Emergency Rooms

When you wake up in the morning do you ever anticipate that, Today I will be spending the day in the emergency room? I don’t.If my calculations are correct I have only been in a hospital about 9 or 10 times total in my life. Only 2 of those were for me the rest were for friends. This morning Bill had a dentist appointment at 7:30. Originally I was going to go with him and take the car and go have my blood drawn for my yearly check up. When I woke up I had a headache from the left over pain in my jaw from the teeth extractions so instead of having my blood drawn and then waiting in a dentist waiting room for 30 mins I decided to sleep an extra hour and Bill would come back by and pick me up. So I go back to sleep and wake up at 8 feeling much better and take a nice long shower and get ready for Bill to pick me up. He was supposed to call when he left the dentist about 8:30 to let me know he was on the way. I sat here on the couch for a few mins after 8:30 when finally he called. I pick up and he tells me that we have a problem. Apparently on his way to the dentist he had another episode. It was not as bad. He was driving and felt that he was getting ill again. Bill being the luckiest man I know was of course only a short distance from a Fire Department. He pulled into the FD’s front lot, got out knocked on the door and when they opened it proceeded to crash to the floor. This time, however, he did not lose consciousness fully. The firemen rushed around taking his vitals and contacted the paramedics that didn’t happen to be in the building and shortly thereafter (a little over an hour) he started feeling better. At which point the firemen loaded him up and hauled him down to the hospital near his personal physician (different hospital then last time). Unfortunately since it had snowed this morning Bill had taken the Jeep. After my initial freak out I made phone calls until I could find a wonderful friend (Thank you Tanya!!) to pick me up and take me to the Jeep so that I could then get to the hospital. I get to the hospital and we wait and wait. Since this time he did not pass out and stop breathing so he was not a priority. They ran a few tests before I got there and X-rayed his chest again. The new ER Doctor (Doctor Spies) was much better at communicating with us then the prior ER doctor whom I did not like the first time I saw him. This doctor was determined that “These things DON’T just happen.” After a few other tests and the results continuing to come back negative he decided Bill needed to see a Cardiologist. Bill’s cardiologist was in the building next door but he was not in today. By this time (3:30pm) they decided to send us next door to the Cardiologist that was on staff. We went next door and sat in the room for almost an hour before we got to see the doctor. The doctor reviewed all of the files, The ER documents from Bellevue, the ER documents from Renton, the doctors’ reports of all 5 of the doctors Bill has seen in the last month. He walked in the room and said that he is 95% sure it is Vasovagal Syncope. It is causes a drop in blood pressure so that your brain is not getting enough blood so your body just… stops. It is apparently very common. The blood pressure medicine he is taking apparently is known to aggravate this condition. The Cardiologist changed the medicine Bill takes and sent us home.

So we think this may be the resolution. We are still hesitant to accept something that sounds so simple and also because Bill has taken this particular Blood pressure medicine for over 10 years. I am glad that we may have an accurate diagnosis and hope that it is truly this simple. I guess at this point only time will tell. Needless to say Bill won’t be driving anytime soon. LOL So that’s the deal. Sucks to sit in the ER all day and sucks that it happened again but glad we had someone else that was more determined to get it figured out. At least tomorrow is Friday. I think I need a vacation.