Holiday Stress Test

First of all let me apologize for not posting the past few days. The holidays have taken over at our household and I find my discretionary time to be at a minimum. There are are Christmas cards to get out, shopping to be done and mastering og multiplication tables to be completed.

Huh?

The point is, that on top of all the extra activities that the holidays bring on we still need to focus on the mundane things that normally eat up our time. My current challenge is help my nine year old daughter master her multiplication tables. We are employing a variety of strategies and having limited success. Does anyone know of a good software program for kids that could help here?

Anyway, on top of all the normal chaos that comes with the holiday season, I had the added fun of putting up a Christmas tree twice. I came home early the other day hoping to get some work done before I had to go meet Morgan at the bus stop. I came in, let the dogs out and was heading back out to my car when I heard a very loud CRASH. It was a glass breaking crash sound.

Sure enough, my ten foot Christmas tree which had stood steadily for three days suddenly decided to give into an unseen indoor wind and toppled over onto the hardwood floors in the foyer. Broken ornaments littered the area, so much for getting any work done that day. For the next few hours I cleaned up the mess, moved the tree back out to the garage and removed the tangled morass of lights while Mama Wordbones cleaned up the water and pine sap that remained behind.

The thing is, I didn’t let it stress me too much. Sure, at first I was angry but then who was really angry with except me?

I certainly couldn’t blame Mama Wordbones. In our house we actually have two Christmas trees because years ago Mama Wordbones decided that a real tree was just much dam trouble. She now happily unpacks her fake tree and places in the living room while I still go the traditional route with a live tree in the family room. If anything I was extremely grateful that Mama Wordbones helped me at all. She could have easily retreated to her fake tree in the living room and sipped a hot cocoa while I slaved away at cleaning up my natural disaster.

But this is Christmas after all and in the spirit of the holidays she pitched in and helped me reconstruct my tree. It is now back up, complete with a new tie back to the wall behind it (Mama Wordbones suggestion) and some ornaments that look like they came from the Island of Misfit Toys.

Rob From Glen Burnie

“I finished my shift before I went to emergency room.”

I was talking to a guy named Rob in my cardiac rehab class. He looked to be in his mid thirties. He’s a big guy. He had only recently joined the class.

“I can’t wait to get rid of this thing.”

Rob has a walker to help him get around. He says that after surgery he didn’t trust that his legs would hold him up. Rob had open heart surgery. He had five major blockages in his arteries.

“I have the road map of Florida to Maine on my chest.”

I bet. What struck me about Rob’s story is that, once again, here is a guy who was having a heart attack but thought he just shrug it off. He finished his shift for crying out loud! That is so typical of a guy.

“They flew me in a helicopter to Hopkins.”

Rob got the helicopter ride!

“It was pretty scary.”

Scary?

Rob just had a major heart attack and is on deaths door and he is scared of a helicopter ride. Go figure.

I told Rob that I got a ride in the back of the truck. I also told him to hang in there. The nurses in the cardiac rehab program will have him off that walker in no time.

Pork Brains

If you really want to go the whole non heart healthy route perhaps you should consider putting pork brains in milk gravy on your shopping list. How does one serve pork brains you ask?

Well, some folks like them with their eggs for breakfast.

And speaking of jeopardy…

The big news last night was that Alex Trebek, the host of Jeopardy, suffered a minor heart attack. He is expected to return to the studio next week.

I’ll take heart attacks for two hundred.

Bad Message

I was driving to my office holiday party last night when an ad came on the radio for St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Baltimore. The ad, which was playing on the all Christmas music station WLIF, began with a recap of the warning signs of a heart attack. That part was good. Then the ad went on to extol the expertise of the hospital in dealing with heart attacks and went so far as to suggest that if you are having a heart attack you should make your way to St. Joseph’s Medical Center…wherever you are.

Considering that the listening area of this particular radio station covers a pretty broad geographic area, that would seem to suggest that someone suffering from a heart attack should bypass all of the other metropolitan area hospitals, including Johns Hopkins, and drive directly to St. Joseph’s.

