A “silent” heart attack.

The Cancer “scare”/ Heart Attack Story (of 2026.)

I’m related to my mom, so I’ve got to…

Prologue

On March 1^st I had to go get my follow up CT scan (from all the kidney and cancer “fun.”) These are scans that we’ve been doing for 5 years. That went fine. Nothing exciting happened, but I had a phone call following that from the Cancer Center at Pro Health. They told me that I needed to come see them at the end of the month for a follow up with an oncologist because of something they noticed when they scanned my lungs.
Now, I had already known that I had a small nodule in there way back in 2018, but every time I had been to visit them, they said that there was nothing remarkable about it and that we didn’t need to be concerned about it. But this time, they noticed that it appeared to have changed in size by 2mm. This was disconcerting to say the least, and I began to dread this appointment at the end of March. But God was good and I didn’t lose my mind or too much sleep. However, I was not looking forward to this. Slightly nervous would be a great way to say how I was feeling about it.

At the cancer clinic, again…

Finally, the 27^th of March came around and Tamara and I went to the oncologist and it was a great visit. He was a nice guy, he had looked at ALL my scans from earlier that month and then we went back through all of my scans since 2018. And then he said, “I really don’t think that this is cancer. It hasn’t changed in size or dimension since 2018, other than this one scan that we just had, and that’s most likely due to improvements in the CT technology. But if it IS a cancer, at the rate that it’s growing, it is going to take 100 years before this is big enough to do anything to you. I don’t want you to worry about this, but just to make sure, let’s follow this up in 6 months with a new CT and we’ll focus on that granular nodule in your left lung and see if we can tell anything about it.”
That was it. “Good news” in my opinion. Yeah, I’m not looking forward to another CT in 6 months, but in six months it will have been five full years since my left kidney was partially “nephrectomized” and with a clear scan of that, I should be considered cancer free!
I spent the weekend doing stuff around the house/ yard; we chopped a bunch of wood, as the boys and I restacked the pile. I was feeling fine.

Spring, broke…

Fast forward a mere four days. Four days. The boys are at school. Tamara and I are on what passes for Spring Break for us while the college is closed for their spring break. We have spent the last two days enjoying each other’s company. We’d gone for a walk in Port Washington and enjoyed ourselves. We had spent most of the morning watching the waves on the lake and enjoyed the breeze blowing up the Bluffs at Lion’s Den Gorge. On Tuesday, we went to see a movie during the day while the boys were at school.  We had been attempting to re watch the first season of 24.

Turtlenecks…

On the 31^st of March, when I got back from picking up the boys from school, I felt like I had an ill-fitting turtleneck on. I haven’t worn a turtleneck in years, thankfully, but this one felt like it was the wrong size. It was too tight on my neck. Wasn’t like it was strangling me. I could still breathe; I could still swallow, it just felt like it was “tight.” Shortly after that I noticed the same kind of “tightness” in my upper arms. Again, not worrying, just weird. It felt like I had a blood pressure cuff on my biceps, but not super tight. Since I didn’t have anything incredibly urgent to get done, so I told Tamara I was going to take a nap. I laid down on the couch for 15 minutes, got up and felt fine. We went on with the evening, the boys did homework, we puttered around the house and we ate dinner. We tried to watch another episode of 24 and then went to bed. I did not sleep well. I felt like this turtleneck and BP cuff was on my arms as I was trying to sleep, but again, not really concerned because I could breathe. It wasn’t like I was out of breath. I wasn’t choking on anything, but it would wake me. So, I would do some kind of little stretch, and then go back to sleep.

