Okay, so I had a heart attack in January. Don’t worry, my health is improving. I was treated in a local hospital where, as I had just recently given up my insurance as a cost cutting measure (timing is everything) they made sure I was going to live, put me on a ton of medication and sent me home. Okay, not entirely fair, I was there for five days and they did get my heart back to a normal speed (down from 177 beats per minute) and take care of the congestive heart failure (swollen ankles and lungs full of liquid. Fun.) They didn’t give me much information, though. One thing they didn’t tell me, for instance, is that, when you have a heart attack, your penis disappears. Really. It’s not funny.
After getting discharged, I got myself enrolled at County. Thank God for County. The bureaucracy is hell, it takes forever to get anything done, plan on spending hours on hold waiting for the appointment lady (you have to do it by phone, not in person, because she doesn’t really exist in actual time and space) but every single person I’ve encountered in the vast system is truly wonderful, caring and committed to the patients. They actually give me information, explain to me what’s going on, what will go on, why we’re doing what we’re doing and take the time to giggle politely at my sophomoric humor. Still no mention of the penis thing, of course, but after six months of consuming no salt or fat I’ve lost over sixty pounds and the thing seems to have come back with a vengeance, so no harm no foul, to use a phrase coined by our friends the basketball players.
I’m still on the ton of medication as I’m still in A-Fib (heart out of rhythm. The pesky thing won’t use its whole top half, it seems.) I’m having three procedures in the next two months, two to determine how damaged the heart is and how well it will start to heal once it’s out of A-Fib, and the third to get it out of A-Fib. That is the one where they drug me up, shock my heart so it stops, shock it again so it starts back up in the correct rhythm, then send me on my way. I’m both looking forward to that (it will mean I can stop a lot of the medication, especially the blood thinners, which react with everything I eat and give me hemorrhoids) and am really, really, really not looking forward to it. (They are going to stop my heart!)
It sounds more extreme than it is. It’s an outpatient procedure, believe it or not. The only prerequisite is that I have someone drive me to the hospital and wait around for however long it takes to stop and start a heart, then drive me home again so I can curl up in my own bed and sleep off all the nifty narcotics they’ll give me so I don’t freak out while they’re actually electrocuting me. I’m serious.
I must be getting to that age. A friend of mine called to tell me he’d had heart surgery the week before, a surprise to him that he needed it until they rushed him to the hospital. We talked on the phone and sounded like two old men on a park bench. A lot of my conversations, now, are about my health. When I hear myself, I want to start talking in a faux Yiddish accent. “Pain? You don’t know from pain. I got pain you vouldn’t believe all the way up and down my nichtacocusoid…” Maybe I should write a blog about it.
I recently visited my brother, his wife and their kids in Washington, DC and the kids thought it was hysterical that I made the “old man” noise every time I sat down or stood up. I started not doing it, just to throw them off, and they’d giggle about that, too, the savages. This is all odd, as I still think of myself as in my twenties. Well, maybe thirties. Wait a minute, it’s time for my medication. Ohiee.
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
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10 Comments
Afib can recur after the shock procedure.
You might be a candidate for an ablation, with a maybe 70% cure rate.
You’re a very funny guy Geoff! Your heart problems sound all too familiar to me–I’m an RN on a medical/telemetry floor… One thing not quite correct: shocking isn’t ever used to “start” your heart back up, your heart starts back up on it’s own (hopefully) AFTER being shocked. Look at “shocking” as kind of a “reset”… If someone’s heart stops, ie. “flatline” or technically asystole, and is not trying to restart on it’s own, that is not a “shockable” rhythm as they say in CPR! Hope that’s not too scary…:-)
See you on Pat’s coaching forum. Jim
Anne – I googled “Ablation.” All I can say is “Eeek!”
Jim – I see your “hopefully” and raise you two “it better, by God, start back up again”s.
Would you be interested in writing for The Neave Online Publication? I love your writing style and I feel like you would fit in perfectly with the other writers.
Howdy – looked over your site – interesting and diverse to say the least. It also has a very good look.
Thanks for the props! I’d love to write for it and with you guys, but I’m so over committed now that, unless there is pay involved, I can’t do anything else. Not a bad place to be, I guess.
Keep around here, and I’ll keep an eye on you.
Geoff
P.S. just subscribed to your rss feed.
G
Hi Geoff!
I adore Disappearing Penis Stories! I can’t get enough of them!
Sincerely, I found my little heart episode (was lucky and got away with angioplasty with a stent) fascinating.
During the angio, I was under a light sedative and abruptly woke up. The Doctor was in dialog with a Ms. Baker, telling her to go so many degrees latitude … then so many degrees longitude. When the tech saw that I was awake they all started laughing. I asked em … why are you laughing?
It appears the tech running the computer that directed the Taiwanese Shadow Puppet Vein Cleaning Machine was named Diane, and every time he called her by name I would wake up or move!
So … I got to watch my team cleaning the veins in my heart while it pumped away! It was fascinating and amazing and I fell head over heals in love with my heart!
So I applaud both of us … and those of you out there with similar fascinating lost and found stories!
Life goes on, and if we’re lucky we find fascinating adventures along the way!
Keep us posted!
Diane
p.s. I can’t stop thinking about “The Case of the Disappearing Penis!”
Diane –
Don’t worry, it did eventually come back!
That would be, however, a VERY interesting Sherlock Holmes story, now wouldn’t it?
I’m not sure I’d like being awake for that, I had trouble enough at the angiogram (i.e. ultra sound – what trimester am I in?) hearing and seeing my arrhythmia. Yikes. Of course, I am, as I understand all men are, a big baby.
I do see that I will come out of this much healthier!
And, yes, I’m grateful for the adventure!
Geoff
Geoff!
The kids werent so taken by your “oy vey” groaning as much as your imitation of Tevia from Fiddler on the Roof. They have forgotten the grunting sounds of effort but they still burst out laughing at your “If I were a rich man” outburst on the bus.
So…the disappearing penis…yes, someone has to address this medically and that will be me. I must say that I have never counciled an MI patient about the potential for disappearing penis. I have talked out the real possible dangers of re-engaging in vigourous (is there really any other kind?) sexual activity too early after an MI – but the physical sequelae has always been sort of “under the covers” as just part and parcel of this part of recovery. In other words, it is almost a given in many cases…..and sort of too little, too late….
I can say that I have had [and counciled] many patients with diabetes and/or severe atherosclerotic disease which effects the blood supply to their hearts, eyes, kidneys,etc. – including thier limbs (and including the third leg [a.k.a. penis]) – resulting in various dysfunctions. This means that if you have athersclerotic disease serious enough to have a heart attack, you can certainly have the equivalent issues with the blood supply to your penis (but eveyone is different – including the ways and degrees to which they assign importance to this organ). I’ve always thought that the American Medical/Heart and Diabetse Assocaitions were missing a great marketing opportunity by not using this important fact to afffect real behavioural change in the aging male patient population.
And then there is the new complicating facotr of the Super-pill – VIAGRA- to really mess up the picture.
But I digress.
I liked the blog, baby..and it was great to see you in Washington DC.
Wow, now I have the medical background for the issue!
And, yes, advertising that fact might indeed greatly curb the male propensity to disregard body ques and abuse (no pun intended) themselves.
I also had a gran time visiting you and the kids. Perhaps I can make my first trek to Europe in the not to distant future and see you again!!!
Geoff