A Not All That Hilarious Heart Attack, Part 2: The Cardiologist Strikes Back

So, when we last left our hero, the seriousness of the situation was finally - belatedly - registering (because even I can't have a discussion with a cardiologist about the risk of death associated with a medical procedure versus the risk of death associated with doing nothing, without it sinking in that something important might be happening), and I was being taken upstairs on a stretcher.

While I was being prepped for the procedure, the cardiologist explained a few more things, including that I wouldn't be able to drive for some time afterwards. 

"That's not an issue for me," I said, "I don't drive."

"Oh," he replied, "You got here in an ambulance?"

"No," I said, "I took the bus."

A look of pure incredulity flashed across his face. "You took the bus? Why wouldn't you take the ambulance?"

"It seemed excessive," I told him.

He laughed out loud. "It seemed excessive," he said, shaking his head. 

So yes, everyone: Point taken. The Head of Cardiology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre agrees with you. The bus was not one of my better ideas. Sheesh! Can we move on to the procedure? 

This was the procedure: I would get a local anaesthetic on my right wrist, and a sedative - but not a general anaesthetic. Then a camera would be inserted via my wrist and snaked up to my heart. They'd have a look around and take further action as needed.

The further action, I learned afterwards, was the insertion of a stent. One of my arteries was totally - one hundred percent - blocked. They were able to clear out the blockage and re-open the artery with the stent. So there's a tiny plastic tube in my artery. It releases medication, too, over time, to ensure that my body doesn't try to heal it over.

Yeah, how amazing is medical science? Based on information obtained via a tiny camera that went to my heart via my wrist, I had a stent inserted - again, it went in via my wrist - into one of my heart's arteries. All of this without being cut open (the tiny incision in my wrist healed within days) and without needing anaesthetic. This all  took an hour. I was conscious throughout the whole process.

It didn't even hurt.

My one regret is that I couldn't see the monitor myself from the position I was lying in. Although with the sedative, I'm not sure I would have been able to make much sense of it. I was flying pretty high, except for the time I fell asleep.

Fun as it was, the sedative wore off quickly and I was able to talk to the cardiologist and debrief as soon as the procedure was finished, which is when I found out about the stent, and the extent of the blockage in my arteries (in addition to the total blockage of the right anterior artery, two others had partial blockage - one was forty percent blocked, one fifty. These didn't require intervention as they're considered treatable via medication and lifestyle change.

So, the procedure was done and I was ushered into my post-heart attack era by being taken down to the Cardiac ICU. There I was moved into a bed - the nurses who got me settled in told me that the bed cost more than both their cars, put together - and hooked up to a bunch of machines that go ping: An ECG, a blood pressure monitor, oxygen, an IV feeding me blood thinners, and a blood oxygenation monitor (which, in another "Sweet FSM modern medicine is freaking astounding!" moment, is a little clip that goes on your finger, shines a laser at it, and via that process determines how oxygen-saturated your blood is).

That's when they let Sarah in to see me.

I probably looked a bit hellish by that point, even if she hadn’t already been scared half out of her mind. We were both pretty emotional. She hugged me - gently - and sat with me, and held my hand. We talked a bit - not a lot, we were both exhausted. The kids had school in the morning, or later that morning, really, since it was after 3:00 am by then, so after a little bit of just being together, she went home to take care of things, and I went to sleep in a bed that cost more than two nurses' cars. 

Exhausted, weak, with a tube in the artery next to my heart. And alive. 

Next: The first day of the rest of my life (in a post-heart attack world)

A Not All That Hilarious Heart Attack

Alice Sheldon, who wrote some absolutely brilliant science fiction, mostly under the pen name and guise of James Tiptree Jr., once wrote an account of her experience having a heart attack while on vacation in Mexico. She called it 'How To Have An Absolutely Hilarious Heart Attack' and it's well worth reading, if only to note the deft writing that went into a very frank account of a medical emergency that still managed to keep her gender implicit and therefore, her identity secret.

My own experience was perhaps not as hilarious, and my description of it will be a lot less well-crafted. On the other hand, I promise that "Stephen" is my real name.

And last week, I had a heart attack. Oh, and if that wasn't hilarious enough? I'm 41.

I had been feeling not very well for a couple of weeks. Simple activities, that wouldn't had even rated as effort before, seemed to get me winded, to get my heart pounding.

I wasn't sure what to make of it, but I figured, meh. I'd put on some weight since the holidays and it was slowing me down. I was getting over a cold. It was a long, cold, winter. Nothing that starting to eat better and exercise regularly again wouldn't fix.

