Del Rey author Aaron Allston — who recently underwent bypass surgery — is recovering and writing in his Livejournal blog about what happened.
He writes about his diabetes, painful foot ulcer and the recent heart attack that occurred during his book tour for his new Star Wars novel Outcast.
Here’s an excerpt from his story about his health condition and what happened during his heart attack:
I was also spending a lot of time asleep/unconscious and experiencing a series of intense, interconnected hallucinations, in which I had reached a malevolent afterlife in which I was tested and often tortured. These events played out in a series of semi-independent scenarios. When awake, I knew I had been hallucinating, but when hallucinating, I had no ability to distinguish between what I was experiencing and reality. It was, to say the least, a grim few days.
I coded — that is, my heart stopped, causing the medics to revive me with defib paddles — something like three times between the morning of my surgery and the following day. The last time, though my heart activity was restored, I evidenced very little neurological activity, and the medics scheduled me for an electroencephalogram to determine whether I had anything going on upstairs. Though the medical staff was not yet telling my family and loved ones to prepare themselves for the worst, some of the nurses and doctors were beginning to exchange little shakes of the head.
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