MARK SMITH MORE COLUMNS Advertisement

When you take off for a sunny Thanksgiving afternoon hike and things go down the drain that quickly, you know something is seriously wrong.

I took off for Lovell Canyon Road and the jeep trail up to Red Rock Summit, and before I had gone more than half the way up, I was in the middle of a major-league heart attack.

Trouble was, I didn't realize that's what was going on. I had a new day-pack with considerable weight in it, and I figured, OK, the straps will need some adjustments to allow for the strain and that would be it.

When I got back to the car I could barely drive and decided to aim for home. Even then, it wasn't until my friend called from Vegas that I was convinced I needed to get to the hospital. After a reasonably short wait a gent came into the ER and announced blandly that I was suffering a heart attack and would need to visit a hospital in the city ... fast. I was so out of it by now that I imagined we could stop by my house along the way and see to the cat's care.

For the next several days I was in a virtual stupor, listening to words but not really comprehending them and vaguely remembering stents being emplaced, and not gently, either.

I was punctured, bruised, taped up, electroded and generally beaten to a pulp.

At some point in there, my friend in the city had rushed to Desert Springs Hospital and managed to talk her way into the ER and accompany me to the surgery, then drive all the way here to recover my car and pick up the cat for safekeeping, and then return to the hospital to spend the day. She then kept my family back east and Marie Wujek and Horace Langford Jr. here up to date on how I was doing.

Before dark I had almost coded and been brought back, and they still had to put in the second set of stents the next day. More hard massage, like a large constrictor trying to strangle my leg instead of my chest. I suppose it was Saturday afternoon before I finally got a grip (my mid-section appears as a large hematoma from one side to the other).

It really wasn't until Monday that I was fully conscience and aware. All was appearing far better than I would have imagined and by Tuesday p.m. I was at my friend's home for the initial recovery.

But not without one last bout of nonsense. My friend was out of cell service at her home, or so I thought (only later did I realize that I had screwed up the number), so in a panic I called my boss at the R-J. He had barely said goodbye a half-hour ago, and now I was begging him for a pair of pants. Geoff, being Geoff, chuckled and rounded up a pair of slacks from his own closet and a T-shirt from my erstwhile chief at the View, then hastened back to set me free.

Good thing, too -- they were already preparing my room for another guy before I had even left. When the nurse wheeled me out to the parking lot, the sky was a beautiful sunset red.

It goes without saying that many people deserve my thanks: the quietly efficient Mercy Air chopper crew, the guys at Desert View's ER, Dr. Mark Taylor, Dr. Cham and their teams at Desert Inn, Geoff and Jeannette, my friends here and, perhaps most important, Meg.

The oddest thing is that I never actually felt I was having a heart attack. There was some general discomfort around the sides and front of my chest, and my wrists hurt a lot, but that was it. A bout with pleurisy more than 10 years ago was a lot worse where chest pain was concerned, and it may have helped me survive this event -- I quit smoking cold turkey at that time and at least didn't have that to worry about.

What I may have learned, I hardly have any idea. It may take weeks or more likely months before some realization strikes.