Spanky's Place

Yesterday was my daughter's birthday, and I started it off by getting up really early (02:45) to finish up a piece of software I've been working on. I've been mentally in "ship mode" for a while now, and I really needed to get it done. My doctor took me off caffeine a couple of years ago, and except for the very rare soda or coffee, I've been pretty good. However, being in ship mode has changed that. Since Wednesday morning I've gone through 2 POTS of "real" coffee, by myself. Now, those of you who are still in your 20's probably don't think that is even worth mentioning. Hell, when I started in this business I used to snack on chocolate covered espresso beans while drinking 3-4 pots of coffee a day. However, now that I'm in my 40's and don't do caffeine, those 2 pots are suddenly a very big thing.

Anyway, I managed to finish up what I needed to do (it is now ready for beta testing) by 8:00AM, and checked in on a couple of blogs I like to read. I noticed that Rocky has accepted a job with IBM, which is really cool (congratulations again). It's odd, here all this time I have been bitching (well, perhaps complaining loudly) about the changes going on at work, and how much I'm going to miss working on Domino stuff, and that I didn't really want to go back to the consulting world, and it never even occurred to me that I might consider Big Blue until Rocky did it. That doesn't mean I'm going to run out and do such a thing, it's just something that didn't occur to me. Hang on....

Ok, I'm back now. I just had my Cardiolyte injection. It is something called a "nucleopeptide electrolyte". I'm going to be doing a "cardiovascular stress test" in a little while, and this injection part of the procedure. Anyway, where was I? ....oh yeah, yesterday's events.

So after I finished up checking blogs & such, I got up and took a shower. During the shower I noticed that my chest was hurting a little bit, and that I was a bit short of breath, but I figured I was just overworked. I finished my shower, got dressed, and took my wife and daughter out to Krispy Kreme for breakfast. My son had school, so this was just me and my two favorite girls. By the way, did you know that Krispy Kreme will give you a 1/2 dozen doughnuts and a filled travel mug on your birthday? Neither did I, but we found out once we got there. We didn't have but one doughnut, as we were planning on having a nice lunch fairly soon.

After the doughnuts, we headed over to the mall, and went to Build a Bear Workshop. For those of you that haven't had the pleasure, Build a Bear Workshop is a place that lets the customer (my daughter in this case) make their own teddy bears. My daughter picked out a frog (she's never been one to follow the crowd), and soon we had a new addition "Kenny Froggins" to the family. The four of us then walked over to Chevy's for lunch, which was great. They did the whole "happy birthday -have a sombrero while we sing" thing, and my daughter loved it.

As we were finishing our meal, the pain in my chest started to get worse, and began to radiate into my arm and jaw. This was accompanied by a feeling of constriction. I turned to my wife and told her that I figured I needed to go to the hospital.

I drove home, dropped off my wife and daughter, and headed to the hospital (I've been in waiting rooms before, and I didn't see any reason for them to have to wait around also, so I left them at home).

When the staff at the ER think you might be having a heart-attack (there, I finally said it), they don't mess around. Five minutes after I walked in the door I was having an EKG, and five minutes after that they were drawing blood. Soon after that, I was taken in for chest x-rays. And then the wait began. Apparently I wasn't in any immediate danger of dropping dead, so they took care of the more pressing cases (triage is done for a reason).

4 hours later they finally called me from the waiting room and took me to an examination room. This room had all kinds of very expensive looking equipment, they even had a machine that went "BING!" (Not the same as the machine I'm currently spending time with). They hooked me up to some of the equipment, checked the results, and after much murmuring and discussing, put me on Oxygen (those tubes don't really go that far up your nose, but they are still bothersome), and gave me a nitroglycerin pill.

WOW!!! Nitro pills are cool! The pain ended, right now. Of course, it also made me a bit slappy, but that's ok. The attending physician came in, and told me they wanted to keep me overnight, and did I have a cardiologist? (In case you're wondering, this kind of thing is really scary, but at the same time very surreal.

My wife, my brother-in-law, one of my buddies, my pastor and his wife all started trickling in. I don't think I realized how grave this situation seemed to be until I saw my bride, or more to the point, the way she was looking at me. After visiting for a while, a nurse came in and told me that my bed was ready. I said good-bye to my friends, and (accompanied by my wife and brother-in-law) was wheeled into the elevator, down the corridor, and into my room in the Cardiovascular unit.

My brother-in-law stayed for a little while (thank you), and then eventually went home. My nurse came in, checked my vitals, and explained the stress test to me. She left, and a few minutes later a lab specialist came in and took some more blood. We watched TV for a while, and then shut out the lights and attempted to get some sleep, interrupted occasionally by the beeps coming from my wired companion.

That was last night. My wife left a little while ago (the waiting around is making her crazy, and I told her she should go get some things done with all that nervous energy. A buddy of mine from church stopped by a little bit ago for a visit, and just left. So here I am, waiting. Music right now is: AEIOU (and sometimes Y) by Ebn-Ozn.