When you are adventurers, as we are, you must beware of calm periods. Calm periods are when the adventure gods (demons?) are making plans.
During the calm period building up to Thanksgiving, we commented how glad we are that our family holiday gatherings are not drunken, violent, insult-trading, events as portrayed in so many TV shows and movies.
This period was so calm, I couldn't think of anything interesting to write about. (I just accidentally typed writhe about. hmmmm.)
Indeed, Thanksgiving was the usual enjoyment filled weekend at Margie's house. Margie has 7 grandchildren aged 3-10. Except when they are all there at the same time. Then, there are a dozen. Usually, there are no more than 6-8 adults present at these times, so doing the math, that often means that each adult has to watch 3 kids, and 6 or so are running around unsupervised in the back yard. These are always good times. We appreciate that Margie is willing to share her grandchildren with us.
On Black Friday the womenfolk, Peggie, Margie, Casey, Liz, and Vada, take a traditional get-out-of-the-house-and-leave-the-kids-with-the-men trip to Jerome. They don't need or want anything in Jerome. But it is 10 miles from children, so they go. We menfolk draw straws, arm wrestle, or flip coins to see who gets to take the older children on a hike down to the wash. The "older" children are all but the 3 year old. So Dustin, father of 3 of the "older" girls, and I left Dave with the young one, and headed to the wash. The goal was the carcass of a steer we first discovered a couple of years ago. All the children found a bone or two or three and carried them back up to the back yard, which now looks like an archaeological dig sight. The kids were all great. Only one hurt herself and had to cry all the way back, and only one was ready to be done with the hike at the halfway mark.
We have a busy weekend planned, so we drove home after dinner on Black Friday, intending to get an early start today. But the adventure gods had been watching and plotting.
About 30 minutes out of Tucson, a steel band about 3 inches wide tightened itself around my torso. Front, back, sides, all hurt. But I am nothing if not stoic, so I didn't say anything at that time. We stopped for gas, in order to start out today with a full tank. We got home and got in the hot tub to soak away the normal been-too-long-in-the-car aches. I got some temporary relief from the tight band. But, in bed, I could not get comfortable. It was late, I wanted to sleep. Finally, Peggie wondered what was wrong. So, still not wanting to complain, (stoic people don't complain) I explained about the band. After a while, she got up and looked up heart attack symptoms. That was inconclusive, so she took me to the ER at Northwest Hospital. She wasn't worried about me. She said she didn't want to wake up next to my dead body in the morning. She is sweet.
When you are 63 and you show up at the ER with chest pains, there is no waiting. In less than five minutes I was wired to an EKG and four different people had me give my name, birthdate, and describe my pain. The EKG showed no problem, so I could go home, right? Nope. The guy who had hooked me up showed up with a wheel chair and told me to get in. They would bring my wife back with me. They are keeping me? What for?
They rewired me to the heart monitor, which consisted of the finger clip, blood pressure cuff, and three electrodes on my chest. Then two different nurses tried four different veins to hook up an IV and to draw blood. I used to have good veins, but lately they always have a hard time getting one. By this time, Peggie is sitting in my room and correcting all my "understated" answers to family history questions. I forgot to mention my mother's condition, and my brother's, for example. The doctor and nurses were very informative. As the title of this post suggests, it was a slow night in the ER. So I got lots of attention. They gave me a very tasty (unpleasant) GI cocktail to rule out digestive issues. (I had been eating too much rich food for two days) They took me for a chest X-ray to see if I had a heart. They took me for ultrasound to see if my liver and gall bladder were in place. They took a second blood draw to double check the enzyme tests that can identify heart attack. They gave me a nitroglycerin pill, which would make the pain go away if it was a heart attack. It didn't. Because it wasn't a heart attack. So they gave me morphine to "make me comfortable" no matter what the cause.
Finally, at four this morning, they let me come home. They did not wheel me out. Peggie said, "It is aways a good thing when you can walk out of the hospital."
We don't know what caused the pain. So now I have to follow up with my primary and a cardiologist. There goes December. Appointments get in the way of retirement.
So now we will get our errands run this afternoon. Casey is coming to help me put up Christmas decorations tomorrow. I bet I go to bed early tonight. My sleep was interrupted last night.
