It Happened This Way………………………………........................

After thirty two years of experience with heart disease, we have learned to look back and find things that happened to us that bring laughter. This was one of those time.

My first bypass surgery was done in a hospital about 165 miles from my home because my hometown hospital was not then doing open heart surgery. It was either at least several weeks or months after surgery and I was in my hometown hospital for some minor checkup or for some other reason, I just don’t remember what prompted this hospital visit.

During the late afternoon, they had taken an EKG and I had looked over and viewed it. By this time in my life I thought I knew a lot for a layperson about EKG’s. I looked over at my wife and boastfully said, “They won’t find anything wrong with this EKG!” And I really believed I knew what I was talking about. Was I in for a surprise!

The hospital situation in my hometown was like this. There were two separate buildings but only one hospital. They were located on opposite hills with a street separating the two down in a hollow. The building I was in was used as a holding area more than anything else. People in this building were usually not considered to be in any major health crises.

All had gone well for the day and my wife and I had settled in for the night about 10 PM. We were going to get a good night’s sleep and be released the next day. But a strange thing occourred that night. About 10:30 that night, the door burst open and staff poured in and of course, like all hospital personnel, they woke us up! The Nurse told me, “We’ve got to get you over to the main hospital.” I asked, “What’s wrong?’ She answered, “your EKG shows there is a problem.” By this time my wife is a wake too! I thought I had slept through my very own heart attack and that nobody would tell me. My wife thought she had slept through my heart attack and I wouldn’t tell her. You can imagine, our eyes were as big as saucers wondering what had gone on. Every fear was aroused and we felt as our every worry from the beginning of all this had come to be.

The attendants in an old ambulance without the emergency lights and no sirene were there to get us. They rushed my gurney down the hall around the corner and out the door in freezing temperatures to the ambulance with no heat. There was only one sheet , as I remember, between me and the heavens. My wife crawled in with me, the doors were shut and away we went. Down the hill over big speedbumps we went just as fast as it would take us. Down to the bottom of the hill the ambulance “almost” sped where it screeched it’s brakes and making a stop. Then an unexpected trip backwards up that same hill over the same speedbumps to the door of the building we had just left. The attendants had forgotten the paperwork or X-Rays or EKG, whatever they needed at the other building. Then back down the hill again to the half completed trip!

Going up the hill on the other side was uneventful as was the night I spent in Intensive Care and my wife’s in the waiting room. Now we don’t know what the truth was about this event but we did hear two very different stories from the staff the next morning. The first was that the staff member who read my EKG had not seen a person’s EKG after having open heart surgery and it was interrupted wrong. That sounded reasonable to us who were laypeople and not medical staff. The second story was a little heavier. We heard the story that someone had gotten mine and another person’s EKG confused and that someone in the Cardiac Unit died that night. We do know that someone died that night but we don’t know if the confusion over the EKG’s was a part of the story or not.

But thirty two years later we find laughter in this situation even though there was none that night. As I look back on this I see this as almost cartoonish. In my mind I can see the very old ambulance with no emergency lights and resembling something that had been purchased from a salvage yard. I can just imagine it going down the hill on a cold night hitting the speedbumps with the back door flying out and my sheets flapping in the wind out the back door, possibly with the X-Ray or other papers flying loose in the air. And then at the bottom of the hill, it backs up to start back to it’s original starting point just to come back down the hill again. But I can imagine and even funnier view if one had been looking at me or my wife as our eyes were so very wide open wondering what was taking place. There we were with chill bumps on every part of our body, each of us thinking that one knew what had happened but was afraid to tell their partner. As it turned out, I was never in any kind of danger or even a serious situation.

This “happening” has brought laughter to us many times over the years and I hope you may have found some humor in it. I urge you to look for humorous things that have happened in your experience with your heart event and to have fun with them. I‘ll guarantee you they are there!

Bob Jackson