Now this is a non clinical blog about heart disease so I won’t attempt to provide any medical advice but, everything I’ve read and been told about a heart attack is the time matters. If you were to follow the advice of this advertisement and end up driving over an hour to get to St. Joseph’s as opposed to a closer hospital wouldn’t you be putting yourself in jeopardy?

Tis The Season

As I was returning from a shopping trip yesterday I turned on to my street and saw an ambulance and a fire truck three houses up from mine. In our county a fire truck accompanies every ambulance call for some reason. If there is a firefighter reading this blog perhaps you could share the reasoning of this. It seems to be overkill to me.

Anyway…

The presence of the ambulance on my street recalled to mind an Associated Press story that my colleague, Tom Whelan forwarded to me last week. Apparently the holiday season is also heart attack season. In addition to the rich meals, alcohol, and extra stress that the holidays bring on, there is an added denial dimension. No one wants to be a buzz killer by complaining of chest pains at a holiday gathering. Many folks ignore will ignore the warning signs of an impending heart attack by writing it off as bad indigestion.

That’s a big mistake. Time matters when dealing with a heart attack. The longer the delay, the more damage to the heart and the longer your ass will be in recovery.

Take heart. If you experience any of the warning signs of a heart attack, call 911 immediately. Besides, the arrival of an ambulance and fire truck on your street could add some excitement to an otherwise dull holiday party. It will give your friends and family something to talk about for years to come and just might insure that you will be around to share in them.

Wayne's Story in Three Parts (3)

I ended the third installment of Wayne’s story with his twelve minute helicopter ride from Howard County General Hospital in Columbia, Maryland to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

“Within five minutes of the helicopter landing on the roof of Johns Hopkins I was in the operating room being prepped for Angioplasty. With local anesthetic to my leg where the catheter was inserted and a mild sedative to help me relax I was awake throughout the hour and a half operation. They found one total blockage of the Left Anterior Descending (LAD) artery and one partial blockage of another artery of the heart. They opened both with a balloon and put a stent in the LAD. I was then taken to the Hopkins Cardiac Care Unit for a four day stay. I have never seen such a well run place in a hospital. The nurses, doctors, and interns were not only very helpful and knowledgeable, they were nice people showing real concern for me. I felt like I was the only patient there.”

Ann had called me later that fateful Sunday and told me what had happened to Wayne. On Tuesday I went down to visit him with another cycling buddy, Julius Hader. Wayne was in great spirits and regaled us with the story of his helicopter ride. He looked a lot better than the last time I saw him. He felt he was on the road to recovery but was he?

“On Thursday the 26th I was able to go home about 4:00pm. At 2:00am I awoke with pain in my chest. It was a totally different pain than the heart attack, more like tight muscles than an elephant standing on my chest. Off we went to the ER. I was admitted but not quite as quickly as the first time but still a good response. After multiple ECG’s and various medicines and drugs they decided something had probably happened with my heart but not strong enough to show up in the ECG’s. I think it was a reaction to the medicines I was on and the stress of the situation. They kept me in the hospital for the day and released me about 7:00pm. Everything has been constant improvement since. It looks like I will come out healthier than before the attack. By getting the Tpa so quickly it looks like I will have almost no damage to my heart Added to that is the fact that two arteries are now wide open instead of being partially blocked, it all adds up to me coming out of this in great shape.”

Wayne is doing great. I met up with him this past Friday for coffee. Interestingly, he still drinks regular (not decaf) coffee. “Ann has given up on that issue,” he told me. I think it is because he told her that he wasn’t about to change that habit. Other than that he looks great. He is in fighting trim and though he hasn’t been on his road bike for some time he still exercises regularly. We plan to meet up for a walk sometime.

Wayne claims that I may have saved his life. I always blanch when he says this. The point he wants to make though is that as a buddy I did the right thing. I ruled out any further biking that morning and stayed with him rather than leaving to go get my car. He had a cell phone after all and calling Ann was the only wise course. I don’t consider that to be anything but using common sense. If he thinks it saved his life so be it.