Besides, after talking to some people and researching my symptoms online, I was pretty sure I had acid reflux.

But last Sunday, March 31st, some time after 10:30 in the morning, that theory got a lot less tenable. My father-in-law had taken the kids for an outing and Sarah, my lovely partner, was getting some well deserved sleep, so I was the only one both home and up.

And I suddenly felt like a giant was leaning on my chest. My heart was pounding, again - and this time, I hadn't been doing anything at all. It hurt to move. It hurt to breathe. It just plain hurt, and no matter what I did, it felt like that giant was pushing me, putting all his weight into pushing me right in the chest.

My first thought was that this acid reflux thing? A lot worse than I'd expected.

I looked up some home remedies (apple cider vinegar, that sort of thing) and tried a couple. They caused a lot of burping, but brought no relief. They also seemed to bring on a bout of nausea, and it was the sound of me trying to throw up that woke up Sarah. Since I'm rarely sick, she was surprised and concerned. "Are you okay?" she asked me.

"No," I said, "I think I need to go to the hospital."

As I said, I'm rarely sick - until this recent misadventure, I hadn't used a sick day in about two and a half years. We talked about it, and agreed that the best thing for me would be to get some rest instead.

So I went to bed and slept for about five hours.

When I woke up, the pain had subsided, but it was still there. I still felt awful, and I'm used to a decent nap being a cure-all, so I was even more concerned, even though I didn't actually hurt as much. I decided to call Telehealth and get some advice.

(For non-Ontarians, Telehealth is a toll-free phone line the provincial government operates - you call and talk to a Registered Nurse, who can advise you how best to proceed based on the symptoms you describe. The idea is that it keeps people from rushing to the emergency room when they don't need to go, and makes sure that people who need to go to the ER do).

The nurse at Telehealth was... a lot more concerned than I expected, and encouraged me to go to the ER as soon as possible. "I can transfer you to 911 right now," she said. I said that was okay, I needed to talk to my partner about making sure she and the kids were okay, et cetera. "If you don't take this advice, you could be putting yourself at risk," she said. I thought that was hitting the disclaimer boilerplate pretty hard, but I said I understood, thank you and so on, and hung up.

I told Sarah the nurse had said that I should call an ambulance, but that I didn't think that was necessary. A bus stops right in front of our building that goes right past the nearest hospital - it was minutes away, probably just as fast as an ambulance would be.

So I showered, put on clean clothes, got some things together and went out to hop on the bus. It had been a mild day but was starting to get cold. Happily, I didn't have to wait long. The bus arrived in a few minutes and I was en route to the hospital.

I arrived a bit before 8:00 pm, and sat down to wait for triage. I saw a nurse, told her my symptoms. She gave me a couple of baby aspirin, which I chewed up and swallowed. She didn't seem unduly alarmed. I may have understated my pain then, or the seriousness of my pain earlier. I may have been a bit too committed to my acid reflux theory. In any case, after triage, there was more waiting.

Over this time, my heart rate seemed to speed up, and sometimes it felt like my heart was doing some particularly awkward acrobatics in there. I chalked it up to stress and psychosomatic symptoms brought on by my imagination.

Eventually, I was assessed, and got an ECG.

More waiting.

Finally, after midnight, I was seen by a doctor. She looked at my chart and immediately told the staff to give me another ECG, since it had been so long since the last one. When that was completed...

The doctor looked at the ECG. "Did you feel that, just now?" she asked.

"Feel what?" I said.

She nodded, as if to herself, "Yeah," she said, "We're going to get the cardiologist down here to talk to you."

Would you believe that it wasn't until then that my internal "Oh shit!" alarm started to go off?

The cardiologist was there shortly. He looked at my ECG results, did a quick examination and assessment.

"You had a heart attack," he said.

"Really?" I replied.

He told me, yes, I really had. We discussed the risks and benefits of an angiogram and angioplasty, and I agreed that the procedure sounded like a good idea - and signed the appropriate paperwork.

I might, he said, want to call someone.

I said that I didn't think that would be necessary. I didn't want to bother my wife.

He looked a bit incredulous, and tried to explain to me that a heart attack was not a minor thing. I should probably, you know, tell my family.

I called Sarah, and let her know the news. She started to cry. I told her that I was going to be okay, but that she should probably come to the hospital. Within a few minutes, she had made arrangements for a friend (the kind and generous Melanie - thank you so much!) to come over and stay with the kids, and told me she'd be there as soon as she could.

