Читать книгу Diagnosis: Heart Attack - Karla Weller - Страница 6

Ground Zero

For the next five hours, paramedics, emergency doctors and surgeons fought hard to keep Gerd alive. The rescue helicopter had landed on the soccer field near our home, but couldn’t carry him because Gerd’s heart wouldn’t have been able to withstand the pressure equalization. At least they were able to provide him with nitroglycerin as an emergency medication. A remedy which every rescue helicopter is supposed to keep on board.

Nitroglycerin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Nitroglycerin (NG), also known as nitroglycerine, trinitroglycerin (TNG), trinitroglycerine, nitro, glyceryl trinitrate (GTN), or 1,2,3-trinitroxypropane, is a heavy, colorless, oily, explosiv liquid most commonly produced by nitrating glycerol with white fuming nitric acid under conditions appropriate to the formation of the nitric acid ester. Chemically, the substance is an organic nitrate compound rather than a nitro compound, yet the traditional name is often retained.

For over 130 years, nitroglycerin has been used medically as a potent vasodilator to treat heart conditions, such as angina pectoris and chronic heart failure. Though it was previously known that these beneficial effects are due to nitroglycerin being converted to nitric oxide, a potent vasodilator, it was not until 2002 that the enzyme for this conversion was discovered to be mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase.[4] Nitroglycerin is available in sublingual tablets, sprays, and patches.[5]

I now drove from the restaurant to the district hospital right away, where I waited together with my brother-in-law for the ambulance to arrive which seemed to take forever. From the parking lot, I could see hospital staff standing on the ramp and almost an hour later, I walked over to them to ask when my husband might be expected. First, no one would tell me anything, until finally they said, “This can take a long time. If he even makes it at all!”

When the ambulance finally arrived, I could see from afar that the emergency doctor inside the van was standing up and performing CPR because, even after several resuscitation attempts with the defibrillator, Gerd’s condition still wasn’t stable.

The ambulance doors opened and I could see the entire team was completely exhausted. Sweat poured from the men’s foreheads and trickled down their faces. When the stretcher was pushed out of the vehicle, I finally caught a glimpse of Gerd’s body. His orange-striped shirt had been cut open, his bare torso was hooked up to wires, and I couldn’t tell if he was conscious or not. I wanted to run towards him, but paramedics stopped me. They told me, I wasn’t allowed to accompany the patient, but instead had to wait in the emergency room until someone would come to get me. My brother-in-law, Peter, followed me inside the hospital.

While my sister Beate and her husband, Hardy, had stayed home with Justin, Peter had driven to the hospital to be there for me. Now he told me in detail what had happened since Justin’s phone call.

Because he hadn’t been able to reach our general practitioner, Justin kept his wits together and immediately notified 911 before he started mouth-to-mouth and CPR right away.

Since my sister lived in our neighborhood, I tried to call her on my cell from the restaurant, hoping she could help in any way. I had just switched from my old telephone to a modern touch-screen and I found it difficult to use. At first, I didn’t know how to open the window, couldn’t find the contacts folder and I felt like throwing the stupid thing from the mountain terrace where I stood at that point. But finally I was able to handle it so that the four of them met on the street at our house at nearly the same time: my two sisters and their husbands. While Sigi and Beate showed the two ambulances and the emergency doctor their way, Peter and Hardy, both trained first responders, performed first aid. Justin had already bedded his father on a thick floor pillow and was continuously blowing air into his mouth and nose. But Peter and Hardy realized Gerd was clinically dead at that point. His eyes were open wide and bulging, his mouth was slack and open and they couldn’t find a pulse in his neck. The emergency doctor used the defibrillator several times, oxygen was pumped into Gerd’s lungs and, after more than an hour, Gerd was finally carried into the ambulance. Yet they couldn’t leave for the hospital now, because Gerd’s heart kept stopping several times.

Out on the street, my sisters had overheard a phone call between the emergency doctor and the chief physician at the hospital, who instructed him to cease resuscitation at a certain point. But he wouldn’t obey. Maybe he simply couldn’t disappoint Justin, who had fought inexorably to keep his father alive and had never stopped trying to resuscitate him.

