Breathless

We went to 8:30 mass yesterday morning and after mass one of the parishiners called 911 because Bob was white as a sheet and could hardly stand up leaning against the outside wall of the church near the side entrance. So someone brought out a chair for him to sit on. He looked like he was going to pass out. He said he was short of breath.

The fire truck arrived very shortly before the ambulance did. In Sunnyvale the firemen and policemen are all trained in EMT so any of them are good to have show up in an "emergency."

Bob is due for another check on his ICD on Feb. 17 because the battery is getting low. He gave that info to the EMT people. The EMT lady thought Bob's problem might be caused by the low level of the battery in his ICD since her grandmother had had a similar situation last year.

Of course Bob had not wanted anyone to call 911 but he looked like he needed professional help. So they took him to El Camino Hospital. I took a detour by the house on the way to the hospital to put on some warmer clothes because I had gotten rather chilled standing in the wind by the church. Bob had been situated where he was not in the wind.

By the time I got to the hospital a doctor had already seen Bob and they had started an IV (saline solution), taken some blood and had him on oxygen. Of course the EMT folks had put him on oxygen as soon as they arrived at the church - standard operating procedure. Bob's color was already back to normal when I arrived and had probably returned to normal while he was being transported to the hospital. Very shortly after I arrived a lady came in to take some more blood for a "heart enzyme" test. They took blood for that same test and hour later for comparison and then another hour later they did it again.

It all boiled down to a diagnosis of "Breathless". His heart had not done anything out of the oridinary and all of the tests were "normal."

So, by 2:30 in the afternoon they released him from the hospital and we came home. When we got home I had to take care of a couple of things and then planned to ask Bob if I could fix him some lunch. When I got back to the kitchen he was in the process of fixing his own lunch and was doing quite well. I had had a Danish and some coffee at the hospital about 12:30 while we were waiting for the test results.

After Bob started eating his lunch I went to Saratoga to a "Celebration of Life" for a good friend of mine who had died on New Year's Day. I was a couple of hours later arriving than I had originally planned but was able to talk with my friend's husband and with her mother and various mutual friends. When I returned home, Bob was still doing fine.

So today Bob wants to go get a haircut and go grocery shopping -- back to normal activities.
Magie