After the waiting, waiting, waiting, I was a little surprised by the speed at which events moved forward. I was only waiting for about half an hour while the CATH lab team was assembled (they're called is as needed, rather than kept waiting around) and that was just as well - it gave me time to talk to Sarah.

Then I was taken upstairs on a stretcher - for the procedure.

Next time: The procedure and afterwards.

(Spoiler warning: I didn't die!)

And the Beat Goes On

Yes, so, lots has happened, and lots continues to happen. And much of it is interesting. And, uh, I really should be blogging about it, shouldn’t I? That means this is most definitely going to be a scattershot, bunch of little updates, ITEM: Stephen likes pie! kind of thing:

I had kind of a blah start to the year. It was grey and cold and I was fighting a bug of some sort and needed to sleep a lot. So I got really stalled out and didn’t make a whole lot of progress on any creative front (or with exercising, for that matter). Until…

My writers group went on a weekend mini-retreat. We got out of Toronto (on the night of a big snowstorm, no less) and spent a couple of days at a cottage near Grand Bend. It was awesome to be able to go heads-down for an extended period of time, and it let me push through the morass. I owe big thanks to: Claire, who thought of and organized the whole deal; her family, for generously allowing us to use their cottage that weekend; and of course to my co-parent and partner Sarah, without whose support a weekend away would not have been possible.

I came back feeling creatively rejuvenated, and I’m currently working away on the script for the next story-line for my webcomic, Cold Iron Badge. It’s still going a little slower than I’d like, but you, know, I have the time to write that I have. Any progress beats the heck out of no progress.

And on the subject of Progress, I haven’t been blogging here much so far this year, but I have been blogging. Greg Beettam and I have blown the dust off the long-dormant Xeno’s Arrow website, and we’re adding new content there regularly, about four posts a week on average. No new comics or story material yet, but Greg’s providing a look at the process of creating our characters, including never-before-seen art, in his Sketchbook Diaries. I’m doing blog posts going into our processes of collaboration and co-writing, and also contributing brand-new Appendices that explore the Known Galaxy of Xeno’s Arrow.

Appendices were prose features, sometimes illustrated, sometimes not, that we ran at the back of issues of Xeno’s Arow, after the comic. They were part of the universe, but not part of the story – usually presented as excerpts from books or articles from somewhere in the Known Galaxy that allowed us to explore and detail elements of the setting that fell outside the frame of our characters and their adventures. They were always tremendous fun to write and I’m having a great time doing that again!

And there may be, very possibly may be, some more news on the Xeno’s Arrow front. That’s pending some other elements falling into place, so nothing’s confirmed yet. If something’s happening, it’ll most likely happen later this spring. Even the prospect has me really excited, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

Meanwhile, I've heard back from most of the beta readers who very kindly had a look at my novel, and I'm starting to think about the final round of revisions. Depending on how long it takes to finish the script, that may be my Big March Project. After which... wow, after that I have to start thinking about finding representation by submitting it to agents. 

Still creeping their way up the to-do list: Regular exercise, my next novel, and another entirely different writing project that I've been kicking around that would be an absolutely insane amount of fun, if I could pull it off. 

More updates, perhaps not quite as they happen, but pretty close. Stay tuned!

This Is What I'm Doing: The Looking Down The Barrel of December 2012 Edition

There are always slings and arrows. Sometimes they bounce off our armour, sometimes we get by with the nicks, bruises and superficial contusions of outrageous fortune, and sometimes they hit us in sensitive spots. All of which is to say: It’s been an interesting month.

It started on a high: Through the generosity of some dear friends to whom I’m very grateful (and my wonderful partner Sarah, who handled our kids solo while I was out of the picture all weekend), I was able to attend the 2012 World Fantasy Convention. I met amazing people, learned a lot, had funny, fascinating and/or profound conversations, enjoyed some damn good beer, and got firehosed with books. Oh, and I kind of broke a panel on diversity in YA fantasy. It was a good time.

I embarked on NaNoWriMo with high hopes considerable ambitions, and while I didn’t “win” (I didn’t write 50,000 words in thirty days, not even close), I did have my least-unsuccessful NaNoWriMo ever, which is something to be proud of. Going forward, though, I think I might need to accept that November is a really bad month for me, personally, to try to do Big Pushes on Big Projects.

I got another rejection. The short story I consider the best one I’ve ever written is now also the most-rejected, although to be fair that’s mostly because it’s the one I keep submitting to publications.

