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"Connections and Why They Matter"
Most of what happens in our life will spark a connection. Life connects with what has been found in books. Books connect with what happens in life. Use the connections to help you see more clearly. A love of reading and writing is what motivated the creation of this blog. Thank you for coming to the blog.
I had five trips to the hospital for a heart attack between 2009 and 2016. Two trips were false alarms, but I still made it to the operating table 4 times.
The first trip was a complete surprise. I got up and started getting ready for work. The week before, I had been in a group of volunteers that worked with older people, and we were given instructions on heart attack symptoms. I had acute pain in the middle of my chest, the inside of my arm hurt, I felt nausea, and just dizzy overall. I had made it downstairs and was sitting in the kitchen and just wasn’t sure what was happening, so I said a little prayer and asked if I had a heart attack and if perhaps I could recognize another symptom. I felt a cold sweat within a few minutes, so I went upstairs, told my wife, and got into bed.
The surprise of all this started to sink in when 8 EMTs arrived in my bedroom, lifting me onto a stretcher and carrying me to the ambulance. I couldn’t stop thinking about how surprising it was that I had had a heart attack. Laying on the stretcher, I looked up at the lady EMT leaning over and taking care of me and said, “I just don’t understand why this is happening; I have run 13 marathons in my lifetime?” She looked down at me and said, “Maybe it is just your time.” I didn’t laugh at the time.
Being wheeled into an operating room is frightening. They slide you onto a cold stainless-steel table where you lay, almost naked, in the middle of the table. The room has many people, all seeming to be doing something important. The staff was young, professional, and engaged in some good-natured banter.
On my last trip to the cold steel table, the first thing that caught my attention was that the music seemed to be a little loud. By this time, I had my heart doctor, but he was not on-site, and when I met the doctor, it seemed like he was so young he could have been my grandson. Everyone was very busy, and I just lay waiting for drip anesthesia to be set up. From the comments and the volume, it seemed clear that all those young folks walking around were enjoying the music in the background, but at least they weren’t staring at my naked and cold body. A young man came over and said he would get the anesthesia set up soon, a good thing I thought, but he wondered if I had some favorite music saying he would find it and play it. Well, I still had my thoughts in place, so I suggested Leonard Cohen, figuring it was a long shot. Not one person in the room had heard of him, nor could they find any of his music even though they made an effort to see him. I thought it was funny and might have chuckled, but I was out soon after that.
My last trip to the hospital was one where they again picked me up with the ambulance. The ambulance sat in our driveway in front of the house after I had been in for a while. A fire engine crew and a support car team were on-site with us, and several paramedics regularly checked the back of the ambulance; they would greet me and ask how I was doing. One of these guys seemed to have paused for a few minutes, so I looked up at him and told him I still remembered getting help like this the first time I had a heart attack telling him about the question and the reply I got from the EMT nurse about it “being my time.” Neither of the two paramedics said a word or even changed facial expressions. They just seemed like they had kicked into gear and were about some important business. I noticed that the one paramedic left the back door ajar as he left, I saw him go over to a group standing by the fire engine where they seemed to huddle and laugh, and then he went to a different group. I figure this was a good sign. The last heat attack event had a connection to the first. It still wasn’t my time.
