Today I Celebrate
It was 20
years ago today that I walked out of Arby’s Roast Beef and climbed into my old
Chevy station wagon. When I turned the key the engine turned over but it wouldn’t
start so I turned the key to the off position. I don’t know what happened but the
engine kept turning over. I couldn’t stop it. Suddenly smoke started coming out
from under the hood. “DAMN.” I said to myself. “What am I going to do?” I was
really scared that my car was going to catch on fire. I opened my hood and
unhooked the battery. Thank goodness that stopped the engine from cranking
over. I was so uptight that I felt like I had gas pains in my chest. I thought
it was from the roast beef sandwich I had just eaten and all the anxiety.
I waited a while and then hooked the battery backup.
This time the car started and I headed off to Walmart to get a few things. When
I walked in, I didn’t feel right. I was out of breath and felt like I was having
a panic attack. I had a history of panic attacks so I decided that I better go
home. When I laid down on the couch I thought it would go away but it didn’t. The
worse it got the more panicky I got. I was scared so I called the emergency
room and talked to a nurse. She told me to call an ambulance. When they got
there, they hooked some wires up to my chest and told me that they were going
to take me to the hospital. On the way to the hospital the guy in the ambulance
said, “Are you still with us,” he asked me. I told him, “Yeah.”
In the emergency room my doctor showed up
within a few minutes. He said, “Your body is trying to have a Heart Attack.” I
told him, “I want you to let me know everything that is going on. Otherwise I’ll
be even more scared than I am now. If I am going to die I want you to tell me.”
My doctor knew I was serious about my request and he said, “I will let you know
everything.” I felt better when he said that. I guess I am the type that has to
know what’s happening at all times. The Doctor put a Nitro Glycerin patch on my
arm. I told him that I didn’t want it but he said, “Yes you are going to wear
it.”
After some tests they took me up to ICU (intensive
care unit). I called my sister and told her what was going on. When I was
hanging up the phone all of a sudden I got the most intense pain in my chest. I
was having the Big One. Talking to my sister had nothing to do with me having
the big heart attack, I just want to make that clear because I would have had
it whether I talked to her or not. The nurse was there and I told her, “I think
I am going to die.” I don’t know how other people feel when they have heart attacks
but I knew that I was dying. The nurse seemed calm about everything but before
I knew it they had moved me into ICCU (Intensive Cardiac-Care Unit). Instead of having a Nitro Glycerin patch, they had the Nitro
Glycerin going into me intravenously.
Sometime later they wheeled me into the
operating room to put a catheter up into my heart so they could see what was
going on. On the way in I started to get sick to my stomach. I told the doctor
and they got me something I could get sick in. The doctor said, “That’s the
Heart Attack.” When I was done they put the catheter in my leg and fed it up
into my heart. I was awake so I could hear what they were saying. They found
the blocked arteries and tried to put a stint in it to open my artery up. But
when they tried it wouldn’t go any further. Every time they tried I could feel
my heart skip a beat or stop for a second. That scared me. “Your arteries are 90%
blocked with calcium and we can’t get the stent in. We are going to have to
open you up,” The doctors told me. “Then do it,” I told him. I wasn’t scared of
the operation at that time because I knew that was the only way I was going to
get out of this alive.
The doctor put a balloon next to my heart.
The balloon on the end of the
catheter inflates and deflates with the rhythm of your heart. This helps your
heart pump blood to the body. As soon as the balloon started to help my heart
pump blood though out me, I felt much better. They left that in me for a couple
of days so that my heart could rest. That’s what they told me anyway.
The day of my Heart Bypass I laid on this gurney
in some white tiled room looking up at the ceiling. As I laid there I knew that
I wasn’t going to make it. That’s just the way I felt. I thought of my two children
who were not there because they lived in another state with their Mom. “I’ll
never see my kids again,” I thought to myself. “Then I clearly remember saying
to myself calmly, “I wonder what it’s going to be like being dead.” Dr. Elisabeth
Kübler-Ross said there are 5 stages of dying.
1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
I was going through stages 4 and 5 as I laid waiting for them to take me.
I heard someone come up behind me and say, “OK, I’m going to put you to sleep.”
I knew I would never wake up again.
No sense of time had passed although
I found out later from my aunt that they had kept me under for 36 hours. I don’t
how long the operation took but someone told me they were having trouble with
my blood pressure.