0600 hours…

I woke up in the morning, got ready to take the boys to school, and I had my cup of coffee. Again, occasionally my neck would feel tight. I’d do a little stretch and it’d go away. I’m not concerned. I don’t have a headache. My arms aren’t burning. There’s no tingling sensation. I just am not feeling any urgent problem. I’m just annoyed… We were supposed to go do some coffee shop hopping.  As I’m coming home from dropping the boys off at school, I feel this tightness in my jaw, like I’d been at the dentist for too long. And then another couple minutes later there was this added sensation of having swallowed a tortilla chip, crooked, maybe stuck in my throat?  Again, not incredibly concerning, but made me wonder what’s going on. I did NOT have nachos for breakfast… Another couple minutes and I feel like I’m leaning into someone’s fist. Doesn’t hurt, doesn’t make me dizzy, nauseous, or concerned that I would be unable to drive or anything like that. I got home and I tell Tamara. She says, “You need to go to urgent care or call your doctor before we go hit any coffee shops.” And so, I do the cheapest possible thing and call my doctor.

The Nurse Line

I begin to talk to his nurse, and she stops me about a minute into this description of my symptoms. She says to me, “This is where I need to put you on hold and call an ambulance.” I reply, “You’re calling an ambulance because you want me to go to the ER? Because… you think I’m having a heart attack?” She says to me, “No. I don’t think you’re having a heart attack. You ARE having a heart attack. You need to get to the hospital.” I said, “We can get there faster than you can scramble an ambulance and get me back the to the hospital. I’ll get there, ASAP.” I hang up the phone with her, tell Tamara, “The doctor says I need to go to the hospital and get checked out.” and shortly thereafter we’re out the door…

At the hospital…

Tamara drops me off at the ER entrance. I walk in and stand in line behind an older gentleman. When it’s my turn, I say to the nurse, “I just got off the phone with the nurse at my doctor’s office. She thinks I’m having a heart attack and I should come in and get checked out.” Then, we head off to the waiting room, and just about have time to sit down and get our coats off when the ER nurse comes in and says, “Come on back. We don’t have a lot happening this morning. I can probably get you into a room.” So we get into this room and she says to me, “I’m gonna need to get an EKG on you.  Ever had one of those?” and proceeds to hook up all the sticky pads and leads. Moments after this, two guys from the Fire Department come in and one of them is a trainee. They begin asking a few ‘test’ questions, but they’re interrupted before they even make it through their opening spiel by a silver haired guy in blue scrubs carrying a portable EKG monitor. He, very calmly says to me, “Are you familiar with NASCAR? What’s about to happen is going to go down a lot like one of those pit stops. Everybody’s going to be moving right along, but we know exactly what we’re doing and we’re going to get you taken care of. Do you have your pants off yet?” I said, “Oh! You mean like, now!” And he responds, “Yes. Right now!” So, I unbuckle my pants and in about two seconds, Tamara has got my pants off and I’m wearing a thin hospital gown between me and the world. The silver haired man in blue with the portable EKG asks Tamara, “Are you coming with us?” Tamara responds, “Of course!” She hurriedly gathers up all of our belongings and coats and the book that she thought she was going to have time to read in the ER waiting room, and off we go. He points Tamara, to the ICU waiting room and continues wheeling me down the hall. We make an abrupt turn and we’re greeted by another man in blue who says, “Oh, is this our heart attack?” To which I respond, “Wait a second, am I the heart attack? Did I have a heart attack?!” The man in blue says yeah, “Um, Yeah. You definitely did. Now just lay still and we’ll get you all taken care of.”  So, I lay still and a few moments later (after the buzzing of clippers and splash of cold betadine scrub) I am strapped to a table and being pumped full of IV contrast and they are putting a stent in my 100 percent blocked, OM1 artery. This is all seems very exciting for me, but I am totally calm because they’re also pumping me full of Versed and fentanyl so that I just lay still and be a calm patient. After the procedure, they show me what could be a stubby baby carrot on top of a heart shaped mass of soft tissue. That was my OM1 artery. After they put the stent in, I can see what appears to be the human version of the tributaries feeding the Amazon River. I’m also notified that they found two other serious blockages in my LAD1 and LAD2 (arteries) which they’re gravely concerned about because these feed a major portion of my heart. There’s also a 4^th blockage further down that is about 45% blocked. They will address these tomorrow after I’ve had a while to process all of the contrast (that they just pumped me full of.) So, they close my radial artery, and send me on my way to rest, under observation.

