A Heart Felt Gratitude

One of my many responsibilities at the hospital is the creation of a video for the quarterly staff meetings, which are coming up next week. My goal for the day was to get the filming completed by early afternoon, then get home to get the editing done tonight so that I could enjoy the weekend. As the day wore on and people took more and more of my time I felt myself getting antsy, with some pressing need to get home. Finally at 2:30 I called it a day and hurried home. When I got here I was glad I had.

I entered the house to find Kate in the living room, doubled over in pain and unable to stand. She had been having severe chest pain for a couple of hours and sweating profusely. Kate handles pain better than anyone I know (as evidenced when she delivered Bean naturally without complaint). So I knew that something was really wrong. I suggested that we go to the ER, but she refused, pointing out that she had to be to work by 7:00.

She called her mom, who told her to go to the ER, as did Beth, when she arrived at our house to pick up her child. Eventually the nurses convinced her to go. Beth packed up the Shirley kids and took them to her house while Kate and I headed to St. Mark’s. Upon arrival I found that when a person presents in the ED with chest pain, she doesn’t have to wait. She walks past the people who have been in the waiting room for days.

I also found that when a post-partum nurse calls in sick from the ED that is just 100 yards away, they don’t question it. And the house supervisor at St. Mark’s is not HIPAA compliant…

First they shot Kate with more narcotics than I have ever seen, in order to control pain. In less than 10 minutes she was sacked. They had to wake her up for the EKG and chest X-Ray. In between I kept watching the monitors. It was scary to see her heart rate, which is usually in the low 40s stay up near 70. And her blood pressure was out of control.

Mike stopped by and he and I visited while we waited for news. Finally they were able to rule out my worst nightmares and declare that she was suffering from pleurisy. All I really know about pleurisy is two things: It is an inflammation of the lining that surrounds the lung cavity and that Ben Franklin died from it. Fortunately we have better healthcare nowadays, and Kate was allowed to go home with some scripts and an order to ‘take two and call me in the morning’.

There was some humor in all of this, though. The gown that the ED nurse gave my wife could have wrapped around her three times. Kate was upset that it was so huge. Then when it was time to go we asked for a wheelchair so I could get her to the car. They brought a bariatric chair, in which I could have sat next to her and had Mike push us both out. The irony of all of this is that Kate has been killing it at the gym over the past few months and is thin and fit.

When we arrived at home I had to carry my bride up the stairs because she couldn’t make it. Once I got her and the kids home I had to run through the fog to get her scripts filled. While I was gone the kids crept around the house, getting their pajamas on and quietly doing story time in Whitney’s room so they wouldn’t disturb their mom. The kids were great. They even made some get-well cards for her.

It was a stressful night, hearing words like pneumonia, endocarditis and pulmonary embolism being thrown around while seeing my young wife holding her chest and doubled over in pain. I am incredibly relieved and grateful that she was able to come home tonight and is sleeping comfortably. However, I don’t think that she will be very grateful when I tell her she can’t go to the gym tomorrow…