[Leica] OT My night and three days in the hospital

[j2m46 at hotmail.fr (Jean-Michel Mertz)]

Herbert, thanks for this very detailed story. I am satisfied to read there 
still competent doctors around making the right decisions. I hope this PM 
will get you back to as normal a life as possible!Jean-Michel
 > Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2012 13:54:55 -0700
> To: lug at leica-users.org
> From: kanner at acm.org
> Subject: [Leica] OT My night and three days in the hospital
> 
> Sorry, no photographs. I am the proud owner of a brand new pacemaker. 
> Here is the story:
> 
> Ever since April, I have been having some bad days where walking a 
> block was a problem; I'd get painfully out of breath. The evening 
> that I met Richard Man at a gallery was the third of three 
> consecutive days when this problem got severe--I barely managed to 
> stagger from my car a block to the gallery, though by the time I had 
> been there for a few minutes, I felt fully ok.
> 
> The following Monday morning, I saw my pulmonologist on a scheduled 
> appointment. (Now I have to decide whether to fire him for extreme 
> inattention to a possibly dangerous situation.) I described the 
> increase in my symptoms in detail. One of them was missed heartbeats. 
> It started months before, when I noticed that after activity, I would 
> lose one heartbeat out of ten. I had already mentioned this to the 
> cardiologist and got no reaction; an internet search indicated that 
> if not accompanied by chest pains, not to worry. But it had worsened 
> to where, after any moving around, it got to where, after two beats 
> it would skip one, then maybe after a bit, three beats then skip one.
> 
> Well, especially since it could very well have been partially due to 
> a side effect from a new drug he had prescribed, he wrote out an 
> order for blood tests and for me to come back the next morning. When 
> I took the order to a lab, they pointed out that he had forgotten to 
> put his name on it (!!!!!) and they had to call him on his cell phone 
> to get authorization.
> 
> The next morning, July 10, he looked it over, saw anemia--again yet 
> another one of the myriad side effects of this drug--suggested 
> stopping it for two weeks and seeing him them. What bothers me is 
> that he was not in the least alarmed.
> 
> I had a standing appointment for an annual physical that very 
> afternoon, did not feel up to it and phoned to cancel it. About an 
> hour or so after that, I decided that I was getting scared, called 
> back, told what was going on, and the doctor's nurse said to come 
> in--that they'd fit me in and would do an EKG.
> 
> I cooled my heels for a while after the EKG. The doctor was not happy 
> with it and took it to a cardiologist, came back and told me that 
> sending me home was too risky and that she had arranged for me to go 
> right to the emergency room. I phoned my wife, who had a bit of 
> trouble absorbing this startling info in a hurry over the telephone, 
> but eventually got it and ferried me there--I had an ok on leaving my 
> own car at the doctor's parking lot.
> 
> After a relatively short time, considering that it was an emergency 
> room at Stanford Hospital, they told me that they were admitting me 
> to the hospital. That was Tuesday night. All day Wednesday, the 
> electro-cardiologists were trying to make up there mind whether or 
> not I should get a pacemaker. I wound up making the decision for 
> them. Around noon on Wednesday, my wife was visiting while I was 
> eating lunch--hospital food has sure improved--and just as I leaned 
> forward to pick up a shrimp by the tail and bring it to my mouth, I 
> felt dizzy for just two or three seconds. Thought nothing of it. 
> Didn't even remember that I was supposed to tell the nurse if I got 
> dizzy--got mildly chewed out for it later. Early that evening a 
> cardiologist walked in with a printout in his hand, asked: "Were you 
> dizzy today?" showed me a monitor printout that indicated that my 
> heart had stopped for about six seconds. He said: "You need a 
> pacemaker".
> 
> One was installed the very next morning. The amazing thing is that 
> it's all done with local anesthetics and extremely mild sedation. The 
> procedure took about an hour. I didn't get out until late the next 
> afternoon because it took all day to arrange a couple of ten minute 
> procedures: an x-ray to make sure the pacemaker wires were where they 
> should be, and a session where an expert nurse-practitioner who 
> tested and reprogrammed the thing by inductive coupling to a 
> specialized computer program.
> 
> That's how I spent a week. No photography.
> -- 
> Herbert Kanner
> kanner at acm.org
> 650-326-8204
> 
> Question authority and the authorities will question you.
> 
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