No More Water Slides?

Last week I took my daughter and two of her friends to the Six Flags “Hurricane Harbor” water park in Largo, Maryland. One of the perks of being a parent is getting to act like a kid every once awhile. I’ve found that water parks generally afford that opportunity.

One of the rides the girls wanted to go on was called the Tornado. This ride entails lugging a four person raft up a 75 foot stair tower and then plunging down a chute into what resembles a giant funnel laying on its side.

It was a blast! The girls had fun and I had fun.

At the end, however, as I went back to retrieve the flip flops I left at the foot of the slide, I noticed this sign. I guess I should have read it beforehand.Hmmm. I wonder what they infer by “heart conditions?”

Prior to my cardiac event I never gave a second thought to signs like this. Now I’m supposed to pay them heed?

I don’t think so. Not this heart attack guy anyway. The way I see it, the most stressful part of this ride is lugging the raft up the steps. As long as I keep myself in shape, I figure I can continue to enjoy the rides.

And that’s the thing; I am in better shape than most men my age. Still, I get friends who come up to me with a look of concern and say “how are you doing?”

I always respond, “I’m doin great, how’re you doin?”

Oh yeah, by the way, this was my first and last visit to Six Flags. The whole time we were there not one single staff person smiled. Most were sullen. It was not a happy place.

Good Food Gone Bad

Number 7

I sometimes wonder if I have been put on a “list” of people who’ve had heart attacks. I am referring to the kind of list that direct mailers use like people who own cats or people who subscribe to The New Republic. In the last few months I have noticed that I seem to be getting more mail from firms or organizations that deal with health, or more specifically, heart health.

A few weeks ago I received just such a mailing from the Nutrition Action Healthletter. This particular mailing caught my eye with a headline that read “We Name Names!”

Now I wasn’t sure whose name they were naming and why but I suspected it had something to do with bad food choices. My suspicion was correct.

Why is it that all bad food is so freaking good?

That was certainly the case with this list. There wasn’t one item on the ten item bad food list that didn’t sound delicious.

Okay, maybe I could pass on the Pepperidge Farm Roasted White Meat Chicken Pot Pie. I’ve never been a big pot pie guy anyway. That was number one on the list.

On the other hand, number four was Dove Ice Cream. With half a cup serving containing 300 calories and an average of 11 grams of saturated fat, the Nutrition Action Healthletter says it “will fill your heart all right…but not with love.”

And who only eats half a cup of ice cream anyway?

How about a Chipolte Chicken Burrito?

How bad can chicken beans and rice be?

How about a whopping 950 calories and 2,900 mg of sodium, and that’s only if you are trying to be good by passing on the sour cream and cheese. With those two ingredients added it tops out at 1,180 calories and 19 grams of saturated fat. The newsletter succinctly sums it up with, “Yikes!”

The newsletter isn’t all about what you can’t eat though. It does offer another list of “Ten Super Foods” for our consideration. The problem is that most of them don’t sound very super to me unless you happen to have a thing for sweet potatoes (number one) and kale (number 10).

So here’s the deal my fellow cardiac challenged readers. You can save yourself the ten bucks it costs for a subscription to this newsletter by just remembering this simple tenet; if it sounds delicious it’s probably bad.

The Heart Scan Scam

I can easily imagine one of those “good news bad news” jokes coming out of this.

Doctor: I have some good news and bad news.
Patient: What’s the good news?
Doctor: The results from your heart scan look great.
Patient: That’s fantastic. What’s the bad news?
Doctor: As a result of all the radiation from the heart scan you now have cancer.

This past Sunday, the front page of The New York Times featured a story entitled “Weighing the Cost of a CT’s Scan’s Look Inside the Heart.” According to the story, these CT (computed tomography) scans “expose patients to large doses of radiation, equivalent to at least several hundred X-rays, creating a small but real cancer risk.”

And here’s the thing, the benefits of these scans is somewhat dubious. The article claims that these CT heart scans "have never been proved in large medical studies to be better than older or cheaper tests.”

That hasn’t stopped some docs from prescribing them for their patients though. In the past year alone over 150,000 people have been given CT scans for their heart.

So why would a doc prescribe a test that may expose his patient to a cancer risk?

The answer is quite simple. Many of the docs prescribing these scans hold an ownership position in the equipment being used. A CT scanner costs around a million bucks so a doc would need to perform around 3,000 scans to pay back his or her investment.