A few hours later in the hospital stairwell, I happened to run into the emergency doctor who had led the rescue effort. We had never met before, but recognized each other in this awkward situation. He abruptly stopped on the stairs, looked at me and told me, in a few brief words, that Gerd had suffered a massive heart attack. The whole team had done everything they could. Even on their way to the hospital, they had to stop the ambulance several times to resume life-saving measures. What happened next was entirely in God’s hands. He looked at me silently for quite some time. I didn’t say anything, didn’t ask any questions. He was still clearly exhausted. Then, as though giving me confirmation of his words, he handed me the certificate he had issued:

Myocardial infarction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Myocardial infarction (MI) or acute myocardial infarction (AMI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow stops to a part of the heart causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may travel into the shoulder, arm, back, neck, or jaw. Often it is in the center or left side of the chest and lasts for more than a few minutes. The discomfort may occasionally feel like heartburn. Other symptoms may include shortness of breath, nausea, feeling faint, a cold sweat, or feeling tired.[1] About 30 % of people have atypical symptoms,[2] with women more likely than men to present atypically.[3] Among those over 75 years old, about 5 % have had an MI with little or no history of symptoms.[4] An MI may cause heart failure, an irregular heartbeat, or cardiac arrest.[5][6]

In contrast, the definition according to Louise L. Hay’s “little blue book” named YOU CAN HEAL YOUR LIFE, says

Squeezing all the joy out of the heart in favor of money or position, etc.

While my brother-in-law waited for news from the doctors, I went down to see the hospital’s administration to register. They asked me countless questions which I was only partly able to answer. Of course, I knew all of Gerd’s personal information, but couldn’t tell his insurance number or all the other details which were obviously desperately needed in case of emergency. The on-duty clerk looked at me uncomprehendingly, when at one point to my own dismay I simply couldn’t stand this endless question and answer game any longer and just blurted out that I didn’t even know if my husband was still alive and that I wasn’t willing to continue this questionnaire any longer.

Instead of showing some understanding, he ordered me to finish the admission file anyway! Just then, another hospital employee joined us. She sensed the strained situation and my emotional condition instinctively, and called to inquire about my husband.

Despite several attempts, she wasn’t able to reach anyone. “Look, everyone is obviously working hard in the shock room to keep your husband alive. That’s why no one had time to answer the phone. You will have to remain patient.”

Definition according to Wikipedia:

A shock room, also called a reanimation room,[1] is a component of emergency rooms in hospitals in Europe[2]. It serves as primary care unit for trauma patients and patients with polytrauma. Emergency patients with problems pertaining to internal medicine are not usually treated there, which delineates the concept from that of an American emergency room.[2]

At 11 p.m., Gerd was being moved to the intensive care unit. In all these hours filled with fear and terrifying uncertainty, none of the clinic personnel had given me any information about his serious condition. Through a sliding door just opening at that very moment, I could only catch a glimpse of a gurney with a critical patient being pushed by. And even now, I still wasn’t allowed to stay by his side. His body was connected to tubes and needed artificial respiration.

Finally, a doctor explained to me that a stent was inserted into his coronal artery, and they would be keeping Gerd in a medically induced coma for the next two or three days, and we would just have to wait and see what happens.

So without even having seen Gerd, Peter and I were sent back home where my whole family had gathered in the kitchen. Justin had heated up the beef stew Gerd had cooked the evening before. They were supposed to eat something in order to keep their strength up. “Food is also soothing the soul,” we always said.

Everyone except for me, had seen Gerd before he was taken to the hospital and no one had really expected him to still be alive. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any good news to tell now. After all, I hadn’t even been allowed to be with him!

To carry Gerd out of the house hours before, a glass door had to be removed in the stairwell. Unfortunately, one of the paramedics had crushed his finger and injured himself during his attempt to help. So this door was leaning against the wall on the second floor now and when cleaning up the rescue area, which was strewn with packaging material from the numerous devices and disposable syringes, the door started to slip, slammed against a corner and burst into a million glass pellets. Those glass pellets sprang from the upper level, through the open staircase straight down to the cellar and hid in every corner and even in every shoe on the shelf on the wall.

After the initial fright, my sisters were almost glad to have something to clean up again just to break the uncomfortable silence and tension left due to the trembling uncertainty regarding Gerd’s condition.

The next morning at five, Gerd’s cell phone rang. The phone was placed next to my bed in case the hospital called. However, it was his colleague calling to ask where Gerd was, as they were supposed to drive to Thuringia. I felt like I had just fallen asleep. I was nauseated and hadn’t been able to get any rest due to my fear and worry about my husband, so I tersely told him Gerd was in the hospital after suffering a heart attack.

There was no reaction on the other end of the line; perhaps he thought it was a bad joke.

I would have liked to have said more, especially about the argument he had had with Gerd about the detour to Ikea. But what was the point? Could I really blame a colleague for Gerd’s heart attack? Instead, we both hung up.

When I went to visit Gerd later that morning, he was all stretched out, completely still, on the hospital bed. The machines issued their regular noises, but otherwise, the room was filled with silence. Gerd had been put in a single room at the far end of the hall in the intensive care unit. They wanted to make sure it was quiet around him for the next few days so his body could recover from the trauma.

When Gerd still hadn’t woken up on the fourth day in a row, I asked the attending physician about this circumstance. He explained to me that a period of two to three days of recovery was simply based on estimation. No one could tell whether or when Gerd would ever wake up. All they knew for sure was he had survived the night although predicted otherwise.