I continued to let my novel rest while my Beta Readers did their beta reading. I’ve heard back that two of them have finished it, and one sent me comments by email. I’m going to meet with the other, sometime next week I hope, to benefit from her insight. There are four more readers who I expect to hear from over the next couple of weeks. Then I’ll let the comments simmer while I finish some other projects, before returning to the novel some time in early 2013.

The big trouble, this month, the reason that I had to put some things on hold, was a family health problem. Everyone is fine now, and all I suffered myself was worry, sympathy and a bit of schedule disruption. I would of course rather not have had this problem at all, but I trust everyone reading this will agree that when it did happen, the only possible thing I could do was put some of my personal business on hold so I could pitch in and do my part to help. That’s why I lost some of the forward momentum on NaNoWriMo, and also on going to the gym. That’s nothing, on balance. It could have been so much worse, for so much longer. I’m glad things (and people!) are better, and I should be able to pick up and make quite a bit of progress before the further, more fun and happy disruptions of the holiday season are upon us.

That anticipated progress, over December will be all about finishing this year’s business. That’s the Next Novel and the script for the comic, as well as some advance planning for a big project coming up in early 2013, that I will not discuss now because it’s still in such a preliminary stage. When it is ready to share, you need not fear that I’ll be shy about announcing it. And announcing it, and announcing it, and then announcing it just to be on the safe side.

And after that, it’ll be time for my annual New Year’s Revolutions, and the challenges and adventures that 2013 will bring.

I’m looking forward to sharing them with you.

This Is What I'm Doing: The October 2012 Edition

Lots of little updates this time out...

The Short Fiction
I have continued to take my short stories out to the market. One advantage of starting with the most prestigious and professional genre publications is that I know the bar is high, and my expectations are therefore low. So far, I've been getting rejections, which I am trying to frame as valuable experience in dealing with the realities of the short fiction markets. Currently, two stories are still out and I'm waiting on responses. If I get a sale, you'll hear about it. Believe me, everyone will hear about that.

The Novel
I have forward momentum on the novel again, at long long last. After letting the notes I got from my esteemed Alpha readers lie fallow for a while, I'm now going through the manuscript and making edits and revisions - if you follow me on Twitter, that's what the #RewriteMonth hashtag is all about.  I'm also making notes for broader, bigger revisions that need a little more thought than "That line's out, that line stays in" - things like fine-tuning character arcs and bringing themes into focus. It's going quickly, and most of the big-picture stuff is going to be a matter of adding touches at a few, key pinch-points across the whole story. Oh, plus one scene that needs to be entirely rewritten, but that should be relatively straightforward.

My goal is to have the new draft done, and out to my Beta readers, before the end of the month. Yes, this month, October. I know it sounds optimistic, but like I said, I have forward momentum at last, and I don't intend to squander it this time. 

The Next Novel
My timeline for the Novel (which I'm calling the Novel because I'm a between names for the darn thing) seems to be sufficiently realistic that I'm thinking about the next big writing project. It's one that's been waiting on the back burner for even longer, a collaboration with my dear friend, once and future partner in wordsmithery, the all-around awesome writer Nicole Winters. It's called Underground. This is going to be fun.

November is of course National Novel Writing Month, so I'm strongly considering taking another stab at NaNoWriMo this year with Underground. Now, I haven't had much success with NaNoWriMo in the past, but I seem to have gotten better at making time in my schedule to write and I've done my own, effective, not-part-of-NaNo Big Pushes on various projects since then. I think it's worth another try, especially since with Underground I'll have a detailed outline and won't be starting cold.  Again, this is something that I'm sure you'll hear all about while it's happening. 

The Comic
I've also been doing some scripting! In September, I started in on really writing Book 2 of Cold Iron Badge, and I took the loose outline from where I left off and turned it into something rather more detailed - with page breakdowns, for instance, so there won't be any pagination surprises this time out - and then started scripting.

I got about a third of the script written before #RewriteMonth started eating all my writing time and energy. Right now, the script is paused, and waiting for me to get back to it. That's looking like it might be a December project. I'd like to finish the script by the end of 2012. 

The Other Comic
It's in the early stages, but Greg Beettam and I have been discussing plans for Xeno's Arrow - and we've got interesting ideas in the works. The question now isn't what we'll do, but when we'll do it

The Fitness
I haven't made a big deal about it, because I wanted to make sure that I was in a groove first, but I've been eating better and getting to the gym more regularly. How is it going? Slow and steady, but well.

