Graduation Day

I completed my cardiac rehabilitation classes today. The nurses said I graduated.

Three days a week for the past three months I have dutifully trekked to Howard County General Hospital to rehabilitate my cardiac. I am proud to say that my cardiac is fully rehabilitated.

I’m glad to be done.

It wasn’t the exercise that bothered me. I have come to accept that my lot in life is to make exercise part of my regular regime at least five days a week. It was the other stuff I grew to dislike like strapping on the remote EKG monitor. Each time, after the class was finished, I’d defoliate my chest just a little more as I tore off those sticky EKG pads off my chest. My chest hair now resembles a rogue timbering operation.

I also hated having my blood pressure taken while I ran on the treadmill.

I’m going back to my old gym now. I haven’t worked out there since the treadmill incident. I’m looking forward to returning to that routine.

I will miss the people though. The nurses, Susan, Allyson, Beth, Ann, Cindy, Diana and Tricia (I probably missed a name or two) were terrific. Their humor and compassion made the inconveniences more than tolerable.

I’ll also miss my cardiac classmates. I met lots of great people over the three months. Some I posted about already, others I just met today, like Ed. Ed had a quintuple bypass. He was on vacation in Calgary when he came up short of breath.

“I really didn’t have any chest pains,” he told me.

I told him I didn’t either. Ed told me that he had actually been feeling fatigued for about a month before that fateful day in Calgary. “When I told that to my wife I thought she was going to kill me.”

If the heart disease don’t get ya, the angry spouse surely will!

When he got home and went to hospital he was admitted immediately. They told him he had two arteries that were 90% blocked and three that were 60% blocked.

Ed was just starting his cardiac rehab run. I told him that I clearly recall my first sessions. I felt like the new kid in school.

I’ll miss the women in my class too. They have made me think that perhaps I should start a new label entitled “Heart attack gals.” They have some pretty incredible stories too.

Still, I am glad to be finished. In my exit review with Beth she told me that I remain at high risk for another heart attack due to things I have no control over; my age and my family history. I guess it’s possible I could end up for some post grad cardiac rehab sometime down the road.

For now though I feel pretty good so I’ll just be happy with that.

Stent versus Bypass

Tonight, on the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, in a story entitled “Medical Matters of the Heart” Robert Bazell reported on a new study of 8,000 patients which determined that bypass surgery is better than the stent procedure for avoiding the recurrence of a heart attack.

Now they tell me.

On the other hand, the story goes on to say that the difference is only 2%. That doesn’t sound like much of difference, and for that matter, much of a story to me.

Airport Coat Check

Denise and I are preparing for our long anticipated trip to the islands in early February. This is something that we started two years ago as a way to break out of the winter doldrums here in Baltimore and rejuvenate our minds and bodies in the warm sun. Many other folks will be doing the same thing of course. In every place that feels the cold pinch of winter, people will hop aboard south bound airplanes to escape for awhile.

As Jimmy Buffet so aptly puts it in his song Boat Drinks, “I wanna fly to Saint Somewhere.”

We are all set. We have plane tickets. We have reservations. We have time off work. We have sunscreen. I have an ample supply of my blood pressure meds. It will be perfect, except for one little thing.

When we leave our home in the early morning hours and set off for BWI, it will be probably be cold. In fact, I hope it is cold that morning. It will make us feel all the better about going south in the peak season (and paying peak prices). The only problem is that we will need our coats. We will need coats until we reach the terminal building. Once inside though, we won’t need our coats again for another week. We could, of course, leave them in our car in the airport parking lot but that won’t help much when we return from the sunny warmth to the blistering cold in the dead of night. If we left them in the car we would still freeze as we waited for the parking shuttle bus. It always seems to take forever for those buses to come around, especially when you’re cold. We could also schlep them with us but that seems ridiculous. Who wants to land in a tropical paradise lugging around a wool coat?

The solution is simple. Why don’t cold climate airports offer coat checks for winter travelers?

It is not exactly a new idea. A Google search on airport coat checks turned up just such a service at Dusseldorf International Airport. I wonder why this hasn’t caught on in other cities.

Real Heroes

I stand out a little in my cardiac rehab class. The class is currently made up of six men and five women. I suspect I might be the youngest man in the class but at least one of the ladies is younger than me.

I come to the 9:30 AM class dressed for action. I wear running shoes, running shorts and an Under Armor t-shirt. I have my iPod strapped to my arm.

The dress for most of the other class members is best described as suburban casual. None of the other guys are wearing shorts. The only other iPod user is one of the gals.

In short order I have usually worked up a sweat. Right now I’m running two miles in twenty minutes on the treadmill.

Around me, on the other treadmills, the pace is somewhat less aggressive.

All in all I was feeling pretty good about myself in comparison to my classmates until I noticed the scar. I can’t recall the first guy I saw with one. People are always coming and going over the 36 session period so at first you don’t catch all the names but I remember the scar. These are the open heart guys and gals. I kid them that they had major plumbing work compared to what I had.

I began to be humbled by these cardiac classmates. Take Joel for instance. I talked with Joel today as we waited for our blood pressure to be taken before our session. I had taken note of Joel’s chest scar a couple of sessions earlier.

“It looks like you’ve had some major plumbing work done.”

“Yeah, I had a quintuple bypass.”

“No shit.”

“They really didn’t think I’d make it. I was in a comma for nine days.”

“How did it happen?”

“I was home. It just came on me.”

I’m going to guess that Joel is in his mid to late fifties. He told me that he doesn’t smoke or drink and that he always ate pretty healthy. He wasn’t overweight either.

“Is there a family history?”

“Not really.”

Just bad luck I suppose. Then again, he is alive today so his luck can’t be all that bad. Joel told me that he is a computer programmer by trade but he also has another job. Joel plays the piano in the local Nordstrom on weekends.

It is interesting that he has returned to his piano playing gig but I don’t believe he has gone back to his programmer job yet. As you can see in the picture, Joel is doing fine considering that his surgery was just this past November.

That makes him a real hero in my book.

Happy New Year!

Yeah, I realize it was yesterday but in case you hadn’t noticed I haven’t posted here since December 20th so I figure a belated Happy New Year is entirely appropriate.

So why no postings lately?

Good question. The best answer is that there were so many demands on my time over the Christmas holidays that I found it difficult to carve out the time to write. I intend to rectify that now.

I am working on a post about Joel. He is a relative newcomer to my cardiac rehab class. Joel experienced his heart attack back on September 7th. I’ll try and finish that up this evening. It's a good one.

I have also been making some other observations in my cardiac rehab class which I will be sharing in the next few days.

And finally, I continue to look for stories about heart attacks and how these cardiac events have affected lives. Drop me a note at theheartattackguy@gmail.com if you have something you’d like to share.

I am also curious as to what you think of this site. Do you enjoy reading these stories and other heart attack oddities I find?

Is there anything else you’d like to see?

Talk to me.