I was completely unaware his prognosis was so bad, and now those bold words hit me hard! An excruciating pain shot right through my heart as the floor broke away beneath me.

The next night, something scared me deeply and I awoke with a startle, knowing something bad had happened to Gerd. I listened to hear if the telephone was ringing, but no one had called.

Early in the morning, I drove to the hospital and hurried to Gerd’s bed. The equipment was still incessantly performing its duties; the numbers on the monitors hadn’t changed. But Gerd was running a fever and his right thigh was swollen like a balloon.

The operation during which the stent was inserted via the femoral artery near the groin had apparently caused internal bleeding which had gone unnoticed. And if that wasn’t a big enough threat, I also had to worry he might suffer brain damage from the high fever. At a body temperature of 106 degrees, the brain swells and presses against the skull. To prevent this, they would lower his temperature with cold, wet cloths spread out across his bare torso. It made him look eerie and somewhat like a mummy.

At the same time, the windows in the hospital room stood wide open! When I asked the nurses about it they explained to me that fresh air was very important for the entire ward! And since visiting hours weren’t until the afternoon, I wasn’t even allowed to be here at this early hour!

Fresh air? Certainly! But foggy, cold, wet air on an late October day while the patient was lying naked and immobile with a fever?

I stood by Gerd’s bed and tears of anger, fear and helplessness ran down my face. I knew this was a matter of life and death for Gerd. Did he have the will to return to this world or had he already chosen to move on to the next? I had brought a small guardian angel made of rose quartz which I laid in his folded hands. I also had the Abaris1 arrow with me to provide him with even more healing energy. Unfortunately, I was only allowed to stay with him for a few minutes because my presence in the morning supposedly disrupted the station’s work flow.

1 Energy Stick for Healing Support

The next day, Gerd had bilateral pneumonia. His fever still hadn’t gone down and the doctors were considering opening his skull to give his brain more room.

As on the days prior, I performed different Jin Shin Jiutsu techniques, an old Chinese healing current, to activate Gerd’s animal spirits and harmonize his vital flows. His body was ice cold from the wet cloths and it was a miracle his blood was still circulating at all.

Many desperate hours later, his fever eventually went down and his skull didn’t have to be opened. But no one could tell if his brain had suffered additional damage. I feared more and more for his life when I suddenly realized that Gerd would no longer wake up from the coma on his own volition.

In my unbridled despair I prayed to God and asked for the very best outcome and Gerd’s best interest, when I pulled the card “Breathe” from Doreen Virtue’s Archangel Oracle Deck. This was the ultimate answer to my prayer, and I put the picture of Archangel Raphael next to Gerd’s bed right away. From now on, Raphael himself would watch over him and remind his lungs to keep breathing deeply and constantly.

At that point, a nurse asked me to take home Gerd’s golden necklace with the Jesus pendant which I had placed over his bed earlier. But I wanted to leave it right there since Gerd had worn it around his neck for years. He had bought it in Mexico a long time ago and never taken it off since. Two weeks later, the chain had disappeared and no one knew where it had gone. May it bring its new owner luck and protection!

Justin hadn’t visited his father at intensive care yet. He had fought so desperately to keep him alive during the heart attack, but still wasn’t able to face his father’s lifeless body in the hospital. Every night, Justin lay awake in bed and barely talked during the day. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw his father’s face in pain, fighting with death, and therefore he couldn’t get any sleep.

To improve the situation for everybody, I decided to get in touch with my daughter, Daniela, who was still in Chicago and asked her to fly home as soon as possible to join her brother visiting their father. That was the only chance I saw to bring Gerd back.

But first, Justin urgently needed help. He couldn’t handle the situation alone. He had already had too many sleepless nights. We made an appointment with Mrs. Sigler who worked as a shaman and had helped me personally deal with a life crisis before.

On a soul journey, she was able to discover that Justin’s personal spirit animal was a giant bear. Because of the shock he had experienced, some fear had settled in his head, which immediately dissolved when his spirit animal made itself known. Inner strength and self-confidence could once again blossom. The Archangel Raphael gave him Aesculapius’s staff and Justin would have to decide for himself whether to accept it or not. Being a helper and healer was his destiny.

On October 31, Daniela returned from Chicago and, as planned, the siblings visited their father in the intensive care unit for the first time. I waited outside. The three of them had such a special connection which I didn’t want to disturb because I knew if anyone at all could move Gerd to come back, it was his children.

Unfortunately, the desired success didn’t happen right away. After a few initial hesitations, the two of them spoke to their father as though he were awake. They told him of the past few days, how much he had scared them, how furious Daniela was that he hadn’t listened to her and consulted a doctor while there was still time to take action, and anything else they could think of at the moment. But Gerd didn’t wake up and didn’t give any other indication he even recognized his children were there with him.

