I just got off the phone with my brother, step brother actually but he is in better shape than I first suspected. He is a year and a month younger than I am but had to have a quadruple bypass nine years ago.
He had a mild heart attack, two arteries were 99% plugged. They slipped a stent through his groin and opened one back up and said that was good enough for now.
He has to follow up with his regular doctor and map out a long term plan now but he should be out of the hospital tomorrow. I also got an update on my Step Mom from his wife who I just love and she is quite a bit less hysterical about everything. Apparently even though Mom isn’t in anything resembling good shape, apparently she isn’t at Death’s Door as I had been led to believe. There is still a bunch of work to do there.
Anyways, I jus wanted to relay some good news and thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.
I haven’t got an update on my buddy Leigh’s Dad who also had a stroke yesterday back East so I would appreciate you sending some good thoughts his way.
The Rental management people were here for their damn inspection and for the fist time it wasn’t quite so contentious. It’s still pretty plain that me and that guy don’t care for each other but at least so far there didn’t seem to be any issues. We shall see, he actually got into the garage unsupervised with his camera and was in there a bit. I may or may not hear that the owner don’t like me having a little shop going in there.
I’ll deal with that if it comes back to me.
Great!
Things are looking up.
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It’s a hard time of year for anyone to have health issues (not that there’s ever a good time). Hope all will have fast recoveries! Why would a rental inspection person have unsupervised access and need a camera???
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I wasn’t in there behind him to keep an eye out. They got crafty and have been sending a cute little blonde chick with him so that I have to keep an eye on one or the other so that they can snoop around. They take pictures of everything to keep a running documentary of wear,tear and damage to the place. I’m sure when we finally move out they are going to try and make me pay for a bunch of shit.
It’s gonna be hey Buddy, remember that deposit I had to pay when I moved in here?
Keep the fucker and have a nice day.
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Not sure why they wouldn’t stent both occluded arteries. You have three main arteries feeding the heart and you need ALL THREE of them to keep the heart muscle oxygenated. They were already there with the guide wire….they could have placed a second stent in a matter of minutes. Sounds like you’re brother got his facts mixed up or his doctor screwed up. Either way he needs that second stent….and soon……before he loses any more myocardial tissue.
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Likely a lot more to the clinical picture than the third hand info we have here. Phil did mention a nine year old quad-bypass, so his cardiac plumbing is quite a mess to begin with.
My wife woke me up one Sunday morning at about 4 am with chest pain. We lived about a ten minute drive from the medical center we both worked at, so I got her into the car and rolled up the ER ramp that ten minutes later. They wheeled her into ER, had a 12 lead EKG hooked up in about two minutes, and it took them fifteen seconds to say “Call the Cath Lab!” About two hours after that she was in Coronary Care Unit with a stent in place. The cardiologist who did the procedure introduced himself to me as “I’m just the plumber here.” That was about five years ago, and she’s fully recovered from it all. The state of the art of cardiac care nowadays is truly amazing.
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Amen! The Aortic Valve Surgery I had was “just another routine surgery”, I wasn’t worried. It amazed me afterward just how much better I felt with my heart working properly, lemme tells ya!
Modern medicine is truly amazing!!
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Awesome! All good, peace
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Great news! In 2003, I also had a mild heart attack. I ended up at a Cath
lab and had a stent inserted. The first symptom was shortness of breath.
As I was lying in the grass, it was the most peaceful and serene moment
I ever experienced. Having worked in a hospital I knew what it was. I owe
my life to my cellphone. When they drilled into my crotch and weaved it
up to my chest I still had trouble breathing. When the doctor deployed
the stent, he asked me how do you feel now? I was about to say no
change, but before the words came out I was breathing normally.
Just a few decades earlier, it would have meant balloon angioplasty
or open-heart surgery.
If Joe Biden is our next president, this is our future. It is an image of
a Venezualan hospital:
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When the bidet people experience this it will give them great pause. No sympathy from me that they did not know their history.
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That is good news, Phil. I’m glad to hear it.
