Roger Zee Memoirs
Heart Attack 04 01/20/21
Crunch time at Montefiore-Einstein Hospital! Everything comes down to open-heart surgery tomorrow morning 11/04/16. Will I leave the operating table alive? If so, what kind of life will I lead? But first, it's 8:30P and here comes the nurse to prep me for my pre-op shower -- bandages, IV, wires, and all! Welcome to another excerpt from my memoirs, "Life and Times of a Pandemic Musician." B-|
A half-hour late, an attractive, feisty, young Hispanic nurse arrives and unhooks my IV, detaches my heart monitor and changes the dressing on my inner thigh from where they inserted the angiogram wire. Then she covers up my remaining wires and thigh bandage with plastic bubble wrap. Ready to Rock, LOL! As we pass by the nursing station she stops and says hi to the head nurse who gives her a gentle scolding for starting her shift late yet again. ;-)
So we shuffle off down the hall where she opens up a door to what looks like a wet, concrete cave with a dilapidated shower at the far end. She hands me a bottle of liquid soap, tells me to shower and she'll return in 15 minutes. You know, like "the letter's in the mail..." Takes me a while to figure out the detachable shower head as well as the hot and cold water controls -- specifically which one's hot! Guess what? They're both cold! After a few freezing moments trying to wash myself but not get the bubble wrap wet, I notice the bathroom's starting to flood. I rinse myself off as fast and best as I can, shut off the water, and look for a towel. What towel?" >:P
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I search for the button to buzz the nursing station, hit it a few times but nothing happens. Dripping wet, freezing, and naked, I open the door, stick my head out and look for help. It's night and the hall's completely empty. So I begin calling out for a nurse. Nothing! I wait a few minutes and try again. Finally, I see my nurse coming and ask her for a towel. She goes off to fetch one and I shut the door. Fifteen minutes later, no nurse, no towel. I re-open the entrance and one again shout for help. But this time I hear my nurse and unit chief fighting -- cursing and screaming at each other in Spanish. OMG! >:
So I start yelling to get their attention. After what seems like forever, my nurse drops off a towel and disappears again! After another ten minutes, a different nurse knocks on the door and helps me back to my room where she takes off my protective bubble wrap and hooks my heart monitors back up. Wow! If I didn't feel nervous before about the pending surgery, I sure do now! So I turn up the volume on my wall TV and try to find something decent on the five channels they offer. But because I lost my glasses somewhere between White Plains Hospital and here, I can barely see anything anyhow... :-[
Wet, supremely uncomfortable, and getting my vital signs checked or listening to it done to my roommate, I barely sleep a wink. Finally, the new shift nurse preps me for surgery and shoots me up with a mild anesthetic. Finally the patient transporter arrives and off we go through the endless twists and turns of the hospital basement! :-O
They park me outside the OR and wait for about thirty minutes for my room to open up. Finally, they bring me in and strap me to the table. My surgeon, Dr. Michler, greets me and introduces his team. Somebody brings out an anesthesia mask, tells me to count back from ten to one and I'm gone at nine! >:3
Over five hours later, I slowly wake up in the recovery room, groggy as Hell. A nurse informs me all went well and that my ex-wife Gwendolyn Armstrong and my son Spencer will come in shortly to say hello. But for now, I should just rest. So I fall out for another twenty minutes. When the nurse returns, she explains that the anesthesiologist will now take out my breathing tube. "Why didn't they do it while I slept," I ask. "We have to wait until you're awake." Which doesn't really answer the question, does it, LOL! 3:-)
Now comes the most frightening, horrific thing I've ever experienced! Still out of it, hopped up on pain meds, I try to listen to the doctor. But he's from either India or Pakistan and I can't understand an effing word he says. I think he wants me to relax my throat so he can pull out the tube. But as soon as he begins, I start to gag and go wild with fear. This continues for about five minutes until I thrash about in abject terror. I still can't understand a word the doctor says. But the nurse tells me not to move or I'll open up my chest sutures! They stop for a few minutes and bring in my ex-wife Wendy to calm me down. What a laugh. That's why we divorced! >:O
So we start up again with Wendy helping, but now she's freaking out! We're making no progress and I panic while seeing the end coming as I rapidly choke to death. The anesthesiologist keeps directing me and I finally start yelling at him, "English! Speak effing English." Then he starts screaming. I feel wild, uncontrollable fear and start thrashing around again. Now everybody's yelling at me to relax so they can pull the goddamn tube out. Somehow, maybe fifteen agonizing minutes later, they succeed. But only after badly bruising my throat and vocal chords. Good thing I'm a BAMF! Days later, I can barely speak days later and cannot sing for over a month. And when I finally can, I discover that I've lost about four high notes, which really sucks because I sing lower than Johnny Cash anyhow! So my recovery begins. But that's a story for another chapter... ;-)
So today as they swear in Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States, I'm "Feeling Good," tremendously uplifted that maybe now I can get a Covid vaccine appointment at the Westchester County Center that will free me from this apartment prison. Now I get up, slap on Nina Simone's "Greatest Hits" CD on the boombox, grab my Mexican Lake Placid Blue Fender "Player" Jazz Bass, and just go to town on some classic Blues and Soul bass lines. One <3
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