Alone with Chest Pain and COVID Anxiety |
Issue 18
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The pain in my chest begins on Sunday morning when I’m alone in the house. I have no one to say it’s probably just anxiety, since I’m a worrywart and that diagnosis is the most logical conclusion. Even fully vaccinated, I still feel as though the coronavirus is out to get me. Stalking me. Trying to worm its way up my nose. My immunity is wearing off, but I have a booster shot scheduled for Friday. In a few days, I’ll be safe from the plague.
I’m glad twenty minutes later when the chest pain disappears. During lunch I remind myself that my wife Shelley has been away for exactly one month, another cause for anxiety. As a retired couple, we’re accustomed to taking a walk at noon and having lunch together afterward. But she’s had to visit her dying mother halfway across the country and is still tending to postmortem obligations there. Even as an antisocial writer who prefers to be alone, I realize her emails saying she isn’t sure yet when she’ll return are putting me on edge. Virtual hugs in an email just aren’t doing it for me. Fuck. As a cold rain drizzles in the early afternoon, I think about a broken-legged deer that visits our back yard occasionally, perhaps knowing that the writer who stares at her through his studio window has some broken body parts too. Between 3 and 4 P. M., I follow my daily routine of a twenty-minute nap, placing a timer at my side so I won’t oversleep. On waking, I make Lipton Decaf Green Tea with milk and honey, retrieve a small chocolate chip cookie and a square of dark chocolate, and settle in to reading a new book titled What Happened to You? by Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Perry. I’m indentifying with some of the childhood trauma incidents that they describe but don’t feel riled up or anything. Shelley calls around 6 P. M., talks about the current problems her mom’s death has left behind, and asks how I’m doing. I mention my morning chest pains that have gone away, and she makes some joke about my not having a heart attack. Not long after ending our call, the pain begins again, radiating through my chest a bit more forcefully than before. During the next hour I do some bends and kneel on the floor while stretching my chest across a soft hassock. My microwave a dinner remains untouched on the table. Then I pray. Why am I so fearful about the possibility of a heart attack and dying alone here? I’ve done things in the past that require courage — standing up to an abusive father, surviving plebe year at Annapolis, vagabonding alone through Europe, getting married twice, helping to raise a child, taking care of my mom during her nineties, and recently chasing a bear out of our yard while still in my underwear. I’m slim and in good shape, while the bear is fat and filled with cholesterol. If anyone was likely to have a heart attack, it would be fatso. Not me. Fuck. I have to do something besides twist my head in knots. I decide to call Kitty, our friend and retired nurse who lives across the road. I explain the situation and ask if I should call 911. She says she can drive me to the ER at our local hospital, about a forty-five minute drive. The dark drizzle against her windshield and Kitty’s occasional question about how I’m feeling seems to make my chest pain more ominous with each mile, although it probably isn’t intensifying as much as my anxiety. I’ve often thought my fear of death began during an autumn foliage drive when I was eight. Ignoring the colorful trees, Mom implied Dad was failing as a beer salesman, saying she was having trouble paying the bills. The rationales for spending or not spending escalated until Dad’s shoulders snapped back, and he said, “So you’re saying it’s my fault then. So you’re saying it’s all my fault. Okay. If I’m such a failure, I see no point in living. I’m going to kill us all.” He then jammed the gas pedal to the floor and rocketed our old Pontiac down the road, causing the steering wheel to vibrate. I tried to comfort my whimpering sister by saying he was just trying to scare us. Ultimately he let up on the gas, deciding he didn’t want to die after all. But he was destined to threaten us many more times. As life progressed, his character revealed a narcissist, philanderer, alcoholic, wife beater, and control freak who liked to torture Mom by yelling he was “going to kill the kids.” Somehow their marriage had lasted eighteen years and left my sisters and me with subconscious fears that we barely recognized. Kitty drops me off on the pavement outside the double doors to the ER and goes to park the car. Per hospital regulations, I put on my COVID mask and open the outside door to find a man and woman seated in the shadows. The woman beckons. I say I have to go quickly, I think I’m having a heart attack. She hands me a hospital mask to replace my own. Emergency or no emergency, protocol must be followed. I whip on through the inner door to a quiet waiting room with only one customer. At the receiving window I explain my concern to a kind-looking woman, who finds my name in their database and makes some quiet remark to a woman nearby. That woman then makes a quick exit from the rear of the receiving area, setting in motion a number of masked medical people who immediately come bursting into the waiting area to escort me to the inner sanctum and lay me out on a gurney. The following moments are a blur in which my life becomes a flurry of masked marvels who poke, jab, and attach me to an EKG machine. A doctor confirms I’m having a heart attack. They give me stuff to thin my blood, bring down the blood pressure, and control the pain. The plan is for a helicopter to land and fly me to the mother hospital’s main location, where they have