Part One| Part TwoPart Two
By: Jean Johnson for Heart1
The cause of the mysterious pains that dogged Olive Blackwell for a month was finally discovered with a basic test: An angiogram.
“All it took in the end was the referral from my doctor to the heart specialist,” Blackwell explained with a wry chuckle, recounting her experiences surrounding the diagnosis of a heart condition that took four long weeks. “They gave me an angiogram right away and found I had three arteries blocked up 97 percent. They told me I could have died.”
Rather than being angry that it had taken so long, Blackwell was simply relieved. “Really, what went through my mind was, ‘Now I know why I’m having those pains.’”
She didn’t have time to linger there, though, because the cardiologist started in on the implications of the findings pronto. “She said I could say I didn’t want the surgery and just continue on with the chest pains until one of them would probably take me,” Blackwell recounted.
“Yes, she said I didn’t need to have the surgery and could just go on, but I’d be lucky if one took me, and it could leave me a vegetable – a stroke or something,” Blackwell said. “So I said I wanted the surgery.”
Things weren’t that easy, however. While Paul McCartney may have sung jauntily about still being loved at 64, when a human being travels 20 years beyond that to reach 84, it can be a different story.
When the cardiologist called the heart surgeon in to confer, his first words were a flat, ‘We don’t operate on 84 year-old women.’
But as Blackwell tells the story, the cardiologist told him what great shape she was in and that he ought to at least take a look at her. “‘You ought to see this woman,’” Blackwell paraphrased. “So he came over to my room, took one look at me and changed his mind. Two days later I was on the operating table.”
This is where Blackwell’s memory gets selective and she focuses on the love and support she got from her family and friends. She remembers nothing about being worried she might have a major attack over the weekend while waiting for her emergency surgery scheduled for first thing Monday morning.
“No,” said Blackwell. “All I remember is that I was sound asleep Saturday morning and somebody crawled in bed with me. It was Tammy my daughter who lives in Hawaii. When Jan, my daughter who lives here called her, Tammy contacted the airline right away and explained everything. They had one seat left and gave it to her, so three hours later she was at the airport on a red eye. So that kind of took the sting away to know someone was here.”
Sting – and bruising. “They couldn’t get the bleeding stopped from the angiogram, and the nurse kept patting and patting it. I ended up being bruised clear up to my navel and down my leg. Black, and I mean black. It wasn’t that sore, but it just looked horrible.”
That weekend, Blackwell was spared further chest pains, although she remembers talking to her daughter Jan the night before surgery and saying that she was “happy they were doing something” so she wouldn’t have the “horrible pains” she had been suffering with anymore.
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Tips to make your hospital stay as comfortable as possible:
Know that hospital environments can have profound effects on patient moods and affect pain levels and recovery. Read more about hospital environments here.
Consider wearing a visor to shade your eyes if you find yourself a patient under brighter fluorescent lights than you are comfortable with.
Try somel music. An Ipod, Walkman, or just a regular tape deck can work wonders. Introducing soothing factors into the spare confines of the hospital experience will make you feel more at home.
Also, consider the food. Hospitals are coming along, but according to Blackwell, they still have a way to go. Look for ways to get fresh vegetables and fruits and whole grains that do so much to help the body heal. Order any fish you see on the menu and skip the box custards and other facsimile foods.
Family support is invaluable. The presence of family members who can act as advocates on patient’s behalf can make a significant difference in how loved ones are treated while they are in compromised and highly-dependent situations. |
Mother and both daughters were at the hospital early Monday. “Tammy and Jan were both there,” said Blackwell, “But I don’t remember anything after that except the nightmares. “I know that the girls weren’t alone while they were waiting for me to come out of surgery. There was a whole crowd filling the waiting room there with them. Everyone was gathered around.”
That was a good thing, since the four-hour procedure ended up taking almost twice that long. “Apparently they got me all sewed up and the surgeon had just taken his gloves off when I died. My heart stopped.”
Blackwell isn’t sure of the particulars but knows that they had to go back and open her chest up again. “I just don’t remember anything from all that or know what they had to do,” she said, instead going back over how much support her girls and the rest of the family gave her throughout the ordeal.
