By Natasha Josefowitz, Ph.D.
LA JOLLA, California — I am 92 and had recently noticed that I was getting a little short of breath just walking the hallways. I had not seen a cardiologist in years, so I decided to check things out—the question always being: Is it a normal age-related symptom or something else?
Dr. Mimi Guarneri, my cardiologist, integrative medicine guru, and good friend, fits me into her busy schedule. “No, breathlessness is not age-related.” She insists I go to the Prebys Cardiovascular Institute for tests today, they are holding a bed for me, so I should get there quickly. I go home to pack a few essentials and run around in a tizzy trying to remember what I might need. (Advice for my readers: Have a bag ready to go for any sudden departures from your home.) I got stuck at toothbrush—oh yes, underwear, medications, a book, and all those electronics with their chargers: iPhone, Apple Watch, hearing aids…what else? The White Sands limousine takes me to the hospital.
The Prebys Cardiovascular Institute is a beautiful, state-of-the art facility. I enter a large empty lobby with a lone desk, a red phone and a note saying to pick up the receiver for directions. A disembodied voice tells me to go to the second floor registration; the phone is really a robot replacing a person. After filling out the paperwork, I am taken in a wheelchair to my room with a lovely view of the city. A nurse comes to take my vital signs and helps me settle in. A woman making the rounds with a therapy dog walks into my room; when I try to pet him, he recoils…so much for pet therapy!
Then Dr. Daniel Pu comes in to discuss the upcoming tests, followed by the world-renowned Interventional Cardiologist Dr. Matthew Price wanting to know if I had any questions. I am helped into the usual “lovely” green hospital gown to wear with a heart monitor, which fits in the pocket of the gown, making it tilt to one side. I am fitted with an IV in case of an emergency and lots of stickies all over my chest with wires running down. The center is high tech; a scale is brought to my room to weigh me; my blood pressure is taken again and a technician comes for a blood draw.
After dinner, an echo cardiogram machine is wheeled into my room. I watch the news, read a bit, and go to sleep at 9:30 p.m. I am woken up at 11 o’clock by a nurse taking my blood pressure; then as soon as I am fast asleep again, someone comes in for another blood draw. Once I am asleep again, the scale is wheeled in and my weight is recorded in the middle of the night!!??!! Every time I am woken up, I startle at the shadowy figure looming over me in the dark tapping my shoulder to wake me. Dr. Price later informed me that “they are working on something called ‘sleep hygiene’ so that patients may sleep unless waking them for these sorts of procedures is absolutely required.”
Then the weirdest thing happened: when I got up to go to the bathroom, as soon as I put my feet on the floor, an eerie green light shot out from under my bed. Three aliens bathed in that green light came rushing into my room, “You could fall” they yelled. I tried to hide in the bathroom; one of the aliens wanted to go in with me, “No, no,” I begged. “This is a private matter.” When I got out, they were gone, but the eerie green light still shone, which made me wonder whether I had just fought off an alien invasion or was it hospital staff concerned about my falling?
I wake up in the morning grateful to know that I am in a place with the best medical care available in San Diego, no, in California, actually in the world! I am wheeled to a different building to undergo a series of tests: a gamma camera which encircles a rotating chair taking photos of my heart every second followed by a stress test, which I aced as the best Dr. Russo ever saw in a 92 year old! Working out pays off. The last test is a CT scan with contrast dye to determine what makes me breathless.
When I return to my room, dinner is waiting for me. Dr. Pu comes in with a big smile. “We have good news,” he says. “Everything checks out normal. The CT scan shows reactive airway disease,” a minor finding. I can go home and now that I am no longer anxious about potential fatalities I am already feeling better.
A last bit of advice: bring a warm cardigan to drape over “the gown”.
© Natasha Josefowitz. This article appeared initially in the La Jolla Village News. You may comment to natasha.josefowitz@sdjewishworld.com
So happy with the ending result in this “story!” I so enjoy reading your articles and missives here on line; I feel as though I know you! Zey gesunt!