It’s not just the docs either. Hospitals that have invested in CT heart scanners are also motivated to recoup their investment.

It kind of reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by Elbert Hubbard. “When a fellow says, “it ain’t the money but the principal of the thing,” it’s the money.”

Humor & Heart Disease

I ran across the perfect survey for this blog. It is a humor and heart disease survey on the University of Maryland Medical Center website. The survey, originally published in November of 2000, helps you determine how well your individual sense of humor will help protect you from heart disease. The survey comes from a study conducted by the university that found that laughter may in fact be good medicine.

“People with heart disease were less likely to recognize humor or use it to get out of uncomfortable situations. They generally laughed less, even in positive situations and they displayed more anger and hostility.

"The ability to laugh -- either naturally or as learned behavior may have important implications in societies such as the U.S. where heart disease remains the number one killer," says Dr. Miller. "We know that exercising, not smoking and eating foods low in saturated fat will reduce the risk of heart disease. Perhaps regular, hearty laughter should be added to the list." Dr. Miller says it may be possible to incorporate laugher into our daily activities, just as we do with other heart-healthy activities, such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator.”

Okay, my only problem with this survey is that it insinuates that we folks with heart disease may have a diminished sense of humor. I take issue with that. Even as I was laying in the emergency room the night of my heart attack, my humor was still intact.

In any event, you can take the survey by clicking here.

My score was 58.

My Tim Russert Story

Many people have Tim Russert stories. Most of those who tell their stories knew Russert, much better than me. I only got to know him one late spring night and early morning, in June of 1997 in Cleveland when we drank beers and told stories until four o’clock in the morning under a tent on a suburban college campus.

The occasion of this gathering was sort of a reunion within a reunion. Five of us were back on the campus of John Carroll University for our college class reunions. Russert and Mark Pacelli were back for their 25th reunion and Bill Gagliano, Stan Mambort and I were back for our 20th. We shared common bond beyond just being fellow alumni; we were all members of the same fraternity, The University Club.

In the early to mid seventies, The University Club, or U-Club as it was commonly referred to, was chartered to be the “student host organization for the university” which was liberally interpreted to meaning that we were responsible for putting on rock concerts in the gymnasium. It was in this capacity that Bill, Stan and I first actually met Russert. We had all heard of him before of course. He was a legend in the U-Club even back then.

It was 1975 and we were in our sophomore year at John Carroll. Though he graduated John Carroll in 1972, Russert was still in Cleveland attending law school at Cleveland Marshall School of Law. With his connections in the U-Club, he ended up brokering a deal with another fraternity brother, Hal Becker who was then a senior at JCU, to bring Bruce Springsteen to the 2,000 seat gymnasium at John Carroll. This was well before Bruce Springsteen reached his peak of fame. Evidently Russerts brief foray into rock concert promotion helped pay his way through law school.

At least that’s what he told us that night. He also told us that years later he became friends with Springsteen and shared the story of the John Carroll concert with him and thanked him for helping to pay for his law degree. Both had by then decidedly grown in national recognition.

In fact, by the late spring of 1997, as we sat laughing and knocking back beers until the wee hours of Saturday morning, Russert had already been hosting Meet the Press for six years. Ironically, the one topic that was not discussed that evening was politics. We shared stories of our escapades during our years at John Carroll and reminisced about common friends and experiences. I seem to recall that we only agreed to go bed when we ran out of beer.

Over the years I’ve told this story several times to different people. When I’d see Russert on TV I’d often point out to anyone listening that we were fraternity brothers. If anyone probed a little more and asked if I knew him, I would invariably tell the story of the beer drinking bull session under the tent. When asked what he was I like, I always told them that he was the real deal; a regular good guy.

Last Friday, when I heard the news of his sudden death, the memory of that evening came back again and with it came immense gratitude for having had that opportunity to get to know my fellow fraternity brother a little better.

Golf In Heaven

Two avid golfers are out on the links on beautiful spring day. While waiting for a foursome in front of them to finish up, one turns to the other and asks “Hey Roger, do you think there is golf in heaven?”

“I dunno,” Roger replies, “but if one of us gets there first and finds out, he should make an effort to communicate to the one still living and let them know.”

“It’s a deal,” Sam tells him and they continue their round of golf.

Two months later Sam suddenly drops dead from a heart attack, a few days after the funeral he comes to Roger in a dream.

“Hey Roger, I have some good news and bad news. The good news is that there is golf in heaven and the courses are unbelievable and you can play a different one everyday.”

