Surgery on September 4

We are just back from vacation. I am back to playing princess games and going to the pool or the beach. But now I will write for a while.

Just before vacation, we had a hospital experience. P was not feeling well. He has this hearth condition, already 8 years. It's called atrium fibrillation. His heart beats too fast, and arrhythmic, and he's been taking medication for years when it happens. There were periods when it happened too often and he ended up going to the hospital. They gave him the same medication in infuse and he was cured for a couple of weeks.

So he was not feeling well, and he was also feeling some chest pain, he decided to stop by the hospital on a Saturday afternoon. We thought he would get the medication and he will come back home maybe after one night of stay at the hospital. The nurses took it serious, so he called home to say he will spend the night there. Nothing unexpected.

The next day he was still at the hospital. The strange thing was, they were doing nothing at the hospital besides keeping him monitored while his heart was beating like crazy. There was no cardiologist who came and did something. The hospital couldn't reach the cardiologist till late on Saturday. I don't recall if he came by after they reached him. Sunday, nothing happened. P watched some movies we brought, slept and watched some more movies.

They scheduled P for some tests, the same that he was planning to do without staying at the hospital. So we thought it was OK that he stays one more night as the tests were scheduled for the next morning. While he was at the hospital for 2 nights, his tests began not the first thing in the morning but at 3.00 pm! At a certain moment, and after a lot of complaining, the nurse came with two pills, the same pills he has at home, the ones that are not working for him anymore. After 4 days of hospitalization, P was home tired, not happy with the service and his condition was exactly the same as 4 days before. What did the hospital do, I do not know. We heard later that they didn't have his medicine in infuse in the states, the hospital didn't have a cardiologist in the weekend - I missed the sign saying: please no heart attacks in the weekend -, P's condition was bad enough that they kept him at the hospital but somehow the cardiologist didn't find it necessary to come and visit or when he came didn't do anything except not letting him go. Did I say not, well they let him go with the same condition as he walked in!

The only thing they did well - beside the tests that we needed anyway - was to send the bill which included couple thousands of dollars for the missing cardiologist. We expected this to be a very good hospital as it is in the most wealthy town around here, so a lot of wealthy people would be going there. I mean in the US, I suppose those people would sue the hospital if they don't do their best, that's how it works here right?

What now, P went to another doctor at the Northwestern University hospital. He checked the test results. He said that the one medicine the doctors at the hospital suggested was not good, and the test results were not as positive as they said. P's heath is loosing capacity as a result of continous fibrillation. The only option at this moment is a surgery called cardiac ablation. It is good news that there is something they can do about it, not nice news because he needs to go through a surgery. The date is set at 4 september and if everything goes fine, he will leave the hospital healthy onthe 5th.