any pills. Clearly that was as flawed decision on my part.

I have now been here almost four hours. “Excuse me,” I call out hoping to get someone’s attention. Nothing. I call louder and then a few minutes later I call again. The good thing about not eating or drinking anything is that there is no need to use the bathroom frequently, but now I have to go and it is becoming urgent. This goes on for almost 30 minutes before I finally get a response. I ask to use the washroom and I am shown where it is.

“Go whenever you need to,” the nurse says. “Just undo the blood pressure cuff when you leave.” I watch as she frees the line from the cuff to the machine.

After almost 6 hours I have a new problem. Boredom has taken over as I have exhausted every social media feed and game that I can think of and as a result the power level on my phone is depleting fast. I never thought I would need to bring a charging cord with me so it’s at home and I have no way to charge the phone. No one has a cord and I will soon be out of power which means I won’t even be able to communicate with my husband. I am frantic. I need to be able to communicate with my husband. “If my husband brings me a cord and a charger, can he leave it with the reception and have it brought to me?” I ask the nurse who has confirmed there are no charging cords anywhere at the nursing station.

“Absolutely,” she tell me. “You do know that your husband can be here with you, right?” I am shocked, angry and happy all at once. She confirms that as soon as I was placed into this room he could have been with me. I make a final call to him. He was half way home on his way to get me a charging cord, so he turns around and heads back. Finally I will have my anchor at my side.

***

The doctor finally arrives to see me at 2:30. I have been here for about 8 hours now. He explains that this has been a busier than normal night/day in the ER – of course it is! I picked the busiest hospital in the city because it was the closest to home. Dummy.

The doctor also tells me that with the exception of the blood pressure readings, the ECG looks good and the blood work does not show that I had a heart attack. That lessens some of my fears at least. He engages me in a brief discussion about my family history. Judging from my history he feels I have a high risk of heart disease and that heart attack or stroke could become a reality. He then tells me he will release me after he first sees one more blood panel and a chest x-ray. I am to see my family doctor within the next one to two weeks.

I am finally free to leave at 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon. It has been a long day. I have a new resolve to address my health and will start tomorrow with a call to my family doctor and we will take it from there. This is my wake-up call and my opportunity to change how I am going to live the rest of my life.

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Follow-up

It is now 14 months since this incident. My family doctor diagnosed me with high blood pressure, also called hypertension. She immediately started me on a low-dose aspirin and prescription medication to control the blood pressure; this has been adjusted a couple of times now. More importantly, without prompting from my doctor, I have educated myself around how what a person eats can affect one’s health, specifically how salt contributes to high blood pressure. I am actively monitoring how much salt I consume and I am now an active label reader. I plan my daily food intake based on the amount of salt in my food. Occasionally, very occasionally, I allow myself a day to eat freely, so that I can still enjoy things like holiday meals and a visit to Red Lobster. I am doing well though. It actually came as a surprise how much natural salts are in things like eggs, meat, and even milk – I count all those numbers in. Naturally portion size also plays into the amount of salt consumed so that is another way I have modified what and how I eat.

All this work has paid off for me in a big way. My blood pressure is stabilized, albeit with the help of medication and I have lost a significant amount of weight. I feel healthier and best of all, I am on the road to a better lifestyle which is a good thing considering that I am a brand new grandma who wants to be here for a long, long time.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this piece. I have a few different pieces on my personal profile, a fictional series, some poetry and a few other personal pieces. Feel free to check out more of my writing here.

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