The Other Shoe

Things have been going so incredibly well with this surgery that I was sure there was a price to pay for all that.  I think the bill came due last night.

I woke up Saturday morning with the pain in my left wrist from the arterial line back.  I had noticed it on and off but it wasn't horrible and Dr Movahed (surgeon) said that some pain wasn't unusual.  During the day Saturday it kept getting worse and I noticed the pain spreading up my arm toward my elbow.  Fast forward to 2am Sunday.  I woke from a couple hours of sleep to excruciating pain in that arm.

After trying to figure out what to do, we decided to call the nurse line from our insurance company.  She recommended getting a hold of my surgeon or, failing that, going to the ER.  Thus we entered the After-Hours Zone.  We called the office number to get the exchange number to talk with the doctor on-call.  The recording gave us a number; that number gave us a person who gave us another number; that number gave a recording that gave us a number that sent us back to the person; that person said they would page the on-call  doctor who never called.  We gave up and called Dr Movahed's cell (sorry, we tried not to) and he said to go to the ER.

Of course, they were very busy.  We spent 1.25 hours waiting to get back (I've heard of worse) and then they took us back to a hall bed.  I've never had to do that before and is indicative of how busy they were.  After another 45 minutes, the ER doctor came in to see me.  After some questions and a little poking, he said I would have to come back in a few hours for an ultrasound; that whole thing took about 5 minutes.  He left, came back in 10 minutes to tell me to be at the ER at 10am.  A few more minutes then a nurse came in to have me sign discharge papers and told me I could go.

I. Was. Pissed. I just spent 3 hours in the emergency room to see the doctor for 5 minutes for him to tell me to come back in 4 hours. In hindsight, it was better to be home than sitting in the emergency room for that 4 hours. But hindsight is 20/20 and I didn't see that at the time.

So we came back at 10 a.m. to the ER. At the front desk they told me to drive to the heart hospital (same campus). Jamie, being the good husband that he is, had dropped me off at the ER and gone to park the car. So now I had to wait for him to get there so he could go back and get the car to drive us to the heart hospital.

The ultrasound tech was a very nice lady and watching the ultrasound from my neck to my wrist was actually pretty cool. I could see the vein she was tracking and blood flow through it. And even I could tell when we found the issue. I had a blood clot in my artery, or more particularly, a radial artery occlusion. She called down to the ER, and the doctor on duty said to have me come back down. Nice ultrasound lady walked us through the hospital to the ER in far less time than it took to drive over and park from the ER. Thank you ER front desk girl!

After a brief stay in the waiting room of the ER, I was asked if would be willing to take a hall bed again in order to expedite seeing the doctor. I agreed and in less than 10 minutes I was back to listening to ER nurses banter around the nurse's station. Fifteen minutes later the ER doctor appeared, along with two nurses. While one nurse hooked me up to the blood pressure/pulse/ox monitor, the other nurse started setting up to insert an IV. I noticed Jamie looking at her wide-eyed and looked over to see what was going on. When I saw that they were trying to poke me yet again, my well reasoned and mature response was, "Oh hells no!" Doctor looked at me sternly and said "Well, we may need to to save your arm." "Look, I already have 5 holes in me, only one of which was in use by the time I left this hospital after the surgery. I really don't want stuck in anymore" Fortunately, the doctor decided that they would talk to the vascular specialist and if I needed an IV, they would insert it then and not now. Thank you very much, mister doctor!

Half an hour and one hospital gown bathroom trip later, the doctor came back which OK news, and good news. The OK news was that I did indeed have an inch and a half blood clot in my radial artery. The good news was it was treatable with oral medication and I could go home. Yay! So after time for discharge papers we came home.

So I've started a blood thinner (right now for the next 2 weeks) and I need to go visit the vascular specialist ASAP. I still have good circulation in the Ulnar artery, so at this time my hand is not in danger. But, much to my surprise, this little mofo hurts worse than anything so far in this surgery. I have pain every time I move my arm or hand, and I can't hold anything with my left hand (of course it was my left hand!). I am now, officially, an invalid. I can't make my own food, change my own clothes, wash dishes, prepare medication, etc. While I'm pissed about this, I guess the "other shoe" could have been much worse. I will update on this as well as the jaw stuff in the future.

Thanks for reading this update/rant. Hope everything is well out there.