Fourteen days after the heart attack, I was called into the doctor’s office. They had to cease artificial respiration, they explained, because if the tube remained in his throat for too long, his vocal cords would be likely to suffer permanent damage. And what would happen if the breathing tube was removed and Gerd would fail to breathe on his own? Should doctors perform a tracheotomy in a worst-case scenario?

Since Gerd had never filed a living will, I had to see a notary to obtain a legal permit from the authorities to make decisions on Gerd’s behalf.

Due to the life and death situation, the notary offered me an appointment the very next day and after a long conversation, issued the necessary paperwork which temporarily authorized me to order life support measures for my husband.

That same day, Gerd’s oxygen tube was removed and artificial respiration was stopped. I stood, spellbound, next to his bed and watched the procedure. Everything went well and Gerd was able to breathe on his own! Thank God! A first essential step toward returning to life had been taken.

From then on, Gerd was able to make loud noises, but they sounded more like a threatened wild animal than a human being. In retrospect, I think his consciousness returned successively, but he was completely terrified and distraught, still caught somewhere in between the worlds. The doctors didn’t know how to deal with him either, so whenever he became too anxious “for his own protection”, he was administered a drug that plunged him back into complete darkness. For the very moment, this practice was certainly a relief for everybody, especially for the people around him who were frightened by these primal noises. But not for the long-term, because this forced him to go through this semi-conscious state again and again.

We kept trying to think of ways to encourage Gerd to come back to life.

Meanwhile, we had burned a CD for him with a few songs that might mean something to him. There were songs he had loved to listen to the year before and songs he had sung loudly with his friends at a party at a soccer camp in Croatia. Somehow, we all saw that film scene in our minds when the hero suddenly opens his eyes because he hears a certain melody and the happy ending is in sight. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

Still, I put the book “Stand up” from Boris Grundl on the shelf next to Gerd’s hospital bed. Only a few months ago, we had attended an inspiring lecture at which Boris Grundl impressively demonstrated how he had found a new and even better life when he became paraplegic, which he had initially felt was the end of the world. If Gerd woke up, he should be immediately reminded of that and realize that people can start over, especially after such a bitter twist of fate.

One day later, I wanted to visit Gerd late in the evening, but was not allowed to see him. He was very restless and was being treated by two nurses. I was asked to be patient and wait outside in the station’s waiting room. Unfortunately, this happened again and again. When Gerd grew restless, he was given another dose of a sedative that put him back into the artificial coma. So we could never tell how much of his unconsciousness was caused by the artificial coma. How strong were his will and power to return to this life? Where did one stop and the other begin? I was told this was best for him because such massive restlessness might additionally harm his psyche and he might injure himself thrashing about in his bed. To avoid injuries, he had been “strapped” to the bed when I came to visit quite often. Seeing him like that just broke my heart.

While I was waiting to be let into Gerd’s room that evening, the head of the clinic was still on his late ward rounds. When he saw me, he sat down with me in silence for a little while and finally told me he had recently lost his best friend to a heart attack. No one had been around to help him, so he had died alone, suddenly and unexpectedly. I could sense how it had emotionally affected the doctor himself when he asked how old Justin was that he had acted so prudently, thus saving his father’s life. It was very lucky for Gerd that he had and, yet, it was a huge strain on Justin to have seen his father fighting for his life. Regardless of how things continued for Gerd, I couldn’t allow Justin to blame himself for not having done enough. In fact, his behavior had far exceeded what was humanly possible!

Despite all this, Gerd’s condition didn’t allow for a prognosis, the doctor said, so we had to be prepared for anything at any time.

Shortly thereafter, the doctor accompanied me to Gerd’s room. “The walk from the entryway to the hospital room is always hard because I never know in what condition I would find my husband in,” I remarked. But today, I could hear Gerd screaming in despair from afar. Although he wouldn’t say any recognizable words, it was clear he was terrified. He thrashed around in bed and made noises that sounded more like an animal than a human. I went straight to him and laid one hand on his forehead and the other on the back of his neck and whispered soothing words in his ear. Gerd quickly grew calm, his heart rate stabilized at a normal level and his body relaxed. The display on the vitals monitor returned to a normal curve. The Jin Shin Jiutsu “emergency current” was working and performed its miracle cure. When I turned around after a few minutes, I realized the head of the clinic was gone. He had watched from the door as Gerd reacted positively to my presence and interpreted this as a sure sign that he recognized me. The doctor then ordered that an early rehabilitation spot for Gerd be rigorously sought. The clinics in the vicinity that came into question were all full, but they eventually found one in the Bavarian Alps.

However, in order to be moved there, Gerd had to be able to be tube-fed which first required an opening which, of course, would place additional, extreme stress on his body.

A few days later, a gastric feeding tube was inserted and Gerd was then immediately transported by ambulance to the neurological intensive care unit in the Bavarian Alps.