Heart Attack

(on a little morphine)

Wow. What a whirlwind of a week to say the least! My sweet hubbs just got home Wednesday after staying in the ICU for 5 days. It all began on Friday night after he woke up at about 11:30 after having only been asleep for about 45 minutes or so and tapped me (I was dead to the world on meds of my own) to get me to wake up. He was having pain in between his shoulder blades and his chest was really tight, his upper arms were aching and both hands were numb and yet tingling at the same time. He was really pale and sick at his stomach and sweating all over...we both had a sickening feeling that he was having a heart attack. However, we knew he was 36 years old and he's totally not the normal age to have one...looked up the symptoms online...he was having all of them.

I quickly called my mom and she headed over to stay with the girls, we got dressed and then headed to the ER. When we got there they got us in immediately--our ER does not take chest pain lightly. We had an amazing doctor...really outstanding-will most definitely be sending a thank you note to him for his awesome service and patient care! They quickly began running tests and bloodwork and figured out that it indeed was a heart attack and got him a room in the ICU.

Saturday morning he was scheduled for an arteriogram. I was not really all that nervous...I had a peace about me. I know that it came from the Lord and I also know that we had numerous people praying for my husband that morning and in the days to follow. His arteriogram came back clean--no blockages at all. AWESOME GOD!

The cardiologist spoke with me and said that he believed it to be a blood clot that had corrected itself prior to the arteriogram that had caused the heart attack...we were happy with that answer to a point but still wanted to know why he had the blood clot or what had caused that.

Saturday night comes and Boy has another episode, another heart attack...now we know it as a coronary spasm. A coronary artery spasm is a brief, temporary contracting of the muscles in an artery wall in your heart. This can narrow and decrease or even prevent blood flow to part of the heart muscle. If the spasm lasts long enough, it can lead to chest pain (angina) and a heart attack. These are what Stephen had three of while in the hospital, and what he had while at home.

Our family practitioner entered the picture on Saturday and just felt as though there was more to the picture than a blood clot and worked alongside the cardiologist to figure out what was going on. We were not overly enthusiastic with our cardiologist and our family practitioner was fantastic at helping to figure out what was going on with Stephen and at patient and family care.

Over the weekend, I had come to find out that I had strep throat...lovely to be sick and going back and forth between the hospital and home...but we don't do anything the typical way in our household! They had already done a rapid strep and flu culture on Stephen that came back negative but our family practitioner had sent out a two day--on Tuesday it came back-POSITIVE. Big piece of the puzzle.

Our family practitioner (another HUGE thank you note) came into our room on Tuesday morning excited because he believed he had it all figured out. Acute Rheumatic Fever. What? Say that again? Strep throat had caused Rheumatic Fever which had in turn caused the coronary spasms. Whew...alot to get through. We just had to pull in the infectious diseases specialist to get his opinion and bloodwork to prove this. They went ahead and began treating him--only problem was that the #1 treatment was penicillin. He was allergic to it...they went ahead and used it and apparently he is no longer allergic to it. The hospital was a perfect place to test and see if he was.

Wednesday morning comes and Rheumatic Fever it was. They sent us home with eight prescriptions and two follow-up appointments and most likely he'll be on injections to prevent him from getting strep--otherwise he'd get rheumatic fever again and have a heart attack. Which we certainly don't want to repeat!

I want to say that we had a week full of overwhelming support from our family-especially my momma that I love and adore-she spent days here at my house cleaning, cooking and most of all taking care of my babies, my daddy who did without my momma for days on end and supporting us (123 to both of you), Boy's parents being up there with us and with Boy when I wasn't able, friends who've been calling and praying and co-workers who have been taking care of things for Boy while he is out and praying for our family. I can't thank those enough who came and sat with me at the hospital all morning and over the course of the week, the friends who've been bringing meals to our house (yummo!) and for all of the encouraging texts, messages and calls.

Jesus is Lord. He is the ultimate Healer. There are many ways that this week could have played out...but I had perfect peace the whole time...I know that we were prayed through by the union of friends.

"The Lord gives me strength. He is like a shield that keeps me safe. My heart trusts in Him, and He helps me. My heart jumps for joy. I will sing and give thanks to Him." Psalm 28:7


Love my husband beyond words and so thankful for him and his heart...

Much love,
~K