the facilities to analyze and fix the problem. But the chopper can’t land in poor weather. It will be a long ambulance ride instead. The fixers have been notified and will be waiting for me. The nurse briefs Kitty, who then calls Shelley. Kitty gives me her phone. What can I say other than I’m lying on a gurney, feeling little pain now, and waiting for transport. Shelley says she’s so sorry not to be there for me. I give the phone back to Kitty, who moves away and tells Shelley she’s confirmed that she and my son, Jesse, will have access to all information about my current medical procedures. I‘m skeptical about who will drive me north while the New England Patriots are playing their biggest football game of the year against Tom Brady and his Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Do ambulance companies have female drivers who don’t care about football? But when two men finally arrive and load my gurney into their truck-like vehicle, they say that transporting me is their responsibility and that they can listen to the game on their radio. All I can hear as their vehicle careens along is the thump of the tires, the whoosh of the wind, and a static-filled radio from somewhere up front. The burly attendant buckled in back with me says it’s a close game. I apologize for screwing up their night and taking them away from the game. The burly guy says not to worry about it. It’s their job to get me there safely. When we arrive, the attendants roll my gurney onto a platform and then inside through a maze of corridors until we reach a place called the Cardiac Catheterization Unit. The “team” is ready to work. They position my gurney next to an operating table and, as I begin to push myself toward it, they stop me. They slide something under me and lift me onto the table. The ambulance attendants say goodbye. Someone sets up a blocking curtain that obscures my view of anything below my waist. My heart is above. What are they doing below? I’m only half aware of what‘s happening. The team members are all in masks too, and so I can’t really see the nurse’s mouth as she gets up close to give me instructions. I think they want me to stay limp and be quiet. I hear the team talking as they work below the curtain but I can’t make out what they’re saying, something about an artery. I look to the side and see a screen that seems to picture veins with blood flowing through them. Must be mine. Who else? The doctors discover a blocked artery. Ninety-five percent clogged, I will find out later. The team works on me until midnight, inserting a stent to keep the artery open. Afterward, I’m wheeled to a dark recovery room in the ICU, where a nurse keeps checking my blood pressure and who-knows-what-else. I guess I’m supposed to relax, but the gurney is hard enough to defy the discovery of a comfortable position. My son, Jesse, appears in the doorway and says, “Hi Dad. How are you feeling?” It is so good to see him. He and his wife have made a long drive from their home, but because only one visitor is allowed, she and their dog, Wonder, a rescued female Greyhound, have stayed at the nearby motel where they checked in. He says the hospital entry squad said he should have come earlier during visiting hours. He told them his dad wasn’t here earlier and that he needed to see him now. We make small talk for awhile, and then he knows I need to sleep and says he’ll be back in the morning. But I can’t sleep after he leaves. No matter what position, either my hips or my back are arguing with the hard slab on which I’m supposed to sleep. And periodically the nurse is either diddling with me or some monitor. And the light from the nurses station immediately outside my door, the voices there, are like having the TV on in your bedroom. Even when the nurse swings the door shut, it’s no use. If my heart keeps going, I’ll have a nervous breakdown by morning. Somehow I survive until the morning shift wheels me from the ICU to a room on the cardiac floor and into a soft bed with a back that tilts up. I’m attached to many wires and tubes that feel like tentacles when I move. A young nurse named Jimmy is going to oversee my survival today. He gives me a menu and phone number for the cafeteria. I order French toast with syrup but, when it arrives, it seems too sweet. Maybe a heart attack wrecks the sense of taste. I don’t ask about taste when the team arrives and a young doctor prods me with his stethoscope. I say I feel hot sweats now and then, but maybe it’s just anxiety. Two young ones nod as though anxiety is the answer. I think interns want to know about heart problems and not hot sweats. They linger near my bed, but a middle-aged, balding doctor hangs back and seems to observe. I think he is the cardiac surgeon in charge of my case. He must be satisfied that his minions are doing the job, because he just slips out of the room quietly when my exam is finished. Jesse arrives, talks to Nurse Jimmy, sits in a chair next me. He writes down the number of the phone next to my bed so that Shelley can call me. After we run out of conversation, he takes out his iPad and begins studying for an upcoming test for his pilot’s license. I turn on the TV, check out the news on CNN, and move on to the Price is Right and then Jeopardy. The prizes on Price is Right remind me that Jesse’s birthday is in five days and I haven’t gotten him much. An Amazon gift card, a subscription to Flying magazine, and money I earned from publishing an essay about fatherhood in the Boston Globe: “Do Your Eyes Light Up When Your Child Walks into the Room?” And, yes, my eyes did light up when he arrived earlier. How did he get to thirty-four so fast? It seemed like only yesterday I’d made my first trip to the pediatrician with him to investigate a suspected case of bronchitis. He was