My story through cardiovascular ICU

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It all started when I was watching TV. I bent over to look at my computer, and then this pain felt like someone was taking a knife slicing me up the middle and up into my chest. At first, I thought that I may have strained a muscle because I was into working-out with weights but after a few minutes of this pain I knew something was terribly wrong.
I had this instinctive feeling that I couldn’t wait for an ambulance, so I took myself to the hospital which was only a few miles away. I knew exactly where it was, because it was right next to my bank. When I got there to the hospital, they asked me all these questions about my pain, how severe it was. I told them it was the worst pain that I ever felt, and if I felt nauseous.
After some tests, they told me that my aorta was splitting apart and I knew that having an aorta splitting apart is a serious situation. They gave me some morphine and prepared me to be transferred to another hospital which had a heart specialty facility. When I arrived at the hospital I was immediately put in cardiac Intensive care unit where I spent a few days talking to the nurses and family members.
After about the second day I fell into a coma and all I remember are these weird dreams. After three weeks, I finally woke up; by prodding by the nurses. Evidently, they wanted me to come out of the coma. What I heard was “Kurt time to get up” and them pulling at me to get me on my feet. They didn’t pull in a hard way, they were gentle with me.
I remember in my dreams was them making me stand up and sitting me in this chair. After six weeks I finally was released from Cardiac ICU and sent to physical rehabilitation for a week where I learned to walk and swallow again.
I realized the seriousness of my condition when I was transferred to another hospital for rehabilitation. A nurse was looking at my report from the prior hospital where I was treated for the dissection; she looked up at me from the report, with an astonished look on her and said “you had an aortic dissection and you’re still alive,” I nodded my head in affirmation, and she said, “welcome back to the living it’s nice to have you back”. I then realized how serious it was having an aortic dissection.
And finally released to my brothers care where nurse came for two weeks.
The effects were that my left hand is paralyzed, depression and sundry other problems and when I left rehabilitation they gave me about 15 prescriptions to take for my blood pressure and various other problems.