A more exciting week than usual

[paintspot]

It's been an interesting week. Saturday night I started to ache in my left shoulder. It got better and I fell asleep around 1:00am. I woke up feeling some better on Sunday morning, but by noon I was hurting pretty badly again.  I noticed that it radiated from my shoulder down my arm and up into my jaw, so I told Brian he might need to take me into the emergency room. The pain got worse during the trip to Bismarck and I found it increasingly more difficult to breath. We went to St. A's ER first and, after filling out a form, I was told to take a seat and wait to be called. After about 10 minutes I was so uncomfortable that I felt like I just couldn't keep waiting like that (you know how they always ask you to rate your pain on a scale from 0-10....welll, this was a 10, no doubt about it),  so we went to Medcenter One's ER. They took me right in and gave me nitroglycerin. It didn't take too long for that to do the trick. The EKG didn't show that I was having a heart attack, but subsequent blood test showed elevated cardiac enzymes which means I did have one. So Monday they did an echocardiogram and then an angiogram. The angiogram showed a 99% blockage which they stented in 3 places. I have another 60-70% blockage in another spot which can't be stented, so in a couple months I'll have a stress test to determine if I have to have bypass done on that. Anyway, they released me from the hospital on Tuesday. It was very nice to spend a night without several people waking me to give me pills, change my nitro patch, reattach my heart monitor leads, take my bloodpressure, draw blood or check my blood sugar level. The hospital is not a very restful place.

Mom seems to be doing fairly well at home. Joan goes over and does her wash and takes her for groceries. I really appreciate how much she does for her. Mom is going down to the community room for cards most evenings. I think it's good for her spirits to be out among people as much as she can be.