D
Der Biermeister
Hello - its been awhile (Dec) since I last visited. Want to bring you all up to date.
The subject I am about to discuss is not for the squeamish .. and don't read it if you are eating your dinner.
This is my horror tale - like nothing I've ever gone through.
A little background first - I have Aortic Insufficiency that we've known since last summer. It put me down for about 3 months and then finally they got me stable with the right balance of diuretics and potassium to keep fluid from building up behind my lungs and suffocating me. I've been doing great since early Oct -- walking 4 miles a day. Also, because of two stents put in about 14 months ago, I've been on Plavix (a blood thinner) since then.
Now fast forward to a week ago Wed. I went in for a "routine" colonoscopy. Even though I had listed Plavix on my form 3 weeks before the surgery, no one contacted me to tell me to stop taking it. I was too stupid to put two and two together - so for Gods sake, every one of you take heed from my mistake AND LEARN.
3 polyps removed -- I guess they are like chicken livers -
Anyway, at 6 pm, I started hemorrhaging from the place where the sun don't shine. Pure blood - thick dark blood. It was awful. I had about 3 bouts of this blood letting and we headed off to the emergency room. (This btw is a supposedly excellent hospital). They got me rushed through the triaging pronto and into a room. I must have trumped 150 people. This was 7:30 at night. Over the next few hours, I had a couple of more bouts of the bleeding - filling the toilet bowl. I had one of the nurses take a look. She used some kind of swab and put samples on a paper disc. They had taken a blood test and my hemoglobin still looked real good at 13.5 (most men are 14 and women are 12). So -- against my wishes, they discharged me and told me to contact my GI doctor the next morning. Which I did. He called back and we discussed it, and even though I told him the severity of the blood loss, he must not have believed me. Told me to come see him the next day. I bled most of Thursday and it finally stopped at 10 PM. Saw him on Friday at 4 PM. He took another blood test and my hemoglobin had fallen to 8.9. By this time, I had lost approximately 5 pints of blood (approx one pint per unit hemoglobin). A big guy like me has about 12 pints, so I am approaching half of my blood being lost. I was having angina with any kind of walking, but felt fine at rest. He conferred with my cardiologist and they decided -- since the bleeding had stopped that I should go home and stay off my feet and rest for the whole weekend and my blood count should begin to rise. If I started bleeding again or have any kind of cardiac event, I was to get my butt back into the emergency room.
That night I went to sleep feeling ok and my resting heart rate was good (52) and blood oxygen was good at 97%. I woke at 1:30 AM and my heart was in tachycardia - scared the beejezzus out of my. Called the Rescue Squad and they got me back into the Emergency room. I told them to radio ahead and be ready to get a blood transfusion. You can imagine how that went over with the staff.
They immediately did an EKG (looked ok) and blood test looking for a raise in enzymes (a sign of a heart attack). Enzymes came back just barely above normal, so this lady doctor comes in and tells me I am going to be discharged. I am almost crying telling her the chest pain I am in and she can't do that. She tries to tell me that I am simply having an anxiety attack and to calm down, I am going to be ok. This went back and forth for a couple of hours. They did another enzyme test and --- walla -- a heart attack. So, after about 9 hours in the ER, they finally admit me to the Cardiac Care Unit where I began getting my blood transfusion and every test in the world thrown at me -- and more "sticks" than I ever thought possible. At one point, I had 4 IVs going, and after a few days, they ran out of good veins.
Immediately, I was put on a Heparin drip (a blood thinner). They knew it was a roll of the dice as it could start the hemorrhaging again. The plan was to do a heart cath on Monday morning. And after two days of heparin, sure enough -- another day of severe blood loss at 4 AM and the heart cath was postponed. More transfusions. Heparin stopped and I finally stopped the bleeding. So, on Monday night, I had to go through another prep for another colonoscopy on Tuesday morning, where they went in and cauterized two of the three polyp areas.
This finally got things turned around and I began making progress. A heart cath was done on Thursday morning -- with mixed results. No blockages found and no apparent damage (or very mild) from the heart attack. But it did show that my cardiac function is quite a bit down from last fall, so in discussions with the cardiologist and the surgeon - I am having open heart surgery on Wed, April 12 to replace my Aortic valve and while they are in there, they will automatically do a triple bypass. Going to be a cow valve - and like you can do at some great steak houses, I'm wondering if I can pick out my own cow. I think it should be a Holstein - what do you all think?
Back to being serious. As soon as I am up to it, I am going to sit down with the top dog that runs that hospital, and let them know they almost killed me -- especially on the first trip to the ER. Had they realized what I tried to tell them about the extent of my blood loss, I am confident I could have gotten transfusions started that night and averted a heart attack. I am pissed -- REALLY PISSED. They are going sit there, and shut up, and listen to me. Hopefully, something like this won't happen again to someone else.
Sorry to bare my sole (or butt as the case may be), -- no pun intended --- ah maybe it is intended -- but I want to impress upon all of you to:
1. DO get your colonoscopies -- it virtually guarrantees you won't get colon cancer, once you are on the "3 year plan"
2. But for God's sake, if you are on any kind of blood thinners (Plavix, aspirin therapy, etc.), contact your doctor for instructions on when to STOP it (usually a minimum of ONE WEEK before your colonoscopy, unless you have other considerations).
3. And I think another lesson is to be more insistent when you "know" what is happening to your body.
Now -- anybody got a hamburger??
