‘I’ll just hold on ... hope for the best’
It’s heart attacks that are the number 1 killer, not cancer, yet we keep ignoring the signs
Do you have a bucket list? I do. Didn’t really come to that realization until my slightly older buddy Tom Wood asked me late last month. I rattled off a few things, and before I could add more he said, “let’s you and I go to the Portland Swap Meet on April 6 and 7th?” We did. It turned out to be a trip that made a lasting impression on us both.
It is an annual get together of tens of thousands of car nuts and gearheads who love old vehicles and love getting a deal on a part we know we can use, somewhere, someday. It’s a social gathering of baby boomers where strangers discover new best buddies and all the talk is about the cars that got away. Sorry ladies. We still love you too, but this is a guy/car social event.
On the eventual ride home in my soccer-mom-grocery-getter van, Saturday, April 7, I was feeling weird. Being a guy, I wrote it off to indigestion. I chewed a few Tums, washed down some Gatorade and carried on. Wasn’t getting any better when Tom suggested we take a sudden exit and check out a whole bunch of old vehicles he had spotted. We did, and it was a gold mine of 1920s to ’60s vehicles of every brand you could imagine. Several hundred of them. Suddenly, I was feeling normal again. Must have been indigestion after all. That’s how guys reason things out. No fuss. No muss. Carry on.
Rest of the trip home was uneventful and it was nice to officially cross off an item from my personal bucket list. The next Thursday, April 12, my daughter Capri’s birthday, I remembered that trip for another reason. I suddenly was confronted with that same case of ‘indigestion.’ This time I was sitting, having just parked, in the cab of my Peterbilt in a customer’s parking lot in Richmond. Before I could reach for the Tums, I lost use of my left arm. Oh oh! This is not indigestion. I need help.
A lot of what happened in the minutes that followed was explained to me by some new friends over the next few days. I apparently had asked the warehouse receiver if they had any medical folks on staff because I was having some difficulty in walking, seeing and breathing. They administered oxygen, called the paramedics, and I was placed on a stretcher and taken to Richmond General. I was poked, prodded, shoved into machines, given needles by anyone who seemed to walk by, and then made to wear clothing that is quite drafty in the back. Those blue gowns should be outlawed.
I figured I was in good hands. I took off my glasses, took out my hearing aids, and set a permanent smile on my face and let the experts ‘do their thing.’ I had no control over the present or immediate future. I was helpless. Have at it gang. Next thing I knew, now in a slightly drugged-up state, I was in an ambulance heading to Vancouver General. Almost immediately I was shoved, gently, into another machine, then came the men with the masks, the beanies and the sharp knives. Their mission? Going after the multiple blocked arteries they had all found in my personal fuel pump.
What’s a guy do? I told myself this might hurt, but I’ve hit speed bumps before, so I’ll just hold on and hope for the best. It worked. They had to do the slice and dice deal over two different days in order to get most of the bad boys opened up and working again, but I’m still here, hopefully still making you smile with stories from the past.
We all know about heart attacks. Every family has had a personal connection with somebody who has gone through the experience. It’s heart attacks that are the number 1 killer, not cancer.
I was also told by three different doctors during my journey that it is stubbornness and a belief of ‘this is just indigestion’ that often leads to the fatality. The first abnormality that displays itself, be it “indigestion” pain in left arm, blurred sight, slurred speech, anything, the clock is ticking, and if you don’t do something, you won’t make it to 60 minutes. I waited till I had less than 10 minutes remaining. How stubborn is that?
Now you and I both know. Don’t wait, and I’ll see you down the road next week.