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Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been gone for about a week. I want to take this opportunity to tell you why. It’s not because I gave up the fight or suddenly became a supporter of inflation or open borders. Nor did I decide to become a Brandon fan. The reason I’ve been away is because on Saturday, I almost died twice because of COVID-19. Notice I didn’t say that I almost died from COVID-19, but rather, because of it.
On most Saturdays, I go for a bike ride. This past Saturday was no different. The ride was planned to be about 32 miles across the mostly-flat Oxnard Plain. I usually average 4-minute miles so it should have taken about two hours.
Now, before we talk more about my bike ride, let me give you some background. Let’s go back just over 4 years ago, October 1st, 2017 to be precise. I know it was October 1st because it was the same night as the Mirage shooting in Las Vegas. That night, I was laying in bed when I felt something was wrong.
I wasn’t sure what the problem was but I knew I had a problem. I drove myself to the emergency room to be checked out. They did an EKG, a chest X-ray and some blood tests. They listened to my breathing and heart, checked the results of their tests and proclaimed my heart to be fine. So I went home.
Months later, I noticed that my lungs hurt. Well, at the time, I thought it was my lungs. So, I went to my primary care physician. She listened to my lungs, listened to my heart and said there was nothing wrong with me.
But the pain lingered.
It would migrate from lung to lung with no recognizable pattern and sometimes disappear for months. There was no problem with my pulse or breathing and I continued to take my tens-of-miles long rides on Saturday mornings.
But the pain persisted.
I went back to my PCP several times without her coming any closer to a diagnosis. Ultimately, she decided that my problem was heartburn and told me I should eat a less acidic diet.
Eventually, I learned to ignore the pain. It was never debilitating. It was more of an annoyance really. Until it wasn’t.
This past Saturday, I was on mile 20 when I noticed another pain. It wasn’t exactly where the other pains had occurred, nor was it the same type. Actually, it seemed more like heartburn. So, I did exactly what I had been taught to do by my doctor. I ignored it.
And I continued riding.
About mile 22, I started thinking about finding a place to sit down. If you know me, you’ll know that is totally out of character. I realized then that I was never going to make the full 32 miles, so I took the shortest path home which would take another 6 miles. At mile 26, I stopped and sat on the curb. At mile 26 and two blocks, I did the same. At mile 27.5, with only a half mile to go, I gave up and called my wife to come get me.
We went home and I filled up with electrolytes. After about 20 minutes, we decided that it was probably something much more serious than heat exhaustion and headed for help.
Now we’re at the first place where I almost died because of COVID-19. There’s an urgent care facility nearby so we decided to stop there. There was a sign in the parking lot instructing patients to call a number when they arrived. My wife called them, explained that I might be having a heart attack and told them that we needed help now.
We were told to sit tight and someone would be right out…with a fucking COVID questionnaire. Once we’d completed the form, they would come back out and collect our responses and then decide on what to do. Really? They were more eager to protect themselves from catching COVID-19 than they were in helping someone who could be minutes away from dying. Our protests were met with “it’s our protocol”. Give me a fucking break. Actually, I think I said those exact same words.
With the understanding that the term “Urgent Care” might be a great marketing tool, but it isn’t an accurate representation of what they provide at that office, we left and headed for the emergency room.
Now we’re coming to the second time I was almost killed because of COVID-19. When I got to the ER, they moved pretty quickly. I was taken into triage where I was questioned. Was I vacksinated against COVID-19? No. Do I want to be? Hell no. It wasn’t until days later when I realized that they were willing to inject me with an experimental drug, a drug that is known to cause heart problems, without first diagnosing what was already wrong with my heart.
I’m not counting that as an attempt on my life. Because, it wasn’t even close. There was no fucking way I was going to let them inject me with that shit.
So, let’s keep going. Next, they started asking me the “usual” COVID screening questions. Are you having trouble breathing? Do you have a cough? Do you drive a red car? You know, questions like that. I was very careful with how I answered because, if I had given them any reason to suspect COVID-19, their “protocol” would have mandated that I be immediately treated as a COVID-19 patient instead of a cardiac patient. And I would have died.
Because, for reasons I can’t comprehend, and no rational person would, COVID-19 is considered to be more serious than a heart attack. Instead of immediately treating me for a problem that had a good chance of killing me in the next few minutes, they decided to focus on a disease that might give me the sniffles.
Jesus fucking Christ. Is that really where we are?
Somehow, catching a disease that most people don’t even know they have, is considered more life-threatening than my 95% clogged LAD (aka “The Widow Maker”) and my 100% clogged RCA (My LCA was fine. Thanks for asking.).
Thankfully, the cardiologist who consulted on my case immediately recognized what I had as a dangerous problem, admitted me to the hospital, and scheduled a catheterization procedure for Sunday afternoon. But I didn’t have to wait that long. Because I got worse. Much worse. Very quickly.
At 3:00am, the cath team was called in and I had an emergency angiogram. Then, the team went home. At 6:00am, they were called back in to perform an emergency angioplasty to install three stents in my Left Anterior Descending Artery.
One of the things that kept me alive that day was that, other than chest pain, I had no other symptoms. No nausea, no shortness of breath or headaches, which are symptoms of both COVID-19 and a heart attack. If I’d had any of those symptoms, and answered honestly, I would have been sent down a different path. A path that would very likely have taken me to an entirely different place. And I wouldn’t be here to tell you this story.
The good news is that I should be fine. My doctor is anticipating a 100% recovery. Mostly because I’ve kept myself in excellent physical shape (my cardiologist’s words, not mine).
I want to leave you with one last thing to think about.
The survival rate for COVID-19 patients is greater than 99%. The survival rate for someone hospitalized with a heart attack is between 90% and 97%. On that day, or today, or any day for that matter, my biggest danger isn’t COVID-19. The biggest danger to me, and everyone else, are the idiots who believe that possibly catching COVID-19 is more serious than actually having a heart attack.
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