Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Like father, like son
My husband came to me at 10 p.m on Sunday and said to feel his heart. It was just pounding, but he wasn't in pain. It had been going on for least twenty minutes. He asked if it should be checked out. I said yes but I was not looking forward to spending hours in emergency after rowing all weekend.
The drive into town took about twenty minutes. I put on some classical music. His heart calmed down a bit, but still wasn't normal. They put him on some kind of monitor in triage, and his heartbeat still didn't look right, but they sent us into the waiting room where we cooled our heels for about an hour (we did get to go ahead of people who had been there ahead of us).
Inside emergency, the nurses hooked up a monitor and put him on oxygen. Now his heartbeat had a proper sinus rhythm. One of the nurses said something about atrial defibrilation. We waited for the doctor for about almost an hour. Finally, he came and took a history. He made a very stupid comment about my husband, now 54, outdoing his own father who died at age 50 from an arrhythmia and told my husband to stop smoking. He ordered some blood tests and an x-ray. We waited almost an hour for the results. His lungs were a little dirty, but the blood tests came back normal which surprised me. The doctor let us go home and told my husband to see our GP to get a referral to a cardiologist. We got home a little before 2 a.m. I had to get up for work at 6.
D.
The drive into town took about twenty minutes. I put on some classical music. His heart calmed down a bit, but still wasn't normal. They put him on some kind of monitor in triage, and his heartbeat still didn't look right, but they sent us into the waiting room where we cooled our heels for about an hour (we did get to go ahead of people who had been there ahead of us).
Inside emergency, the nurses hooked up a monitor and put him on oxygen. Now his heartbeat had a proper sinus rhythm. One of the nurses said something about atrial defibrilation. We waited for the doctor for about almost an hour. Finally, he came and took a history. He made a very stupid comment about my husband, now 54, outdoing his own father who died at age 50 from an arrhythmia and told my husband to stop smoking. He ordered some blood tests and an x-ray. We waited almost an hour for the results. His lungs were a little dirty, but the blood tests came back normal which surprised me. The doctor let us go home and told my husband to see our GP to get a referral to a cardiologist. We got home a little before 2 a.m. I had to get up for work at 6.
D.
Labels: Family
