Serious as a Heart Attack

We were on our way back from a short run down the coast, and were supposed to pull in to port in the morning. I'd been on the Lincoln for about two months, and I was seriously pondering which part of my body to shoot off in the hopes of escaping. I figured I had nothing to lose; if "corpsman's mast" could get me sentenced to the Lincoln, maybe those same corpsmen could get me sent somewhere else until EAOS. I wasn't the only one; most of the guys in the training department were off the recently decommissioned California, and even other skimmers hated it. Right after I got there the CO held a captain's call for all the E-6's (there were so many we held it in an auditorium in Bremerton) and, when asked why the non-nucs were working 4 eight-hour days in refit while the nucs were basically port and starboard, his answer was literally "that's why you get nuc pay, so shut up".

I'd narrowed my choices down to giving up an ear or a toe when fate intervened and I had a heart attack. It started innocently enough - right after lights-out, I got sick as a dog. I should probably mention that a carrier is run much like boot camp - large open-bay berthing, everyone goes to bed at the same time and gets up at the same time. The bathrooms were also just like boot camp, with the exception that ours had approximately one inch of wastewater slopping around on the floor the whole time I was at sea (In a vain attempt to drain it some halfwit had opened a 3-inch hole in the hull; let me tell you, watching the ocean go by while you take a dump was about the most unusual thing I'd ever done after a life in subs) . I rushed to the head and wretched my guts up - awful hard to do when doubled over, but trying to avoid kneeling in an ocean of raw sewage.

That went on for about an hour, and I started to hurt. Really hurt. At first it just felt like bad heartburn, but before too long I would have sworn someone jammed a one-inch diameter spear right through my back. Up to this point, I just assumed it was food poisoning - the food was horrible the whole time I was aboard, and you had to wait in line up to an hour for the privilege; most guys lived off power bars whenever possible. But I started to wonder if I'd torn something after all that puking.

Luckily for me, the sick bay on the Lincoln was just aft (fwd? I never could tell. Probably forward) of the mess decks, so I headed that direction. At least I didn't have to find and wake the one-and-only "doc" like I would have on a sub; the sick bay on a carrier is manned 24-7. Speaking of the hour, it was about 1030 when I was stopped by somebody's chief.

Unlike a sub, most of the surface chiefs were not all that different than the type of personality naturally drawn to be a CC in boot camp. I had one yell at me, at length, because the "72" on my hard hat was in white letters (meaning shop 72 at the shipyard) rather than black letters (meaning inmate). Telling him that it was the hat I was issued when I reported aboard was pointless, so I just colored the letters in with a sharpie while he "adjusted" me. This was amusing when I was an E-nothing in school; not so much as an E-6 with 12 years in. I'd like to say that this incident was the exception, but I'd be lying (more than normal).

So I wasn't all that surprised to have someone say something; I was outside a berthing area in my PT gear, which was sort of like carrying a bucket of chum through a shark convention. He was pissed I was on "his" mess decks in anything but the uniform of the day, and wanted to tell me about it. He actually tried to block my way when I told him I was going to sick bay and ambled past him; he wouldn't let me go until he got my name and rate so he could write me up later. NJP was as common as rust on the Lincoln - the first thing the XO taught us during indoc was how to write people up (they'd streamlined the process and he was quite proud).

I was in some serious pain, but I had another problem. I was going to a US Navy sickbay and I was violating my #1 rule: I was going there on my own two feet and I was neither unconscious nor visibly bleeding. Would they believe I was actually sick?

Of course not. After ten minutes describing my problem, the corpsman on duty sent me off with some chewable pepto-bismo and instructions to come back in the morning if I didn't feel better. To be fair, I even I didn't know I was having a heart attack, but come on! Pepto bismo is not going to solve something that feels like someone rammed a javelin through your chest. I didn't even make it out of sick bay before that pink crap came right back up.

They finally let me see an actual doctor, who started troubleshooting the pain-following-vomiting issue. She gave me something called a "GI Cocktail" to drink - it didn't help (I was groaning at this point and couldn't lie down), but I appreciated that someone was trying to help. That was until chief #2 made his appearance.

Chief #2 wandered in while the doctor was waiting to see if the cocktail helped, and tried a new approach: "How you doing on your quals, son?" he asked, with a knowing glint in his eye. "Do you have duty tomorrow?"

To be honest, this was partially my fault. I'd gone to sick bay in nothing but a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and I looked fairly young, so he made a reasonable assumption that I was brand new to this whole sailor thing. Not that rank meant all that much on a carrier, but khakis would give you some benefit of the doubt if you were E5 or above. E4 and below were treated just like boots, for the most part. Let me tell you, for the first time in my career I made damn sure I wore every pin and patch I'd ever earned in a (mostly) vain attempt to stave off the endless BS. But I was in pain and forgot to bring some proof along with me that I wasn't right out of school.

He eventually left, to be replaced by the real medical people. I don't know why she thought to do it, but the doctor did an EKG on me. I told her that I'd just had one (part of my pre-sea duty physical), but she just shrugged and continued hooking me up. This wasn't an easy job, as I was more or less balled up in agony at this point, and couldn't find a position that hurt less than the last one.

A few minutes later, everything changed. Suddenly it seemed like the whole medical department was in there (never miss an opportunity for on-the-job training) and she told me what the REAL problem was. At 29 years old, I was in the middle of a heart attack.

Of course, this was actually a great relief to me. First off, I was done having to convince other people how badly I hurt, despite the lack of gaping wounds. In fact, almost immediately they hooked me up to morphine and the physical pain drifted away. They also gave me something that broke up the clot in my artery and I actually started feeling pretty good. I still threw up from time to time, but somehow it didn't worry me.

The second, and more important, reason I was relieved was that I knew I wasn't going back to sea on that tub any time soon. In fact, with less that two years left on my contract, I might not go to sea again, period. Once that thought hit me, I wouldn't have cared if they told me they had to open me up right then and there.

For a while they considered flying me back to shore in a helicopter (probably the first, and only, advantage to being stationed on a carrier), but in the end they figured it would be faster to just wait until we pulled in. I did get to ride up in an elevator they use to move bombs around, however. I was feeling good enough to walk (and high enough to re-up, had anyone offered), but the docs wisely had some big burly guys haul me to the ambulance on a stretcher.

The civilian hospital they parked me was kind of a letdown after the last few hours. I went from being the star attraction (I must have had four or five doctors all to myself on the Lincoln) to just being another body parked in a corner. But, having had little sleep in the last few days, it wasn't long before I was blissfully asleep, secure in the knowledge that I'd got a reprieve from what promised to be a very miserable last two years in the US Navy.