MOO
The subject I am about to discuss is not for the squeamish .. and don't read it if you are eating your dinner.
This is my horror tale - like nothing I've ever gone through.
A little background first - I have Aortic Insufficiency that we've known since last summer. It put me down for about 3 months and then finally they got me stable with the right balance of diuretics and potassium to keep fluid from building up behind my lungs and suffocating me. I've been doing great since early Oct -- walking 4 miles a day. Also, because of two stents put in about 14 months ago, I've been on Plavix (a blood thinner) since then.
Now fast forward to a week ago Wed. I went in for a "routine" colonoscopy. Even though I had listed Plavix on my form 3 weeks before the surgery, no one contacted me to tell me to stop taking it. I was too stupid to put two and two together - so for Gods sake, every one of you take heed from my mistake AND LEARN.
3 polyps removed -- I guess they are like chicken livers -
Anyway, at 6 pm, I started hemorrhaging from the place where the sun don't shine. Pure blood - thick dark blood. It was awful. I had about 3 bouts of this blood letting and we headed off to the emergency room. (This btw is a supposedly excellent hospital). They got me rushed through the triaging pronto and into a room. I must have trumped 150 people. This was 7:30 at night. Over the next few hours, I had a couple of more bouts of the bleeding - filling the toilet bowl. I had one of the nurses take a look. She used some kind of swab and put samples on a paper disc. They had taken a blood test and my hemoglobin still looked real good at 13.5 (most men are 14 and women are 12). So -- against my wishes, they discharged me and told me to contact my GI doctor the next morning. Which I did. He called back and we discussed it, and even though I told him the severity of the blood loss, he must not have believed me. Told me to come see him the next day. I bled most of Thursday and it finally stopped at 10 PM. Saw him on Friday at 4 PM. He took another blood test and my hemoglobin had fallen to 8.9. By this time, I had lost approximately 5 pints of blood (approx one pint per unit hemoglobin). A big guy like me has about 12 pints, so I am approaching half of my blood being lost. I was having angina with any kind of walking, but felt fine at rest. He conferred with my cardiologist and they decided -- since the bleeding had stopped that I should go home and stay off my feet and rest for the whole weekend and my blood count should begin to rise. If I started bleeding again or have any kind of cardiac event, I was to get my butt back into the emergency room.
That night I went to sleep feeling ok and my resting heart rate was good (52) and blood oxygen was good at 97%. I woke at 1:30 AM and my heart was in tachycardia - scared the beejezzus out of my. Called the Rescue Squad and they got me back into the Emergency room. I told them to radio ahead and be ready to get a blood transfusion. You can imagine how that went over with the staff.
They immediately did an EKG (looked ok) and blood test looking for a raise in enzymes (a sign of a heart attack). Enzymes came back just barely above normal, so this lady doctor comes in and tells me I am going to be discharged. I am almost crying telling her the chest pain I am in and she can't do that. She tries to tell me that I am simply having an anxiety attack and to calm down, I am going to be ok. This went back and forth for a couple of hours. They did another enzyme test and --- walla -- a heart attack. So, after about 9 hours in the ER, they finally admit me to the Cardiac Care Unit where I began getting my blood transfusion and every test in the world thrown at me -- and more "sticks" than I ever thought possible. At one point, I had 4 IVs going, and after a few days, they ran out of good veins.
Immediately, I was put on a Heparin drip (a blood thinner). They knew it was a roll of the dice as it could start the hemorrhaging again. The plan was to do a heart cath on Monday morning. And after two days of heparin, sure enough -- another day of severe blood loss at 4 AM and the heart cath was postponed. More transfusions. Heparin stopped and I finally stopped the bleeding. So, on Monday night, I had to go through another prep for another colonoscopy on Tuesday morning, where they went in and cauterized two of the three polyp areas.
This finally got things turned around and I began making progress. A heart cath was done on Thursday morning -- with mixed results. No blockages found and no apparent damage (or very mild) from the heart attack. But it did show that my cardiac function is quite a bit down from last fall, so in discussions with the cardiologist and the surgeon - I am having open heart surgery on Wed, April 12 to replace my Aortic valve and while they are in there, they will automatically do a triple bypass. Going to be a cow valve - and like you can do at some great steak houses, I'm wondering if I can pick out my own cow. I think it should be a Holstein - what do you all think?
Back to being serious. As soon as I am up to it, I am going to sit down with the top dog that runs that hospital, and let them know they almost killed me -- especially on the first trip to the ER. Had they realized what I tried to tell them about the extent of my blood loss, I am confident I could have gotten transfusions started that night and averted a heart attack. I am pissed -- REALLY PISSED. They are going sit there, and shut up, and listen to me. Hopefully, something like this won't happen again to someone else.
Sorry to bare my sole (or butt as the case may be), -- no pun intended --- ah maybe it is intended -- but I want to impress upon all of you to:
1. DO get your colonoscopies -- it virtually guarrantees you won't get colon cancer, once you are on the "3 year plan"
2. But for God's sake, if you are on any kind of blood thinners (Plavix, aspirin therapy, etc.), contact your doctor for instructions on when to STOP it (usually a minimum of ONE WEEK before your colonoscopy, unless you have other considerations).
3. And I think another lesson is to be more insistent when you "know" what is happening to your body.
Now -- anybody got a hamburger??
MOO
