Fiberglass and Flesh: The Story of Hearts

Preface:  New job at the hospital on the heart floor. New project painting a large heart for a hospital fundraiser. Learning lessons from both. My own heart colored by my patients on the heart floor as I color the heart statue.

LESSON ONE: any situation can be made fun.
 
Being in the hospital with heart problems is no one's idea of fun. No one belongs there. 

There are many different kinds of patients on the heart floor. The ones who belong the least are those who were out playing golf, attending a class, washing dishes, or just getting out of bed, when this thing called "chest pain" hit. 

"Chest pain" is a fuzzy term.  If someone's chest hurts, it doesn't mean they are having a heart attack. They might not even be having a heart problem.  It could be that they pulled a muscle or ate something too spicy.

But here's the problem. It could be a heart attack. How do you know?

By the time a patient arrives on our floor, they've been sitting and waiting in the emergency, hoping they can go home. Instead of going home they get told they'll be spending the night in the hospital on the sixth floor and they will have further testing in the morning.  By the time I (the "night nurse") arrive on the floor, it's 11 o'clock at night and family members have gone home to bed. The patients, who were living their normal lives 12 hours before, are alone on the 6th floor of the hospital.  

Maybe they have heart problems.  Maybe they don't. They won't know until morning. 

They are wearing a ridiculous gown.  They have six foamy stickers stuck to their chest, wired to a little monitor box that sits in a special pocket in the front of their breezy gown.  They're told to call the nurse before they get out of bed. They're told to pee in a container and let the nurse flush it.  

All of this is bad enough in a private room.  But if the heart floor is busy, which is almost always, the patient may have a roommate.  There is potential for loud snoring, constant TV shows, or bright lights across the curtain.  Some people refuse to have a roommate and create a scene in the hall until someone finds them a private room.

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 The 5-foot tall heart made of fiberglass and steel was delivered by two tall well-cologned men in dress pants who probably aren't delivery men in their normal lives.

After nearly trapping their box truck in the alley they returned to the door I didn't want them to use and unloaded the cardboard-swaddled heart. It was raining. I stood in the rain out of loyalty to the cause although I was basically useless from a practical standpoint.   

They told me the hearts were made in Chicago with a special mold. The special mold had been developed by San Francisco General hospital for their heart fundraiser.  I guess they didn't mind sharing the mold and the idea with a small mid-western town. 

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One night one of our patients was an elderly gentleman I'll call Jack.

I saw him sitting there at the foot of his roommate's bed when I first arrived. He wasn't my patient. Jack looked like a family member, but I knew he wasn't because he was wearing a gown under his windbreaker, and carting around an IV pole.  I heard that he had developed chest pain during his morning tennis workout.

It was almost midnight but they were just shooting the breeze. Twenty-four hours before, neither one was expecting to be there. Both were scheduled for frightening procedures in the morning. Both were peeing in plastic containers and wearing ridiculous gowns and carrying heart monitors in their gown pockets. They talked for a long time, about their hearts and what they were facing in the morning, about their jobs, about their lives.

I saw Jack out making laps a few hours later, striding up the hall beside his IV pole.

"So you're the tennis player?"

"I've been called a lot of things, but never a tennis player," he chuckled. "I play tennis.  There's a subtle difference."  

I laughed, and he went back to his room.  His roommate was awake. The next thing I saw, there they were again, chatting like it was guys' night out fishing, waiting for a bite. 

I'll probably never see Jack again.  But I learned from Jack that it's possible to go from player on the tennis court to patient on the heart floor-- in a double room-- without losing your chuckle. 

Lesson One: Anything can be made fun. 

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After the heart was unwrapped and toweled dry and the box truck and cologne scent had eased away, I corralled my aunt for a trip to Lowe's. Lowe's is a place I definitely don't belong.  (How do I know if I want satin or flat?)  So it's best for me to not go there alone. With the help of my aunt, I managed to buy a gallon of paint, a foam roller, and a 9 foot by 12 foot plastic drop cloth. 

Fiberglass and Flesh..... the story of hearts, to be continued, with updates on the progress of the fiberglass heart and more wisdom from the heart floor.