Wayne is still enjoying his retirement. He is an adjunct professor of computer science at Howard Community College and he has a new hobby of making ballpoint pens. He is showing off some of his work in the picture I took of him Friday morning.

Wayne's Story in Three Parts (2)

Yesterday, in the first installment of Wayne’s story, I left off where Wayne is picked up by Ann. We maneuvered Wayne’s bike into the back seat of the red Mustang and off they went. I stood there and watched as they drove out of sight. “I hope he’s okay” I thought. He really didn’t look good.

It was now around 8 o’clock. I was midway between my house and the bagel shop. I decided to head home. You may recall that in the first part of Wayne’s story I mentioned that I had a hangover. It wasn’t as bad as when started out earlier that morning but the thought of going back to bed felt pretty enticing. Wayne, on the other hand, was having a different experience.

“Upon arrival home I was feeling a little better and told Ann I was going to walk around in front of the house as that usually helped relieve the gas of acid reflux. She went upstairs and got ready for church. Just before she came back downstairs I started feeling some pain in the middle of my back. As she came down the stairs I started having pain in my arms. I thought both might be due to straining while riding up that hill. Ann and I decided it would be a good idea to call Sarah, a friend of ours who is a nurse. Ann called Sarah and barely got the description of the situation out when Sarah said, “get him to ER immediately”. Off we went.”

Don’t you love how Wayne writes “Off we went.” I mean I know this guy. He is a true Midwesterner. When he says a line like this it is usually with a bit of Midwestern drawl with a smile on his face.

“I walked into the ER while Ann parked the car and told the person at the desk I thought I was having a heart attack. He called for a nurse and then escorted me to a cubicle just behind his desk. The nurse arrived immediately, took one look at me and said “sit still I am going to get a wheel chair”. She grabbed one that was just a short distance away and took me back into the new ER facility, put me on a table/bed and brought the doctor on duty over to me. He paged the Cardiologist he knew was upstairs starting his rounds. In just a few minutes they had me on an ECG machine and took all my vital signs. The Cardiologist (Dr. Silverman) arrived and asked me a few questions about my pain, how it came on, etc. At this point it had been just under a half hour since I walked up to the front desk.”

“While the Cardiologist and ER doctor were discussing the possibilities, the ECG went wild and a huge pain of pressure hit my chest. I was having an all out heart attack. The cardiologist called for a syringe of Tpa and called out several other commands to the nurses. I learned later that Tpa is a clot dissolving drug. Within ten minutes or less the pain had almost disappeared. Everyone was very happy the drug had done its job and were discussing the event and the doctor started telling me what was to come next in terms of treatment. Then the second one hit. They could not inject anymore Tpa but did inject other things the only one I recognized was morphine. I asked the Cardiologist if I was going to make it. He said, “I’m not going to let a fellow bicyclist die, your going to make it just fine.” He called for the Medivac helicopter from Johns Hopkins Hospital. He and the nurses stayed with me throughout the 30 minute wait for the chopper. The morphine had made the pain more tolerable and I made the 12 minute return flight to Hopkins in only medium pain.”

Apparently Dr. Silverman was an avid cyclist. I guess sometime during that initial questioning Wayne had mentioned that he had been cycling that morning which prompted the comment about not letting a fellow cyclist die. One does wonder what he would have said if Wayne had told him he was a runner (he used to be).

And Wayne got the helicopter ride!

I know it is not that enjoyable when you are hooked up with IV drips and a blood pressure cuff but it still beats the 45 minute ride in the back of the truck.

When I think back he was probably flying over my house as I climbed back into bed that Sunday morning. It was later that day that Ann called me and told me what had happened to Wayne.

Wayne’s Story in Three Parts (1)

Wayne Ivester is a buddy of mine. For a period of time around five years ago, he and I got together for an early Sunday morning bike ride on our road bikes. We lived close to each other so I’d simply peddle over to his place and then we’d ride off together.

It was during one of these rides that Wayne’s cardiac event occurred.