HCU, not ICU…

The rest of that day seemed pretty chill for me until midafternoon when I began to notice that my heart was doing regular flippety-flops and back flips and cartwheels and maybe some pirouettes? Apparently, a heart attack is not a good thing for your heart. I was experiencing atrial fibrillation, supraventricular tachycardia, and I believe some kind of bradycardia as well. It was quite the adventure. They did what they could to try and let things normalize without extra intervention for a while, and then later in the evening, they decided that we really needed to get this under control sooner, rather than later.  

That evening, though…

They were NOT impressed with my cardiac “gymnastics.” They asked if I would take another nitro tablet. I was “unimpressed” from my earlier experience, but I placed a Nitro tablet under my tongue, and while it was dissolving, they decided they were going to give me some Amniodarone. I, of course have no real idea what any of these things are going to do, since I’m not a medical doctor, nor do I have personal experience taking them. Moments after the amiodarone is pushed into my IV, I begin to feel like I’m going to throw up. I politely requested an “emesis basin” and the nurse was good to get me one, promptly. Seconds later, I began to feel like I was going to burst into a human flame. And then I began sweating profusely. Next thing I remember, I was waking up with a pain in my lower back (from being folded into what must have looked like a ball of some sort.) As I opened my eyes, I was greeted by 13 medical professionals who seemed to be incredibly concerned for my well-being. I slowly said, “Hello and welcome to the party. Is it OK if I sit up? My back is beginning to hurt.” They looked at me like I was goofing and said, “You’re the one that put yourself in that position. Of course you can sit up.” They all wanted to know what I remembered, and of course I couldn’t remember anything after feeling incredibly hot. Tamara says that after I began sweating profusely, I made this strange expression started shaking/convulsing, pulled my knees up to my chest and my hands in, and slumped over. And then I just stared blankly at the wall on the other side of the room. The only evidence I had of this was a small pile of towels from when a nurse was trying to dry the sweat off my skin enough to make sure the telemetry leads could remain stuck to my skin.  What followed from the collective of medical professionals was a flurry of questions that were very specific about how I felt and what I could see and did I have any numbness or tingling in any of my extremities. My heart was beating regularly, and I was covered in sweat. Aside from that, I felt “pretty OK.” They continued to ask and poke and prod and check things and. They decided that I had an “adverse reaction” to the combination of Amniodarone and Nitro, but they wanted to make sure that I also had not had a stroke (since there was an aura over my left eye for a few minutes.) Shortly after the conversations ended, they decided that I needed to have a CT just to rule out a stroke.  I can confirm that there was no evidence of that.  Since it was now after midnight, and Tamara was exhausted, we decided that she should go home, relieve the babysitter and try to get some rest.

Peaceful slumber…

What proceeded for me was an excellent night of sleep. My heartbeat returned to normal; the nurse was able to verify that I was still alive from my rumbling snores, and I was awakened at approximately 5:30 in the morning to someone needing to draw my blood. But overall, it was a good night’s sleep. The next day brought a couple of visitors and waiting for the second trip to the “Cath” Lab. This one was much less rushed, and they were able to deal with the other three blockages with 1 stent and a balloon. They sent me back to my room and told me to behave myself and never come back. I rested one more night in the hospital. It was uneventful. I awoke the next day feeling much better, needing no more extraordinary drugs or parties, went home.

Home

I have now been resting at home for the last 14 days. I spent the first 7 completely capable of taking a nap at any given moment and then resting all night long. Steadily, I have been returning to my version of “normal.” I can focus on written words again, I can almost string 2 consecutive thoughts together again, and I’ve been able to walk around the block all by myself! And I’m now looking forward to going back into the office and attempting to pick up all the pieces that I left scattered before April Fool’s Day.

That’s the story.

…to be continued.

I definitely learned some things about me and how faithful God is through “adversity.” I’ll be writing more about that later.