Clinging to Joy part two

Part two:

Another twist occurred in our story in that our neighbor, who also works for PWSD#1, had asked my husband to trade weekend duties as he had been in the hospital getting a stint in his heart the weekend before.  So now another worker had to be found to take the rest of the weekend.  Michael took the company work truck and I drove ours to this man's home.  I wanted to do the driving to the hospital as well, but any of you who know my husband will know that didn't take place.  When I realized he wasn't budging, I just told God, "Well, if he has a heart attack on the way and crashes the car, protect others."  Then I told myself that if we died in a car accident, at least we got to go to heaven together!! God got us there quite safely though and we walked into the ER hand in hand.  The registrar was seemingly surprised when he told her he was having chest pressure.  She pointed to the room behind her and told him to go straight in there.  I needed to stay and fill out forms.   I could see everything they were doing though as the room was glass.
By the time I entered the examination room, they had already taken an EKG and chest ultrasound.  Both were normal.  They declared he had not had an actual heart attack, as they could find no damage to his heart.  (Are you counting the miracles yet?  If not, you should probably start.)  We thought he might get to go home, but they wanted to do blood tests to make sure something wasn't about to happen.They took three vials.  They were going to do identical tests on each.  There are two markers, troponins T and I, that tell if you are starting an attack, having one, or are getting over one.  All of one of these markers came out negative...no attack.  The other came out .07, which some people have all the time, but for others can mean they began an attack a few days before and were now getting over it.  The next test, however, came back .126 and said he definitely had had an attack.  The third came back . 09, which told them the attack was ending now.  The doctor told us that he had definitely had an attack, but a very mild one and very minimal damage had to have been done, as it didn't show up in the rest of the tests.  

He said he would do a heart cath on Monday and really believed they would just find one partially blocked vein that had rubbed a scab and caused the attack.  They would stint it and he could go home Monday afternoon.

(A fun aside, that night I tried sleeping in the fully reclining chair next to his bed where we could hold hands all night.  Neither of us slept much at all.  The next night we tried switching.  I took the bed, he the chair.  No sleep.  When we were told we had a few more nights, Michael patted the bed and told me to get in.  I snuggled up next to him and voila, we BOTH slept quite well.  The nurses just chuckled and encouraged us that it was fine with them as long as we got some rest.  They are so sweet at St. Clare.  I have been in other hospitals that told us it was absolutely not allowed for anyone but the patient to be in the bed.)

Monday morning they came and took us to the cath lab.  The kids and I waited in the waiting room close by.  FYI - they don't put you to sleep for a cath.  You are placed in what they call "twilight."  You're awake, but you don't care what they are doing.  Well....that's not quite true in this case.  My husband remembers it all very well.  He kept telling the doctor that he shouldn't be awake because he still cared.  They had to give him 25cc more to get him to relax so they could do the procedure.  They had music going and he was telling them the song titles and performers, keeping them quite entertained.

About an hour later, a nurse came and asked me to follow her.  Dr. Wagner wanted to talk to me and show me something.  When he came out, he was rather pale.  He looked at me gravely and said, "Mrs. Simino, I have never seen such a healthy heart need bypass surgery, but your husband needs a triple bypass."  He took me in and showed me the video of his heart.  He pointed out a vein that he said was about 99% blocked.  That one could be stinted, because of its location.  He then pointed out a second vein.  He told me that one was not nearly as blocked.  However, it could NOT be stinted, as it is at a junction.  If they went to stint it and even the smallest amount of plaque was pushed loose, it could go straight to his heart and cause a massive heart attack.  He would be dead in minutes.  He then proceeded to tell me it was a really good thing that he came in when he did, as the next heart attack would probably have killed him.  Oh, our God is so VERY good!!

However, they had had to give him a particular blood thinner for the procedure and he couldn't have it in his system for surgery, so we were going to be there a while longer.  More tomorrow, if you are still interested, Lord willing.