A Californian In Canada
The Cardiac Chronicles
Part 1

“Do I have wings?” I asked as Brodie’s face came into view. “No,” he replied.

“Do I have horns?” I asked as I turned and saw Jonny’s smiling face for the first time in weeks. “No,” he replied sweetly.

“Good,” I thought to myself, “apparently I’m still alive.” Although, where exactly that was and in what condition I was seemed to be beyond my ability to figure out just then and there. 

I remember thinking I’ll work it all out later as I was still quite sleepy and closing my eyes and drifting off again to the sounds of voices intently discussing serious matters in the background seemed to be the thing to do at the time.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My New Home

The first four months of 2018 were pretty stressful. We were still living in Sudbury. However, as this was Jon’s last on-campus semester at Cambrian College, his student grants and loans were rapidly running out, and I, of course, still unable to work in Canada, had only my monthly Social Security payments to help us eek by. Nevertheless we were managing.

In early March, after just one interview with one potential employer, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario , Jon was offered a job as a Power Systems Engineer that was simply too good to refuse.

Jon’s new job would begin June 1. The plan was that I would drive down to Hamilton, spend a couple of weeks with our good friend Brodie Chree and his mom while looking for a new place for Jonny and me to live.

As the housing market in Hamilton was in the process of heating up, it proved to be an even more stressful undertaking than living off Social Security way up north in Sudbury.

How far north is Sudbury? It’s not the Arctic Circle but you can see it from there.

One of the effects of these various stressful situations was a serious case of gastric reflux or GERD. During the nearly two weeks I was unsuccessfully house hunting in Hamilton I had at least three bouts of seriously painful acid reflux.

And so it was the evening of April 16.



Brodie and I were watching the new Lost In Space series on Netflix—my first mistake—when I had another bout of heartburn. Thanks to a serious dose of esomeprazole this attack abated quickly and for a little while I felt fine.

About a half an hour after that attack I began feeling chest pains once again. Brodie became concerned and spent nearly as much time online investigating my distress as he did watching the TV show. Hoping what I was experiencing was just angina brought on by the acid reflux I began using my nitroglycerin spray to see if it provided any relief. It did but only for about ten minutes at a stretch.

By 9:15 that evening we gave up on Lost In Space—that in itself was a relief—and went up to the main level of the townhouse Brodie shared with his mother. Sheila Noble Chree is a retired Registered Nurse. She and Brodie began discussing my condition. He told her he and I had decided I should go to a hospital and that he was about to call a cab as neither he nor his mother drive and I certainly wasn’t in any condition to do so.

While Brodie was speaking to the cab company I could see the look of concern on Sheila’s face.

“How do I look?” I asked my host and former RN.

“Ashen,” she said without a moments hesitation.

“Brodie,” I called out, “cancel the cab. Call 911.”

The ambulance arrived in less than ten minutes, I told the two female EMTs I suspected I was having a heart attack and they quickly surmised that I might be on to something. They gave me two baby aspirin, which I began to chew as years earlier I had been instructed to do in the event of a heart attack.

“What are you doing?” the one young tech asked.

“Chewing the aspirin,” I responded.

She giggled slightly and said, “You don’t need to do that anymore. Just swallow them they’re especially coated for faster relief.”

“Now you tell me,” I said trying to get the bitter taste of acetylsalicylic acid out of my mouth.

I was transferred to a gurney, strapped in, and wheeled into the back of the ambulance. Brodie climbed in after me, one of the techs took the wheel of the ambulance and the other hooked me up to a portable EKG machine.

Hamilton, Ontario is chockablock with hospitals one of which is little more than 1.5 KM/1 MI away from Brodie’s house. Even so I could hear the two techs talking about taking me to Hamilton General Hospital, which is located on the other side of town.

I looked at Brodie, who’s lived in Hamilton his entire life, and he calmly said, “It’s the best choice for this.”

I was afraid to ask him what “this” was.

The EMTs wheeled me into the reception area of Hamilton General Hospital’s emergency room at approximately 9:45 that evening. Brodie took care of providing the hospital with all my intake information.

“No he does not have an OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan) card, he’s an American. This is the contact information for his American health insurance plan and his address in Palm Springs, California.”

There was a lot more muttering that went on after that but I couldn’t make it out as I was now, between gasps of pain, answering as many questions as I could about my health history.

Following the Q&A session, I was wheeled into an evaluation room where more EKGs were taken along with my vital signs and a goodly amount of blood.

I kept asking if, in fact, I was having a heart attack and I always got the same answer, “Possibly.”

It seems that I only had one of three markers that would indicate whether or not what I was experiencing was a full-blown heart attack. I would need to be evaluated by the “cardiac team” and they wouldn’t be back on duty until 8:00 a.m. the following morning.

By this time, I was given something to ease the pain as well as being relieved of my nitro, which over use of, as it turns out, can actually do more harm than good when having a heart attack.

Time having lost all meaning in a haze of pain relief medication, I have no idea how long it was before I was finally introduced to Dr. Andre Lamy Cardiac Surgeon and Division Head of Cardiac Surgery for Hamilton Health Sciences, which is based at Hamilton General. 

French Canadian with a wonderfully lilting accent and even more pleasant manner and demeanor he told me the next step in evaluating my condition would be an angiogram.

“Are you familiar with this procedure?” he asked.

“Yes, I’ve had two,” I said. “Basically you inject me with a dye, then give me a mild sedative, after which you stick a camera up my groin to see how bunged up the plumbing is.” 

Dr. Lamy grinned then chuckled when Brodie said, “He’s a writer.”

One of the nurses mentioned that they no longer perform the procedure through the groin. I’d be “scoped” through one of my shoulders.

“The sedative will only relax me,” I continued, “and not put me to sleep. However, if you don’t like what you find, I’ll be knocked out and rushed to an operating room for bypass surgery.”

“Basically,” Dr. Lamy said sincerely. 

He began asking many of the same questions about my past medical history and life habits I’d answered earlier. Inevitably he got to the one about alcohol consumption.

“Two glasses of wine a day.” I responded and while I don’t quite remember how we moved on to debating the relative merits of, and differences between, Canadian and California wines, I quickly rose to the defense of the California wine industry.

As if it needed my help.

Edited by
Kenneth Larsen

Next week: The Cardiac Chronicles Part 2, Not Dead Yet

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