Life, the Universe and Everything
There's lots more to talk about, but they're a little more substantive and deserve being discussed at length. I mentioned that I've been making more time to write, but not the whats and the hows. There have been some great developments at home. My children been amazing at transitioning into the new school year and all the changes it brought with it. The progess I've been making on the fronts I mentioned has put me into a positive frame of mind that I've carried through to all the rest of my life, and it feels good.

That's where I am, and how I am, in October 2012. How are you?

Short Update: Short Fiction

Since my last update, I submitted ‘Dragon’s Tail’ to the theme anthology it was written for, and received what I must say was a considerately prompt and very polite rejection. Rejection is no fun, of course, and it was a little surprising because I was and am proud of that story and thought it was a damn good one. But it’s all part of the game. There’s no way to know whether other authors explored the theme in a way that fit the editors’ tastes or their goals for the anthology – or, and let’s be honest here, whether I simply wasn’t one of the twelve, or twenty, or however many, best stories they got.

The good news is, because of the aforementioned prompt rejection, ‘Dragon’s Tail’ is now free for submission to other markets.

And I’ve written another short story, in response to another call for submissions from a different themed anthology, and I’m working on a third.

I have a few overlapping goals, here. It’s challenging and fun to look at something like a call for submissions for an anthology dealing with a particular theme or subject, and use that as inspiration to create a story that I might otherwise never have written. It’s good to stretch my muscles by pushing myself to work to a hard deadline and remind myself that I can write well and quickly when I need to. And you know, a sale would be nice. That would be good. I wouldn’t mind if it didn’t pay much – in fact, at first I was considering courting smaller, lower-paying markets as a deliberate strategy, because I thought it might increase my chances for success.

In the wake of the rejection by the themed anthology, I’m re-evaluating that strategy a bit. It’s a long-established principle among writers of science-fiction and fantasy short fiction that in trying to sell your work, you should start with the highest-paying markets first – because you shouldn’t sell yourself short. Why sell a story to a smaller, lower-profile, lower-paying venue before you at least try the bigger ones? That seems sensible to me, particularly since trying to play the low-hanging fruit angle doesn’t seem to be effective. That’s based on an admittedly limited sample size of one story submitted to one anthology, but it also just resonates with me. I’m the guy who’s drawn to BHAGs, after all, not Small Fleshy Unimpressive Goals.

Of course, there are drawbacks with starting at the top. Everyone else is trying to crack those markets too, which means besides the issue of rather intense competition, that stories can get stuck in the turnaround of the submission process for quite a while. But that, too, is part of the game.

Over time, despite my avowed fear of writing short fiction, I’ve managed to get several short stories done. Almost all of them have been waiting around for me to revise them. There’s ‘Necro Feel’, which I wrote years ago, and needs a fair bit of work, but which I still really like. There’s ‘Dead Chairs’, which is rather more recent and needs some tweaking. And there are this year’s crop of short stories, ‘A Knight Erring’ which needs some judicious trimming and some extra oomph, the just-completed ‘Hard Rain’ which only needs to have extra verbiage cut back, and ‘Dragon’s Tail’, which is ready to shop around. Plus the nearly-ready ‘Final Issue’ which is intended as a response to a particular call for submissions.

Looking at that list, I note that I have no fewer than six stories that, with not too much work collectively, would be ready to be released into the wild.

It’s not going to be my first, or only focus this summer, but it’s also something that I’d be foolish not to do.

So, again and as always: Onward!

This Is Who I Am and What I'm Doing: The Almost June 2012 Edition

It’s the last day of May. I won’t be sorry to see June. This has been a challenging month.

My father died.

If you’ve lost a member of your immediate family, I don’t have to explain, and if you haven’t, I can’t. So I’ll just say, again: May was a challenging month.

I didn’t exercise as much as I wanted. I didn’t eat right as often as I would have liked.

I’m giving myself a pass on those.

I didn’t write as much as I wanted. I didn’t make as much headway on my projects – scripting the comic, revising the novel – as I would have liked.

I’m giving myself a pass on those, too.

It wasn’t all bad. I did finish and revise my new short story, ‘The Dragon’s Tail’ – which I created in response to an open call for submissions – and sent it to the market. I’m proud of that.

And my son turned seven. I couldn’t be prouder of him, and he couldn’t make me any happier.

A story submitted, a wonderful son’s birthday… those are good ways to end a month. That’s what I’m going to focus on, as May turns to June. The new month will no doubt bring new challenges. Here’s hoping that they’re the fun kind.