December 23, 2014

South Bay Hospital

Sun City Center, Florida

Monte went off to work at 8AM and was back within an hour complaining of chest pains and difficulty breathing.   I asked him if he wanted me to call an ambulance he said no but did want me to drive him to the ER at the closest hospital only a few miles away in Sun City Center.

I was a little leery about going to South Bay Hospital because it was small but my fears were quickly allayed when we entered the ER waiting room.  They had a self-check kiosk that had Monte registered with just a swipe of his driver’s license.

Within two minutes a nurse was ushering us through the ER doors and within 5 minutes of us entering the hospital Monte was being hooked up to an EKG machine.   The EKG or ECG records the electrical activity of the heart via electrodes attached to the skin.  Impulses are recorded and printed.  Because injured heart muscle doesn’t conduct electrical impulses normally, the ECG may show that a heart attack has occurred or is in progress.

A flurry of nurses and nurse practitioners swept into the room performing different tasks, taking vitals and asking medical history questions. 

 He had an IV inserted with a heparin drip.  Heparin is an anticoagulant used to decrease the clotting ability of the blood and help prevent harmful clots from forming in blood vessels. 

Blood was drawn within a half hour of our arrival to check for enzyme levels because certain heart enzymes slowly leak out of the blood if a heart has been damaged by a heart attack.  

When I was asked to step out of the room so an X-ray could be taken I took advantage of the time to go seek out a bathroom.  The chest X-ray image allows a doctor to check the size of the heart and its blood vessels and to look for fluid in the lungs.

All of the above happened in less than an hour.

We were told that the EKG looked fine and the blood test to check for enzyme levels came back acceptable but the protocol was to take another blood test an hour after the first and then again six hours after the first one.

In the meantime a nurse placed a nitro patch on Monte’s chest. At this point we weren’t sure if Monte was going to be admitted but we knew he was going to be moved to another area of the hospital because the ER was full and they needed his bed space.  I was amazed that one of the very last people to enter the room was a clerk from registration.  My experience in the past, when going to the ER, has been to show proof of insurance before being seen by a doctor.   

I followed behind as Monte was wheeled from the ER to the Endoscopy Center.  Because the hospital was full and there were no procedures scheduled the center was being used as a staging area while patients awaited tests results to determine if they would be admitted or discharged.

After the final blood test results showed elevated enzyme levels, Monte was admitted because further testing would be required to see what was causing his shortness of breath, chest pains and numbness in his left arm.

When I left at 6PM, Monte hadn’t been moved to a regular hospital room yet.  I was reluctant to leave Monte but I was hungry and tired and knew no more tests would be performed until the morning. 

I also think that at this point I thought this was going to be a false alarm and he was going to be fine.