So on that Friday night, I planned to attend a birthday dinner for my daughter's birthday at one of my favorite restaurants. Just as I got home to freshen up, the phone rang and my daugher, Sara, said, "Denny doesn't feel well. He's flushed and his heart is racing. So I'm going to his house. Call him right now."
So I call. I run through my usual mother questions about what he has been eating and what medicines he's been taking, etc. We determine that while he probably isn't well enough to go out to dinner, we will visit him at his house instead and go for dinner at a later date. We are flexible, accomodating, understanding. It's not the original plan but it will still work out.
After an hour, just as we are starting to dig into our chinese carryout, his heart starts racing and now he has a pain in his chest. We consult with the nighttime medical facility and they urge us to go to the emergency room. It seemed like a dramatic step to take. On the other hand, Denny is having chest pains. So off to AA Medical Center's emergency room we go.
During the ride, Denny's pulse calms down and his chest stops aching, but his face is still the color of a red delicious apple. Because it is a heart pain, they take him back right away and hook him up to equipment, draw blood, ask him some questions (primarily the same ones I had asked but they also ask his history - I already knew that portion of the story). Then they send us with a beeper back out to sit with Sara in the waiting room.
FOR FIVE HOURS
During that time they call him back one more time to do a chest x-ray. Around 1:00 AM, I go up to the counter and ask what are we waiting on and am informed that they are waiting for someone to read the x-ray (for five hours?). Now, this was not an excessively busy emergency room. I realize I couldn't see who was showing up in ambulances but the whole place had a dreamy, "let's all just take a nap", quality to it.
Denny's face is still red but his normal complexion is that of a ruddy Irishman who has enjoyed a Jameson or two (as you can tell from this photo of Denny and Sara).
At 1:30 AM the television that has been on throughout the evening gets louder. Michael Steadman (Oprah's boyfriend - doesn't matter who he was before or since, his biggest claim to fame is that he is Oprah's boyfriend whether he likes it or not) is being interviewed. His speil is very repetitive. "What you pay attention to, enlarges." This is his answer to everything. By 2:00 AM, Denny had had enough of attending to himself so he went up to the desk and asked them to remove the needle for taking blood and we left.
This is not the birthday celebration I envisioned for my daughter. She had spent the day before her birthday helping me through a little medical episode and although we'd had some cake later that night, it was such a small celebration that the dinner was going to be the real party. And I'm sure it will be. But as for me, it seems that God/life/fate was having a good laugh.
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