five. Shelley had done the doctor shuttle until she’d given me the look that said it was my turn. When Jesse’s examination was over, Nurse Rosemary gave him a lollipop. Doctor Freeman asked us to meet him in his office after Jesse got his shirt back on. They left. Jesse examined the lollipop wrapper and said he didn’t like that flavor and wanted a different one. As a father who avoided conflicts about lollipops and almost any other potential dispute, I insisted that one was just fine. He insisted he wanted a different one. I scowled and escorted him across the hall to the office, where the doctor was writing a prescription. The minute we walked in, Jesse said, "Doctor Freeman, I'm going to exchange this lollipop for a different flavor," and he went directly to the lollipop box on the doctor's shelf. "Rosemary tries to get rid of one of those flavors nobody wants," Doctor Freeman said, "but you were too smart for her." I decided then it was best to let the principal parties do their own negotiating. Now I knew Jesse was unlikely to be intimidated by any doctor who had relevant information about my condition. I hear the word “Shelley” from the hall and see Nurse Jimmy on the phone out there. I suspect he is being interrogated by his patient’s wife. As a result of my previous colorectal surgery, Jimmy needs to find me some snap-on colostomy pouches that fit my wafer. Otherwise the exciting hospital food will make for an exciting situation with a pouch that has a capacity limit, which when reached, must be removed and discarded. Why didn’t I think to pack some of my own? But Jimmy finds a couple new pouches to house my collectibles. It’s Monday, and I’m stuck in the hospital, hooked up to every possible monitor. I need to get home before Friday, when I have that COVID booster shot scheduled at my local pharmacy. Staying in a bed for two days is almost more anxiety-producing than the heart attack or COVID. I have to put on a mask and drag a portable monitor and a mound of wires around just to get in a walk. The hospital discharges me on Wednesday, and Jesse drives me toward home. As we speed along the highway, I wonder why none of the doctors asked about my emotional state. I’d read it was common for heart attack patients to feel anxious, depressed, and somewhat broken. I learned then that cardiac doctors don’t deal with the emotional heart, just the physical heart. This and COVID seem to breaking me mentally. Five years earlier I had just finished months of radiation and chemotherapy associated with my colorectal surgery. I felt stronger and was walking with Shelley each day, performing light yard work, and joining Jesse occasionally on a tennis court as his doubles partner. Despite my improvement, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being broken. The numb toes and fingers from the chemotherapy, a nagging open sore on one toe, a bulging hernia that would need surgery, and daily attention to my stoma were constant reminders that my body, and perhaps my mind, would never be whole again. Now I’ll have to consume a slew of medications and worry about my fucking heart. In his book, Just Mercy, A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson writes, “I guess I'd always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we're fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we're shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing...In fact, there is strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can't otherwise see; you hear things you can't otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in all of us.” After arriving at my home, Jesse leaves for his house, which is a forty-minute drive, saying to call him if I need anything. I have a calm night and feel pretty good the next morning, and so I drive to a pharmacy to pick up my five new heart medications and do some grocery shopping on the way home. On Friday I drive to another pharmacy, the one where I’d made the appointment for my COVID booster shot. The woman at the check-in counter becomes surly when I say I forgot my insurance card. But after a short wait, a kind pharmacist invites me into his inner sanctum and jabs my arm. Relief finally. On Sunday Shelley arrives home, which brings more relief to have her with me again. During my chemotherapy days, her kindness and empathy had given me more insight into the depth of our love. One of her friends had even sent me a soft napping blanket similar to the one she’d used when she was recovering from breast cancer. Despite receiving mercy from so many then, I now feel broken again. What can I do to shake it? Many who’d written notes of love and encouragement six years ago as I recovered from cancer and colorectal surgery sent uplifting messages of sympathy about my heart attack. I wrote them of my experience and gratitude, realizing that they had all probably experienced brokenness too. I thought my connection to humanity was stronger than before and began writing about it. I recalled an early spring morning when there had been fresh snow on the bushes and I’d been startled by eight bluebirds that had squeezed onto the edge of my small bird bath. A spiritual congregation! Before I could get my camera, four flew off. And yet even four bluebirds on the bird bath made an exciting photo for the local newspaper. I thought how grateful I was to still be seeing a world that I was only beginning to understand and to be receiving care from so many sources...including bluebirds. |
KURT SCHMIDT is author of the novel, "Annapolis Misfit," (Crown) and chapbook memoir, "Birth of a Risk-Taker," (Bottlecap Press). He overcame anxiety at 82 to fly in a small plane piloted by his newly-licensed son. This story appeared in The Boston Globe.
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