“Jeez,” Roger dreams, “what could possibly be the bad news?”

Sam picks up Rogers thoughts and replies, “You have a tee time at 8:30 tomorrow morning.”

I heard this joke at my gym this morning. My personal trainer, an irascible Irishman named Tim Gallagher, told me the joke after we discussed the statistic I read on the Newsweek website that 850 people a day die in America from sudden heart attacks. That is more than breast cancer, lung cancer, stroke and AIDS combined.

I told Tim, who also happens to have a family history of heart disease, that it would probably be a good idea to make sure all of your affairs are in order since you never know when you could get one of those last minute tee times.

Checking In

Shortly before I began my cardiac rehab program I told my cardiologist that I planned to run in a 10K race this spring.

“You might have to wait another year for that,” he gently replied.

Nothing doing. I was determined to be a model cardiac rehab patient and get myself back in shape quickly, as long as it was within the bounds of the nurse directed program.

Okay, I wasn’t exactly a model patient. I skipped most of the “education” sessions. I attended a few but soon I grew uncomfortable sitting in a small crowded room watching a videotape for thirty minutes. I am much too restless for that regime.

On the other hand, as far as the exercise portion of the program was concerned, I was focused like an athlete training for a big game. The nurses soon caught on to my determination and they supported and encouraged me as long as I kept within their prescribed limits.

The result was that at the end of the 36 sessions I was ready to get back to my old exercise regimen and I was even more determined to participate in the race that was now about two and a half months away.

To make a long story short, I completed the 10K race in just under an hour. I was elated to say the least.

I was also thankful. I truly believe that the nurses in the cardiac rehab program were instrumental in making that happen. To thank them I bought a large box of Godiva chocolates and stuck my marked up race bid in the bag with them and dropped back by Howard County General Hospital to deliver them. It was a small but heartfelt gesture.

A Home Appliance You Can Probably Do Without

Have you ever considered getting a defibrillator for your home?

Yeah, me neither.

I suppose that if I lived in the Australian Outback owning such a device might make sense.

Then again maybe not.

According to this story in yesterdays New York Times, “researchers found no evidence that the devices produced significant life-saving benefits .”

I guess they still could be used to try and “shock” some sense into a mouthy teenager though.

Finding My Voice

When I started this blog back in October I thought I had a clear idea of what I wanted it to be.

I am now rethinking that clarity.

After an initial burst of posts about my own cardiac event and subsequent posts about other guy’s heart attack stories I began to run out of steam. To anyone who has been following this blog that is pretty obvious. My last post was almost a month ago when I graduated from cardiac rehab.

In a way that was a turning point for me. Once I had completed the rehabilitation I actually felt like my old self again. I am back running at a pace that is pretty darn close to my pre heart attack pace and I am seriously considering entering a 10K race this April.

That is not to say that I feel like I am cured. I realize that this would be pure folly. You don’t “cure” heart disease; you simply learn how to live with it.

I am learning how to live with it. I am much more cognizant of what I eat and drink and I no longer consider exercise to be an optional activity. I am growing comfortable with these changes too. Oh sure, I still miss the buzz of three cups of black, caffeine infused coffee. Decaf just doesn’t give me the same thrill. On the other hand, I really don’t miss fried food and I have found that I enjoy eating heart healthy. It actually makes me feel better!

Don’t get me wrong though. I am still no saint. I still enjoy drinking more than a couple glasses of wine and I have no intention of giving up steak. It is just that now I savor those indulgences a bit more. If I am going to have some wine it is going to be GOOD wine. The same goes for steak. If I am going to have a steak is going to be USDA Prime.

The bottom line is that I have adjusted to my new life with heart disease. I understand that there is a very real possibility that, no matter what preventive measures I take, I will have another heart attack at some point in my life. I have simply decided to accept my fate and get on with life.

So what about this blog then?

I have been told that depression is pretty common amongst people who have had a heart attack. A buddy of mine recently told me that depression is more prevalent in heart attack survivors than in cancer survivors.

Fortunately that has not been the case with me. I have a rather enlightened view of my new heart reality. I like poking fun at myself and being a little irreverent at times. Perhaps that is my own personal coping mechanism. Perhaps that is something that may help others in dealing with their own reality of life with heart disease.
So I guess I’ll continue here, sharing things I find that may be of interest about life with heart disease. In my mind this is kind of like a heart attack club but you don’t necessarily have to have had one to join.

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.