Wayne has written his story. This is fortunate because five years ago I told him I’d write it. The plan was to write something we could submit to Men’s Health or Outside magazine. I never did it.

But Wayne did and now I can share it here with my own commentary thrown in. Like I said, I was there. It is a bit long so I’ve broken it up into three parts. This is the first. I’ll let Wayne speak first.

“Ann and I were looking forward to a vigorous hiking trip with Elderhostel in New York. A couple we had become friends with were going to be on the same hike. The setting sounded great, a remote section of the Catskill Mountains about 2 hours southwest of Albany. The session was scheduled to begin at 5:00pm on Sunday September 22nd. We decided we could leave home about 11:00am and make it to the Inn we would be staying at by 5:00pm. Since we would not be leaving early I decided I had time to get in my usual Sunday morning bike ride with my friend Dennis. We ride 8 miles out to a bagel shop for a bagel and then back home.”

Wayne is in pretty good shape. He regularly rode his bike and he and Ann also are into horseback riding. Wayne is an engineer by training who took early retirement from a sales career with IBM before I ever met him.

“Dennis and I left my house about 7:00am expecting our normal ride. It turned out to be anything but normal. I got on my bike and started to shove off when I realized I had forgotten my cell phone. I went back in the house and grabbed it. The ride went along uneventfully for the first half hour.”

Okay, maybe it was uneventful for Wayne but as for me I was nursing a mild hangover. I had been out partying the evening before. When Wayne mentioned that he forgot his phone I almost suggested that we just call it quits and go back home. But I didn’t.

“At that point we came to a long steep hill we had been jokingly calling “killer hill”. For some reason I decided to attack the climb more aggressively than usual and was leading Dennis until just before the top. He usually is ahead of me all the way. As he passed he said he was going to stop at the top to make an adjustment to his equipment.”

By this time I’m starting to feel better. Wayne on the other hand was complaining of having a little indigestion. He mentioned something about rich Italian food the night before. When he started shooting up that ridiculously steep hill I thought, “What’s got into him today?”

Did I mention that he laid out this route?

Anyway, I took the challenge and shot after him, finally passing him just before the crest. I can’t recall if I really had an equipment problem or not but I was glad to take a break. When I looked back behind at Wayne he had slowed considerably. He didn’t look so hot either.

“I was breathing hard but felt fine. As I pulled to the curb and stopped my chest started hurting a little. It didn’t surprise me as I had eaten a lot of rich food the day before at an afternoon party/horse show. I told Dennis I was having an acid reflux attack and wanted to sit a minute before going on.”

He may have felt good but he didn’t look good. His face was flushed. He sat for a minute and then said he had to answer natures call. He left that part out his story but I recall it clearly. He was in the woods a long time.

“The minutes started adding up and I wasn’t getting any better. We discussed riding on, turning back, etc. Dennis suggested I call Ann and have her come pick me up. I objected because I said I could never explain over the phone how to put the bike rack on my car. Dennis persisted and I remembered I had given a bicyclist a ride one time by putting the top down on my car and putting the bike in the back seat.”

When he finally came back out of the woods he looked even worse. We both kind of understood that his ride was over at this point. The question became what to do next. Wayne actually suggested that I ride back and get my car with the bike rack and then come back to get him. Given the way he looked I didn’t think that was such a great idea. He really agonized about how his bike was going to get home. For good reason too, it is a nice bike.

“About 7:50am I called Ann and she left immediately, arriving in 8 minutes after we hung up. At this point I was starting to feel a little better. I had passed through a stage of cold sweats and dizziness.”

To say that Ann got there fast would be understatement. Before I knew we had loaded his bike into the convertible and off they went leaving me atop killer hill.

I decided to turn around and head home. It would a couple of days before I saw Wayne again. He was lying in a bed at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Good News

Now here’s some good news, a bunch of new studies like this one, this one and this one are concluding that beer may be just as good as wine if not better for fighting heart disease.

According to one study, even non alcoholic beer has benefits so you won’t necessarily have to jump off the wagon to enjoy this little benefit.

For any medical types who happen by, here is the technical explanation.

