It’s always in the last place you look

This past week was my big heart health event. I had my TEE on Monday, where they run a camera down your esophagus to look at your heart, and then the “procedure” on Wednesday. It’s properly a PVI—a pulmonary vein isolation.

There was an electrical problem in my heart that would send me to the ER at odd moments. There didn’t seem to be a particular trigger. Sedentary reading could set it off. Walking down the hall—completely random. The electrophysiologist was 70% sure he could fix it so we gave it a try.

They put me under general anesthesia instead of the usual “twilight” state that they use. Good thing too, since the whole thing lasted eight hours. When I woke up, the doctor said he’d found the problem and fixed it. He was about to give up when he got one more idea about where to look and that did it.

Eight hours! That was impressive. He never took a break; just kept on working straight through. Kathy and her sister were waiting that whole time without a single word of his progress or lack thereof. He did warn us that that could happen and that they shouldn’t read anything into it. Also, they take the family into a separate room to explain the results, and again they were warned that the private session did not imply that any disaster had occurred.

He said that I was “tough”. Imagine that. My blood pressure stayed steady through the whole deal—guess all that swimming and biking paid off.

When I got to the room, I was woozy and kind of out of it. Then the phone rang. Stupidly, I picked it up.

“Hello?” says I, groggily.
“Arak?” a gruff voice barked.
“No.”
“Arak?”
“No.”
Arak?”
“You have the wrong room.”
Click. He hangs up, no word of apology.

This happens three more times, with calls for three different people. Finally, after the fourth call, this woman says, ‘”Oh, they moved him, huh?” I said, as politely as I could, “Ma’am, I just came out of eight hours of surgery. I have no idea.” She at least apologized, and that was it, since they turned the phones off on the floor at that point.

A pair of nurses came in to introduce themselves. Get this: They were named Faith and Sara. I love it! God’s gift to us, and God’s faithful servant. And there they were. I knew I was going to be fine.

Of course they checked my vitals every half hour—I mean it—they were in there every thirty minutes all night. So sleep was impossible.

The next day I was a sleep deprived goof. I was supposed to be discharged by 11am, but my neck was bleeding where they had put in a catheter. It took them five hours to get the bleeding stopped. There was a hierarchical parade of nurses, residents and one of the partners in the practice as they each tried a remedy. Finally, the partner came in with some needles and injected lidocain and epinephrine (Nora Ephron?) and for some reason, that did it.

So, much prayer brought us all through this. We thank God for his Spirit, guiding the doctor, giving him “one more idea”.

Now if I could only wake up.