We open with Scene One - which is Husband in his flashy red and black church softball outfit, running like mad to get to third base during a friendly Tuesday night game. He feels his heart go funny but, like mostly manly men, doesn't say anything until...
Scene Two - Husband comes home from work, plops down on the couch beside me, and asks me to check his pulse. I do so, and find that it has a funky rhythm and is anything but the consistent LUB-dub, LUB-dub it is supposed to be pounding out. Husband says, "It's been doing this all day. Not sure what to do."
I pull questions from my college First Aid class and ask if he is feeling dizzy, chest pressure, tingling in his left arm, shortness of breath. He tells me he feel "off" and more tired than usual. I tell him to call Brother-in-Law Nelson who is a RN on the cardiac floor of the local hospital.
I figure Nelson will not overreact, as would my mother (also a RN), who in her spare time, dreams of crazy ways for us to die. Like by getting struck in our hoo-hah with lightning while going pee during a thunderstorm (I guess technically if lightning struck our septic tank, the jolt could travel up the line of pee into our...um...hoo-hah... but that would definitely win a Darwin Award and that is worth something). Or being beheaded by a crop duster. Or in a house fire by a toaster left plugged in too long.
Nelson has me take Husband's pulse twice, then nonchalantly suggests Husband go into the local Prompt Care. I am in the midst of supper and getting the kids ready to go to the neighbor's house to see their new fawns, goats, and cow, so I don't go with Darren. I figure how bad can an irregular heartbeat be?
Scene Three - evidently, when Husband shows up at Prompt Care and says the words "Irregular Heartbeat", they throw him in a wheelchair, careen 20 feet to the EKG machine, read the print-out and promptly load him into an ambulance with oxygen pouring into his lungs. At this point he calls me and tells me he is heading to the Big Hospital by ambulance. I feel a slight pang that I will not be nominated for the Wife of the Year award beings that I sent him to Prompt Care BY HIMSELF (whoopsie!). Luckily his parents are free to meet him at the ER.
Scene Four - Husband has a team of 8 who lunge at him once he enters the ER and put him out, shock him twice, and poke him full of holes to get some good drugs in him. He has more lines attached to him than a landmine field and there is an abnormally loud machine that squawks every time his heart gets off sync...which is about every minute. He is told that he is in a-fib, which my sister Renee (another RN) tells me basically means that the top of his heart is quivering instead of beating and the risk is that he will throw a clot to his lungs or brain.
Scene Five - Husband is told he has to stay overnight at the hospital and will have an echo cardiogram in the morning. He is now sporting the latest in hospital wear - a mint-green, mid-thigh-length gown with gaping back and a sprinkling of mint leaves just to make the gown festive.
As it turns out, before he was facing yet another shock to the heart at 1 PM the following day, his heart corrected itself. Could be because of the IV meds. Could be because the heart just found its groove thing again. Certainly could be because loads of people were praying for my now-grass-green-grippy-slippered Jolly Green Giant. 
Whatever the case, he was finally released at around 9:30 PM the following evening (but not before the Squirrels tore apart his hospital room and begged every five minutes for snacks) and he has not had any recurring episode. 
I look at his very sculpted 6'5", 210 lbs. frame with next to no body fat and next to no cholesterol level and come to this conclusion...if Mr. Fitness himself gets himself in heart trouble, there is no hope for the rest of us. I might as well enjoy life and eat bacon while I can. And then maybe I will get a chance to look fierce in some mint-green hospital fashions!
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