DeadpanAnn (old blogger version)

Tim called in to work Friday, which he has never done in the 20 years that he's been employed. He had a bad cold, so he wanted to get some medicine. He also needed to see a doc to get some old rx's refilled, and he may or may not have been planning to go purchase a certain motorcycle after going to the doc.

He didn't make it that far. Once he got to the doctor, everything went downhill fast. His BP was higher than normal, so the doc wanted to do an EKG, just as a precaution, and it showed something abnormal. So they took some blood to check his heart enzymes, and that showed something abnormal too. So thinking that he'd either recently had a heart attack or may have been having a mild one right then, they sent him to the ER.

He got to the ER at 3:00, and I showed up at 4:00, as soon as I got off work. They pulled the same enzymes again and checked his BP, which was still high. The doctor ordered a shot of a drug to bring down his BP. In the meantime, he said he didn't think Tim was having a heart attack right then but they wanted to wait to see the enzymes and try to figure out why his EKG was weird. We waited for the shot for his BP, and about an hour later a nurse came in and said she was giving him a shot of Lovonox. This is a strong blood thinner that is normally only given to heart attack patients or pulmonary embolism patients, so Tim asked the nurse why he was getting it. She said, "I don't know, I guess they're just being careful."

Another forty five minutes passed, and in walked a different RN and the doctor. The RN introduced herself and said, "We need to talk." She had some paperwork in her hand. She told us that the doctor had ordered a drug to bring down his BP and that the nurse had misread the order and given him the Lovonox as an error. This nurse was the head nurse or whatever, and she was there to do damage control. Well, Tim wasn't upset about it because he knew that one dose of the drug wasn't going to hurt him. My only comment was that as long as it wasn't going to hurt him, nothing would be said about it unless it showed up on a bill.

The doctor went on to say that the cardiac enzymes were closer to normal now and that they were going to send Tim home and have him follow up with a cardiologist. I said, "What about that EKG reading? Has he had a heart attack at some point in the past and we didn't know?" The doc flipped back to it and decided that something was wrong with it, then said, "What if we just do a CT of your chest just in case there's a clot causing this?" We agreed, and they did the CT.

Another hour later (we're on about hour 8 now, if you're wondering) the doctor came in, shut the door, and said, "God does exist." Umkay. We just stared at him. It was late. We were tired. Get to the point, doc. He then said, "You have a blood clot in your lung. Fortunately, you've already gotten the first shot of Lovonox to treat it." He went on to say that they would admit him and dissolve the clot slowly, etc.

We sat there for a while, reeling from what he'd just told us. A pulmonary embolism, as Tim pointed out, is rarely found in time to save someone's life. It's usually found during an autopsy. It was bizarre that he had one and hadn't had any severe shortness of breath or similar symptoms. But even more bizarre was the fact that he had been given the drug to treat it more than 3 hours before anyone knew he had a clot by accident.

The next day the pulmonologist came in and said that the clot was small and "in a good place." They started doing a bunch of other tests which took all of yesterday and this morning, and a second scan of his lungs showed that there was no PE present as of yesterday afternoon. The pulmonologist came back and said that it was definitely not there now and that it had either been dissolved by the Lovonox and other blood thinners, or had been misdiagnosed in the first place, possibly as a result of the dye not spreading evenly through his lungs before the first CT. So either there really was a miracle, or the people at the hospital are incompetent beyond belief. Either way, we're choosing to take it as a wake-up call to make some lifestyle and attitude changes. The timing couldn't be better for that, what with our baby being 5 weeks away from arriving.

Tim was discharged around lunch time today, and has to go back to a doc later this week because they never figured out why that EKG was abnormal to begin with. Hopefully when he goes, they won't diagnose him with having a brain aneurysm and send him to the hospital for three days.