Nothing like having had a bad night, and then getting up to a message on my answering machine from the Heart Station at U/Mass Medical in Worcester asking me to call them at my earliest convenience–that’s it, no further details. The best thing I can say is that it’s times like these that I’m thankful that -I- don’t have heart trouble!
I called. It wasn’t an emergency, but they were concerned because they couldn’t reach my dad. They said that they’d heard that dad’s defibrillator had been “shocking,” his doctors down there wanted to see him, in fact had scheduled him for an appointment that afternoon, and they’d left several messages at dad’s house and he hadn’t called back.
This was not automatically panic-inducing: dad has rehab on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, he’s awful about checking his home answering machine and the Heart Station didn’t have his cell phone number. Someone also told the nurse, while we were talking, that dad had picked up his prescriptions that morning (they obviously have a record of that via their networks). So I gave the nurse the cell phone number, but of course, since I’d just gotten up, the computer was booting up and I had to open Outlook to get the number from the Contacts list, and Outlook took forever to open and let me get to my Contacts.
As soon as that call was complete, I called dad at home and he answered. He started to tell me this long shaggy story, prefaced, as always, with, “you know that…” No, dad, I don’t know because you never call me!!! He probably talked to Jill at some point and told her, but I don’t have a clue! But the gist of the story is this: dad was kept awake on Monday night by his defibrillator–or so he assumes–making a very odd “buzzing” or vibrating sensation every 2-1/2 minutes. It wasn’t making a “shock” indicating a problem with his heart (he said that was a miscommunication–retrograde Mercury, grrf). Since then, he’d talked to his doctors up here and the manufacturers of the device and everyone was baffled. Even the manufacturer said they’d never heard of anything like that happening. The defibrillator has some kind of remote service whereby dad can connect it and send read-outs over the phone, too. The “buzzing” sensation never recurred.
Dad said he’d gone to rehab Tuesday and today and he felt fine–in fact, he said he felt really good today, it was one of his best days in a long time. He was not happy to hear that the Heart Station wanted him to drive all the way down there this afternoon.
He called them and called me back and said that he was going down for a 2:45 p.m. appointment and they were going to run a lot of tests. If, in the worst case scenario, they decided to swap out his device for a new one, he’d have to stay overnight, but it’s a simple procedure. He’s already gotten “upgraded” once since he initially got the defibrillator implanted, I’m pretty sure. He insisted that he didn’t need a ride and he’d call me if he had to stay for the night at U/Mass Medical.
So, I spent the afternoon waiting for news about that and finally called dad’s house at 6:00 p.m. (Saying that he’ll call me if he has to stay in Worcester does not, with dad, mean he’ll call me either way!) He was home–I woke him up from a nap–and said that they had run all their tests and hadn’t found a single thing wrong. The phenomenon remains unexplained (unless it’s somehow linked to the extremely discouraging developments the day before with the New England Patriots, and that’s not outside the realm of possibility!). Dad said he was “dead tired” from the long drive and the tests so I kept the call short–I was just glad that he was safely home.
This has been a very weird week–I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve been having trouble with my DSL connection for the first time in months, and my digital kitchen scale has conked out. This computer hasn’t been behaving itself. The cats have been absolutely berserk, fighting and rampaging around the house, I don’t know what’s gotten into them. I’ve been very out of sorts, and yesterday I got onto this eating binge and couldn’t stop. I literally ate myself sick, that’s why I had a bad night, my tummy was all unsettled. I don’t even have a roll of Tums in the house because I’m just never sick (my medicine cabinet has two bottles in it: acetaminophen and Benadryl). And in fact I wasn’t that sick last night, just restless and uncomfortable enough to sleep badly. As a result, I’m “dead tired” today, too, and I’d be dragging even without dad stress. 🙁 I need to perk up, though, because I still have workout tonight!
4 Responses to Well, that was a bracing way to start the day…!