On my front: Dad is walking better, has eaten, and his speech is improving. It isn’t much, but it is progress. Because of our Noreaster, apparently the hospital was short staffed. So, I don’t think we’ll hear anything about the MRI until late tomorrow.
Thanks to everyone for the well wishes.
Leigh
Whitehall, NY
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Glad to hear there is improvement so quickly, that is a good sign.
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GOOD TO HEAR, Phil – you (AND Leigh) deserve a break. You are all in our thoughts and prayers, Stay safe and happy and (relatively) healthy!!
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Best wishes and God bless
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What a bunch of clapped-out old farts that you have reading this blog, Phil. Hey, I havn’t seen a recent movie in many years, so what is the cultural reference in the photo, the actor and film?
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Ha, you’re asking me?
I have no idea. I have seen about a hundred different memes with it though so I went and found the original image.
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Righto, that must be why it seems familiar. I’ve visited many blogs through your site, I must have seen one of those memes.
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Calvin Candie from “Django Unchained”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1853728/
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Great news, remember the power of prayer works ask me how I know. Good for both of you and know that God is not done with them or us yet, more work to do. God speed.
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Glad to hear it man! This year can’t end soon enough
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Good to hear things are looking up, or at least less down, health wise.
Whether the cardiologist screwed up is unclear without more info, and without seeing the actual cardiac catheterization (cath) films. The bottom line is whether opening a particular blockage will do good or harm.
Think of the myocardium (heart muscle) as of three types: 1) normal/healthy/functional, 2) hibernating/stunned (alive, but too oxygen starved to function/pump), 3) dead (scar/fibrous tissue, no living muscle cells). In an acute heart attack (brand new blockage) #1 is threatened, and you have to open the blockages quickly, or it will die. As to long-term (chronic) blockages, if that artery feeds #2 there might be benefit from opening it, because the affected muscle is still alive but barely hanging on. If it’s #3, you can actually do harm by opening the artery. Getting blood to the scar does no good because it’s DED dead. But you might be diverting blood from neighboring living tissue (a form of “steal”) and that can be harmful. I can get into details about viability studies, MRI scar imaging, fractional flow reserve, etc, but it’s probably more info than anyone wants.
Now it’s even more complicated because of the 4-vessel bypass (CABG, coronary artery bypass graft, say “cabbage” like the vegetable). He probably has a LIMA (artery) graft and the rest are vein grafts (SVG). Vein grafts don’t last long, and 9 years is getting close to expiration date (it varies by person). LIMAs should last longer than 9 years. If grafts are blocked (which is probably what happened here), how much work you can do on them depends. You can balloon and stent LIMAs, what you can do in SVGs is more limited because the grafts are more fragile.
TL;DR is it’s unclear why the cardiologist intervened on only one blockage, but there are a lot of possible reasons why that was the smart thing to do. (Or the guy could be an idiot, can’t tell from here.)
If there is a general take home message, get your cardiac intervention done at a high-volume center where the operator does several per day. Try to avoid the dude who does like 3 a month. Experience really matters. (An in-law went through a lot of bullshit with his local rural Georgia heart doc. Long story short(er) they fucked around for days, did a fuckload of dumb/unneeded tests, then recommended re-do CABG, which is quite risky. In-law finally went to the big hospital in Savannah and the EXPERIENCED interventional cardiologist there opened the two blockages in the cath lab in under 90 minutes.)
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One more critically important tidbit folks. DO NOT PERMIT any cath lab procedure that does not have cardiac surgery available down the hall!!!
My mother’s cardiologist wanted to do a stent on her at her home town medical center. The nearest open heart surgery was 70 miles away! Even by ambulance that’s too far. I had a hissy fit and insisted she get her stent done at the place I worked, 125 miles away. Our medical center does 8 to 10 open heart cases a week, and they’re damn good at it. I worked blood bank, and they rarely even need a unit for transfusion they’re that good.
Mom’s stent went just fine, but if it becomes an “uh-oh!” moment, surgery is needed RIGHT NOW!!!
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