Of NICUs and Silver Linings

A Bit of NICU Influenced Luck:

Almost 14 years ago now one of the greatest things in my life happened: I became a father. And, while I could not wait at the time to meet my son I would have been happy to wait a little longer than I actually did. My son was born 2.5 months early and so I was thrust into fatherhood, and the NICU, at the same time. I was not fully ready for the first and definitely not ready for the latter. Fortunately, after nearly 4 months in the hospital he came home healthy and today is an awesome…teenager.

My son also has a younger sister.

Now, like any good younger sister ("anything you can do I can do too") when she was born two years later she just had to do the NICU thing also. And, again, like a younger sister, she was more efficient (only in the hospital for 2-ish months) while being significantly "louder" (much scarier path) than her brother. Today, she too is doing fantastic and getting even better at scaring the pants off her dad.


I learned so much from these experiences about modern medicine, hospital life, appreciating what is, love...the list goes on and on. But, the one thing that I learned all those years ago that really came back to provide incalculable benefits for me now is an appreciation for Stanford Hospital & Clinics. Both of the kids NICU visits were under the care of Stanford's Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital and I really valued the depth that organization brought to their care. So when I had to choose a "regular" doctor for myself a year later I choose Stanford's Family Medicine practice. I figured that if anything weird happened to me that would be one of the best places to help me sort it out; and, if I was a "regular" patient of theirs it would make things that much easier / faster.

So having two preemies in the NICU (something I do not recommend) actually had a silver lining – 13 years later.

First Doctor's Appointment:

My plane landed at 9:30PM on October 5th and by 10:30AM the next day I was sitting on the oh so comfortable doctor's office butcher paper. As usual my pulse, BP and everything else was normal. I was not able to see my regular doctor as she was off that day but it was not an issue. The appointment only took 10 mins and I left with a referral to Stanford Cardiology and an appointment scheduled for the next day. The on call doctor I saw was just awesome and there was no debate about what to do next.

So October 7th I met with a cardiologist and his fellow. They listened carefully to my detailed recounting of what happened (assisted by thorough notes and data compiled by the afore mentioned great girlfriend and myself) as read off my iPhone – have I mentioned I am a bit of a nerd? And, they agreed that I did not have a heart attack but that whatever did happen was not just "dehydration" or "hunger." They recommended getting a stress ECG to see if we could get a better picture of what was going on.

So that Thursday (October 8th, 2015) I got to play hamster on a wheel and run on a treadmill while trying not to strangle myself, trip, or other wise short circuit many thousands of dollars of equipment. The results from this ECG were normal of course but I got lucky once again. During the test as I was running my left arm once again started going into "annoyance mode". It was nothing like Sedona but I did mention it to the tech and she noted it on the log of the test. I decided to keep going as I had exercised with this thing before and really was not sure that it was not all in my head anyway.

Honestly, I was worried the pain in my arm was my brain playing tricks on me. Kinda like if you say "don't think of pink elephants" that is all you can think of. So if I was thinking "my arm hurts when I get my pulse up" then presto my arm hurt. (My brain and I don't get along very well sometimes.)

When the Dr. got the test results back, although the ECG showed no problems, that note helped him decide that doing something more invasive like an Angiogram was a good idea. I really do think if it was not for that note I would still not know what the hell was wrong with me and would actually be in a good deal of danger. Note to self #2: if something seems wrong to you, even if you are convinced it is not real, say something anyway.

So I now had an Angiogram scheduled for October 19th.