there are no cute doctors in the ER

I thought I'd be able to sneak out of the house on Monday about midnight or so, just leave a note so as not to disturb anyone...and drive myself to the ER. I figured I'd get there, they'd shock my heart back into a normal rhythm, and I'd be home before breakfast. Nobody would really need to know I'd been gone.

I didn't know how it would turn out. I'd never been to the ER before, much less spend any amount of time in a hospital, other than for childbirth.

An anticipated 6-hour adventure turned into a 4 1/2 day gala with a floorful of elderly cardiac patients, most sprawled out immodestly in their beds, their mouths wide open during their daylong naps. And, because my timing always sucks, I managed to miss one kid's all-star tournament game and the other's 5th grade graduation.

As it happens, I'm extremely healthy. I don't get sick, I don't get colds, flus, whatever bug is going around. I've never been severely injured. I'm VERY lucky. Of course, now I've just blown it; tomorrow I'll go outside and get beaned by a huge frozen chunk of airplane waste.

But I've had this funny heart thing, a-fib, for years. And blew it off because, well, I'm very healthy. I figured everyone had a funny heart thing every once in a while. But in the past few years, these little episodes have gotten longer, lasting hours and hours, disturbing me to the point where I actually WENT TO A DOCTOR. It's his fault I went to the ER; that's what he told me to do, but I'm usually not good at following orders.

So the heart thing starts up, I give it a couple of hours, then hop in the van to the ER. It's a Monday night, I thought; how bad could it be in the ER?

I was there for 12 hours.

Finally, they found a room for me and my old (and I mean, old) pal Gloria, a retired math teacher with a pacemaker, rheumatoid arthritis, and lord knows what else. She passed out on Tuesday and came to the ER by ambulance; after 3 days of poking and prodding, they determined it was from the heat. She wasn't a moaner--thank god; didn't talk too much, and best of all didn't require the freestanding commode in the room, so. She was ok.

They hooked me up to a heart monitor with at least 1/2 dozen wires stuck to my chest, providing a computer readout that I'm pretty certain no one was paying attention to back at the nurse's station. Because I was forbidden to remove the monitor, I was under strict instruction--and clearly, I am someone who would buck the system when I could, perhaps by ordering 2 desserts--to not bathe. It was horrible.

I refused to pay for TV, so I passed the excrutiatingly long and boring days with 2 books and several magazines. I also entertained patients and staff with an elaborate series of stretching exercises in the hallway, all the while keeping my hospital gown tied and secure. I wish I could say the same for Clarence across the hall.

I had an ultrasound and a few EKGs performed, with the threat of getting shocked and paddled if I didn't convert to a normal rhythm--and Christianity--by Wednesday evening.

By Wednesday afternoon I'd converted, and it took another 2 days of bloodletting and poking and prodding and pills to convice them that, yes, she won't stroke out immediately upon leaving the building.

I left on Friday afternoon, armed with scrips and follow-up instructions and all sorts of ways in which I now have to "watch myself." No caffeine, for starters, which blows. No vigorous exercise, at least, not yet. No aspirin. No vitamin K. Checkwiththedoctorbeforetakinganyherbalsupplements.

When I was young, these little electrical disturbances were of no consequence. Now that I'm older, my heart--while still very strong and structurally sound--is getting older too, and may not efficiently withstand these little dancing electrical freak-outs. So I guess I'll do what the doc says. For a change.