Selective memory, perhaps, but for good reason. Clearly open heart surgery has got to be so traumatic that even recalling the details brings back pain and anguish too awful to revisit. Then again, maybe the reason is simply because Blackwell is Scandinavian and – like the good people who populate Garrison Keillor’s mythical Lake Wobegon in Northern Minnesota where “the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are above average” – is not given to talking about her woes overly much.
“It was later when I was at the surgeon’s office and talking about how sore my stitches were,” Blackwell said. “He said, ‘You know, you gave us a good scare. You have to realize that we went back in again.’”
Blackwell added that “Really, though, my incision hurts when I cough or try to do too much, but I thought it was going to be horrible. Instead it hasn’t been that bad, but now the incisions on my legs – on the inside of my calves where they took the veins to mend my heart – are sore. The one has a little lump underneath. It was about the size of a lemon, but he said it would straighten out and it has. But I like to sleep on my side, and I can’t unless I put a pillow between my legs.”
Having open heart surgery must be like having a baby, say Blackwell’s daughters who apparently also realize how reticent their mother is when it comes to discussing her aches and pains. Indeed, they remember clearly how pitifully painful it was for her to cough in the first days following the operation. How their mother had to clutch a pillow to her chest even when she simply tried to clear her throat. And how tiny she looked sitting up in a chair plugged into more machines and tubes than they ever knew existed.
For Blackwell’s part, however, the memories are more endearing. “I remember waking up in ICU. It was the first time I remember anything and it was dark and Dan – who we have known forever and is like our adopted son – was sitting right there.”
“‘Don’t worry, honey,” he said. I’m right here,’” Blackwell remembers him saying before she drifted off again.
“I had no pain, but I was disoriented and didn’t know night or day,” Blackwell recalled. “But they had me so doped up, and I complained about these horrible dreams and nightmares, and so they were trying to give me some pain medicine that wasn’t driving me crazy.”
The dreams, though. The dreams. “It seems like I was always on a rocky ledge or something by the sea,” said Blackwell. “Or I was lost and trying to catch up with somebody. Then these neighbors I knew a long time ago that I don’t even see anymore would be there. It was just really weird.
“I’ve had this one dream all my life where I’m walking across a bridge and it keeps getting narrower and narrower. I’m high above the water, and I get scared. But then I step off the bridge and I’m just fine. I’ve had that forever, but these other dreams weren’t like that,” Blackwell said. “One of them I remember I was trying to get over this rough trail, and I was late. It seems like I was late in all my dreams. And they were dark and frightening – you know how you get frantic when you’re lost and late and it’s dark.”
While Blackwell says she thinks the pain medicine gave rise to the nightmares, she also says the cardiac intensive care environment was enough to conjure up bad dreams in anyone.
“The room they had me in was creepy and frightening. The lights were on all the time and there were all these noises all day long and all night long. It was terrible. Even after I got home I had a terrible time opening my eyes because I got so used to keeping them closed against those bright lights.”
Because Blackwell’s was an emergency surgery, there was basically no room at the inn for her. So instead of transferring her out to the cardiac floor into a regular room with a window and some of Portland’s spring sun, they kept her cloistered in the cardiac intensive care unit the entire 11 days she was hospitalized.
“I didn’t even have a bathroom and had to use portable potty. And my room was right out there by the nurse’s station where people were talking all the time. Also, they are building a new cancer wing on the hospital, and sometimes there would be this loud banging and clanging that went on and on. It was enough to drive anyone nuts.
“I got bitchy,” Blackwell says, with a half-embarrassed laugh. “Especially the day they took out my stitches. I didn’t want to take too much pain medicine and get the dreams back, so I just had to stand it. I can’t remember it now, but one of my friends who came to see me that day, said it was bad and I was not happy at all.
“And the nurses, too. There were two of them who were really nice. The rest made you feel like you were bothering them if you asked for something,” Blackwell said. “Of course they are busy, it’s true. I’m just grateful I had my family and everyone around. They could get me what I needed so I didn’t have to ask the staff.”
There was no doubt about it. Blackwell wanted to take her tender, mended heart home to the peace of her own hearth. And she did. Home to go through the two-month recovery period associated with open heart surgery. Join us in Part Three to find out how she fared on this final leg of her journey. How Blackwell went from being a frail patient hooked up to more tubing and plugged into more machines than she ever wants to see again to being – in the words of one of her great-granddaughters - “Grandma’s Unplugged!”