When I opened my eyes, I felt weak
and scared. I didn’t expect to wake up and now I was upset because I felt like
I was going to die all over again. I didn’t want to go through that again. I
laid there expecting my heart to stop at any moment. I felt the time start to pass again now that
I was awake. The more time that went by the better I felt that I was going to
make it. I stayed in the hospital for 10 days. I was still weak when it was
time to go back to my apartment. There was nobody to take me back to my
apartment so the hospital called a cab and the cabbie guy helped me up into my
apartment.
The next day I woke up and went to
take my medicine. The only thing was, I could not open the bottle because they had
sawed my chest apart during surgery. I was all alone and scared. I called
Schaumburg Township and the girl that answered at the disability office came
right over and helped me with my medicine and anything else I needed.
After my chest healed together
they started me exercising at Cardiac Rehab. At first I could only do 5 minutes
on the bicycle. I was still so weak that I couldn’t get off of it. So I sat
there until I had enough strength to stand up.
And TODAY marks the 20th year since my heart attack. If you would have told me that I would be celebrating my 20th year when I first got out of the hospital, I would have told you you’re nuts. I will be 70 in August. I have a friend the same age and we said that we are going to live to be 100.
Today when I walked into Cardiac Rehab, there was no celebration or party. It was just another day. But in my heart I was celebrating. I sat down at the table before I began and the guy next to me said, “You’re smiling. You must be happy about something.” I didn’t realize it showed. Then I went on to explain why. He smiled back at me and gave me the thumbs up. After Rehab, I went down to my Cardiologist and gave him a Thank You note for taking care of me and getting me this far. Down the hall was the chapel. I stopped in and said, “Thank You.” I knew my Mom was there too watching over me
I wrote this back on Sept 1995
Dreams About My Mom
I finally went to the video store and rented the movie "For One More
Day." I have wanted to see it for a long time.
When Chick Benetto first sees his mother standing at the other side of
the baseball diamond behind the fence, I got the chills. It was like the dream
I had about my own Mom back in Nov of 1994, 4 months before I had a heart
attack. In my dream.........
I started having series of dreams about my mom who died on June 3rd 1963.
As time went on, these dreams started getting closer and closer together. This
dream was progressing. I was getting closer to my Mother each time. I wanted to
keep track of this dream to see where it was going. So I started putting it
down on tape. At first, I only saw her on the other side of a river. I was
going crazy because I couldn't get over there and I couldn't get her to answer
me. She just looks at me and walks away without saying a word. Then the dream
progresses where I get on the other side of the river but she doesn't say
anything. In another dream, I get to talk to her and I say, "Where have
you been. Where do you live?" And she says, “You can’t come with me,"
and that's the end of the dream. The next dream I saw her out in the open
someplace and I got to tell her how much I loved her but I didn't get to kiss
her or hug her or anything. I just got to tell her how much I miss her and Love
her. As this dream kept getting closer and closer together, in the next dream,
I was in the hospital and I was REALLY sick. And Mom came to my room. I was so
sick I couldn't talk to her. She was talking to me but I can't remember what
she said. For some reason, all of a
sudden I was better and somehow I automatically knew where she lived now. In
the next dream I went to were my mom lived. It was some kind of monastery. I
snuck in the back door and found her room. But she wasn't there. Her room had
two beds. The one closest to the door was empty. It was chilly in her room and
I found a furnace where the window should be and I turned up the heat. I looked
around the room and decided to leave when this woman passing by looked at me. I
thought, "Oh I got caught" and she kept going. I said, "Man, am
I going to get in trouble now." "Well I'm caught now. I might as well
go out the back door. When I got to the back door, the woman said, "Somebody
has been in her room the last two Wednesdays." I said, "Yeah, that
was me" The woman said, "Well, how is your mother?" I said,
"I don't know, I haven't seen her." She said, "Just wait here a
minute. Each case is so interesting. I want to hear everything about you.” And
that was the end of the dream. This was some kind of holy place and the woman
in my dream seemed to be a nun, but she didn't dress like one.
Four months after I started this recording in Nov of 1994, I had a heart
attack and by-pass surgery. I really didn't think I was going to make it. I
almost REALLY did get to be with my mom forever.
I had one more dream on Sept 6th 1995, six months after my heart attack.
I was in the hospital and I thought I was all alone. But I realized that my mom
had been sitting in the chair next to my bed the whole time I was in the
hospital, watching over me while I was going through my heart attack. I finally
got to hug and kiss her. It felt Sooooo real to me.
I have not dreamt of my mom since. But I know in my heart she was really
there, watching over me.