And, by the way, the black libation in the picture is a perfectly poured Guinness served up at the James Joyce Pub in Baltimore. And yes, it tasted as good as it looks.

Cheers!

Corrupted Plans

I really try to post something new here everyday. I also try to make my posts interesting or at least mildly amusing.

Sometimes I think succeed in doing both. Other times I don’t. I just want the reader to know that I really do try. It’s just that sometimes, just every so often, outside forces corrupt my carefully designed plans and everything goes to hell.

Take yesterday morning for instance. I rose at 6:30 AM with the intention of getting some writing done before I had to leave for my cardiac rehab appointment at 9:30 AM. By the time I finally settled down in my office after feeding the dogs and bringing in the morning papers, it was around 7:30 AM. Not bad so far.

Denise comes in and gives me a quick kiss before heading off to her job. The first order of business was to take care of some business that I told myself to do on Friday. I made a few changes to a lease proposal and then emailed it the client.

Now I could start some real writing. It was about eight o’clock. I had a good solid hour before I would have to leave.

Then the phone rang. It was Igor.

Igor is our home improvement contractor. We’ve had Igor and his fellow Russians in our home quite a bit this year. We like Igor.

“Is Miss Denise home?”

“No, I’m sorry Igor, she just left for work.”

“I call her on cell phone then.”

“Good plan.”

I should point out here that Denise is the true General Contractor on all of these home improvement projects. I pretty much step aside and enjoy the show. For now I felt confident that I now had a clear path to an hour of uninterrupted writing. Denise would deal with Igor. I was wrong. The phone rang again. It was Denise this time.

“Honey, do you remember that I was a planning a surprise for you for Christmas?”

“Sure.”

“Well the surprise is that I am having your office redone.”

“That’s great.”

“Well, unfortunately, Igor is on his way over there right now.”

“Oh. Is he coming to measure some things?”

“No. He’s coming to get started. You have to move everything out of there.”

“Now?”

“He’ll be there in about ten minutes.”

“Today?”

“I’m sorry honey; I didn’t mean it to happen this way. I told him…”

At this point I really stopped listening. I looked around me at the chaos of my office. There was barely any wood showing on my desk. There were things stacked on the floor. There was extension cord spaghetti next to my feet. The picture in yesterdays post shows how my desk normally looks.

“Thanks honey. It’s a great gift. I’d better get off the phone now. I love you.”

“I love you too. I’m sorry.”

No sooner did I hang up than the doorbell rang. Igor had arrived.

Surprisingly, when I checked in at cardiac rehab, my blood pressure was only 136 over 84.

Paperwork

The EOB’s just keep coming. I am referring to the Explanation of Benefits statements that I get from Carefirst Blue Choice for the charges related to my heart attack and resultant treatment. Now I realize that I should be grateful for the fact that I have health insurance. I am.

The thing is I thought I’d try to add up what this little cardiac episode of mine actually cost. They don’t make it easy. To me it is as if you went to a hotel and they billed you separately for everything. You’d get one bill for the room, one bill for breakfast, one bill for a spa treatment and so on.

And these EOB statements don’t really tell me anything either. More space in the statements is devoted to legal disclaimers than an actual explanation of the benefit they paid for!

Just The Facts

• Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States.
• A woman always has the final say in an argument. Anything said after that is a new argument.
• Worldwide coronary heart disease kills seven million people each year.
• You can’t fight genetics.
• Heart disease is a term that includes several more specific heart conditions. The most common heart disease in the United States is coronary heart disease, which can lead to heart attack.
• Given the choice between doing the dishes and taking out the garbage I’ll always go for trash duty.
• It is estimated that about 47% of cardiac deaths occur before emergency services or transport to a hospital.
• I was pretty stupid in that regard.
• The heart is basically a big muscle.
• I tried not to let college interfere with my education.
• The proper name for a heart attack is acute myocardial infarction.
• I don’t think there is anything cute about a heart attack so I’ll just stick with calling it a heart attack.
• There is such a thing as a small heart attack (minimal muscle damage).
• I had one.