First Anniversary - Heart Attack

I was camped at the edge of the Mt. Wrightson Wilderness 40 miles south of Tucson when, out of the blue, I started vomiting. My vision began to tunnel and I recognized the signs of fading consciousness; there was an intense pain in my chest. I figured I should move down to the pavement so someone would find my body before it stank up the car. (When camped in the wilds, people leave each other alone unless hailed.)

Once at the pavement I found a wide spot, pulled over and called Michelle to give her my GPS coordinates. The pain increased until I was uninhibitedly screaming. I writhed over the shift knobs (Phoebe has a long one for her five forward gears and reverse and a short one for the two ranges of four-wheel-drive) for about 20 minutes or so with Michelle listening in. 

I managed to channel some of the pain into the repressed rage Alice Miller rights about in Banished Knowledge.

After the attack subsided I spent the remainder of the afternoon (on adrenaline) exploring the desert. 

Back at camp the evening went fairly normally (all things are relative), but later I was awakened by angina; I turned on the phone to see the time and, as it came on, it rang. I was astonished to hear Allen Rasmussen, a recent acquaintance, calling to see how I was. It was 3:00 a.m., perzackly.

I complained about the angina -- it was bothersome -- and we formulated a plan (Allen was a retired  coronary care specialist) to meet at the emergency entrance to St. Mary's hospital in Tucson.

At St. Mary's I had to lean heavily on Allen in order to make it to the emergency room. There, they did an EKG and determined I was (still) in the throes of a myocardial infarction. They plugged in some morphine, gave me an aspirin and strongly suggested surgery...RIGHT NOW! I declined. 

Once the morphine worked its magic and I'd convinced everyone I wasn't interested in further treatment, they released me. The release however, was against their advice (they REALLY wanted to do surgery) so they proffered no medications.

Curious, a few days later I went to Pima Heart (the local cardiology magnates) and signed up for a transradial angioplasty. This $90,000.00 operation -- performed by Dr. Morales -- disclosed both main arteries totally blocked and unstentable. (Stents are popular for holding open arteries that have narrowed from accumulated plaque.) Dr. Morales recommended bypass surgery; I declined. He prescribed some meds. Dr. Vanessa Cole Marin -- at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque -- is now supervising my care.

Nine years ago, an injury to my left eye resulted in a scarred cornea such that I look a bit like one of those Husky-type dogs with different-colored eyes. The eye has been oozing yellow-matter-custard for several weeks so yesterday I went to have it checked. Dr. Tran (graduated last year from ophthalmology school in Pennsylvania) said that blinking -- and olde age -- had worn a hole through the scar and my eye was leaking out. Lacking a slit-lamp camera, a DSLR that attaches to the microscope used to examine patients' eyes, he used his cell phone camera and texted the photos to their cornea specialist. They suggested a cornea transplant but said some super-glue would hold it for a while. They didn't have any glue and I left with a referral to the "other" clinic.

We'll see (no pun intended).