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This
heart problem
has meant that I’ve looked into my family history to see about
early on set cardio disease.

My father died suddenly at 65 — one November day he went out to rake leaves and didn’t come back.
His father (my grandfather) had a stroke when he was in his late 60s and he died of heart failure a few years later.
And, my great-great-grandfather died suddenly of heart failure when he was 63.
The newspaper column here is from front page of the Oregonian newspaper on October 26, 1908. It is reported that great-great-grandfather “had been in his usual health yesterday and his sudden death was a great shock to the family”.
Sounds just like my dad.

So, maybe my having this operation will mean that I might live past the 65 my genes have planned for me.

I haven’t been entering many entries because there hasn’t been much going on — I’ve just been hanging around the house resting.
I’m not up to the energy level where I’m attacking my computer and doing neat things to my web pages or anything.
I’m hoping for some “perkyness” next week.

I did have my followup visit with the cardio-surgeon today and he listened to my heart and lungs and looked at the foot long scar and said I was doing great. No need for another appointment or anything.

It’s clear that being a heart surgeon is not a low margin business.
His offices are in the ‘doctors’ building next to the hospital and you go down long, non-descript hallways and then enter his clinic offices.
The offices were richly appointed with antiques and dark, rich colors on the walls. The ceiling was a deep red color and the hallways led one’s eyes to lit decorations.
The examination room had custom cabinets and wall paper.
All, in all, he must not be doing poorly.

It’s been a little over two and a half weeks since my surgery and I really haven’t had much pain.
The doctor perscribed Vicodin(r) but, except for a run in with migraines a week ago, I haven’t needed them.
My complaints have mostly been being out of breath, tired and just plain run down.

Until this week, that is.
It’s like the bones in my chest and the muscles around them are finally waking up and they are looking around and sending paniced messages to my brain.
“Do you have any idea what happened down here??!?!?!!”, they are shouting.
Time for a little pain meds while the system settles down.

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Last evening I had all my kids over for dinner.
The real occasion was for my daughter to open her Christmas presents
since she was out of town on Christmas day.
The plan was to have her and her husband over around New Years but
other things
came up.
So, she finally got to open her presents at the end of January.
Pictures
of the eating and the opening are available.
Better late then never.

I had my appointment with the cardiologist yesterday and he listened to my heart, too my blood pressure, talked for a bit and said I was healing perfectly.
Since I’m such a young guy (”premature onset cardio disease” is the term he used) I am healing just as I should be.

So, I left his office with perscriptions for cholesterol and blood pressure meds (for the rest of my life), a pointer to a dietition, a perscription for some “base line” blood work and a followup appointment in April.

I guess he thinks I’ll survive this.

The bills are starting to come in.
Today we got the hospital bill — staying 8 days, angiogram, open heart surgery and various meds and anesthesia supplies.
Just this comes to over $60,000.
This does not include the emergency room, the one night at the hospital with the emergency room and it doesn’t include a single doctor.

I sure hope my insurance comes through.

I’ve been home from the hospital for 5 days now
and it’s 10 days since my surgery.
Most of the pain is gone except for my leg — they harvested a vein from my right leg to use on my heart and it seems like they just just it off and let it bleed every where.
I have this gigantic bruise from my crotch to my knee that is just now starting to look like it’s getting better.

The fact that my sternum was cut open and then wired together is the other source of pain.
Coughing hurts and there are ways you can’t lie in bed.
It also means that I can’t drive for 6 weeks after the surgery because an air bag could do disasterous things to a partially healed sternum.

My main complaint these days is fatague and breathlessness.
The breathlessness is caused by only having about half my lung capacity back so far.
The fatague means that walking out into the kitchen and back to get a drink of water will mean I have to sit down and rest for 10 minutes.
Surfing the web starts as an active activity but soon becomes a mindless television experience.

Everyone says it will be better next week and I’m looking forward to that.
At the moment, I don’t even have the energy to get cabin fever.

I put up some
pictures
of my time in the hospital now that I’m home and on the mend.
More information over on the
blog.
Thanks for all the great throughts you people have sent.

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This is my second full day back from the hospital.
I thought I’d be able to sit in front of my computers and type and type — not hard work, right?
Boy, they tell you’ll be fatagued the first week or so and they are right.
It uses up too much energy to just sit and smile at people.

I did get the
pictures of me in the hospital
up.
I thought it was a nice touch that my wife took pictures of the clock when my heart was stopped and when it was restarted.

An thank you dearly for all the wonderful comments from you people out there — you are all truely nice people. Thank you.

Now I think I’ll go take a nap — all this typing wore me out.

It’s three days after open-heart, bypass surgery and I’m sitting
in my chair in my hopsital room waiting for the nurse to come by
and nag me about walking the halls for exercise.
Can you believe that? Just three days ago they stopped my
heart for 90 minutes so they could add three grafts to repair
the blood circulation.

Now I’m tired — a walk around the halls poops me out and I
take a bit to recover. It will be several weeks before I’m
back to almost normal.

I think I will be going home Sunday or Monday, so you should see me
at my
desk cam
soon.
Take care of your heart.

The new year has taken quite a turn for me — I had a heart
attack on the first.
It couldn’t really be a heart attack I thought.
I mean my blood pressure and colestoral have never been
high enough to be a problem and I finished the Portland
Marathon just a
few months ago
.
The pain hadn’t gone away by Friday so we decided it
was time to check with the doc.

My regular doctor was taking the day off but I had him
paged and he suggested the emergency room.
Since we were sure it wasn’t really a heart attack, we
went to a doc-in-a-box place only to have them tell us
that they don’t have the facilities to handle what might
be a heart attack (this after waiting and hour).
So finally to the emergency room of our local hospital.

They took blood and did an EKG and kept shaking their heads
because I didn’t “look like I’d had a heart attack”.
They gave me esophagus numbing stuff to see if it was a
stomach problem.
The finally the lab work came back and, low and behold, the
“something happened to your heart” emzimes were elevated.
And the cardiologist looked at the EKG and he said some
thing wasn’t right.

So, Friday night was spent at that hospital being monitored
and pumped full of blood thinning and platlet taming
potions. Saturday I was transported in an ambulance to
the big cardiology center where they continuted to monitor
and pump me full of chemicals.

Saturday, I had an angiogram. That’s where they run a tube
up an artery in your leg to your heart, inject die and then
look to see where the die goes to find blockages and
constrictions.
The cardiologist figured that, since I was a young fellow,
they’d find a small constriction that they could fix with
a stint and send me on my way.
Saddly, they found several problems and I’m now scheduled
for triple by-pass surgery tomorrow.

I’m writing this from my hospital bed and, after open heart
surgery, I probably won’t have many updates for the next
week.
If I’m one of the 1.5 in a hundred that doesn’t survive this major
surgery, you might not hear from me at all.
But, I’m rather young for this surgery so my chance of survival
is very good.

Wish me luck.