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.