We didn’t get much sleep Wednesday night. It was cool and rainy during the day. I decided to exercise inside the motorhome instead of going outside for a walk. Light jogging back and forth within the 40 foot length limit. It felt great to run a little at the time, but there was chest pain in the afternoon. By evening we were at the Emergency Room at Boulder Community Hospital. (Daughter Becky beat us there.) The E.R. doctor declared my heart was trying to have a heart attack and just hadn’t managed to accomplish it yet. He gave me a handful of Aspirin to chew and swallow, put me on Heparin to prevent any clotting, and sent me upstairs to Cardiac Care. Cardiac Care monitored me through the night. Judy slept on a fold-out bed next to me. I use the term “slept” loosely. There was a steady stream of monitoring going on. Tom and Kathy took care of Annie for us. Becky, Brian, and Matt helped us get through the next morning. By Thursday afternoon, I had two more stents in my heart, but also had an unexpected bonus.
I had been thinking about this ahead of time, so as a proactive measure, just before the operation, I told the Cardiologist what I wanted. I wanted a solution that did not involve me taking Plavix for the next year (I had to take it for a year last time and it kicked my ass.), and I wanted him to not just fix my heart, I wanted him to improve it. For the last two and a half years, I have been appreciating that I’m alive, but complaining that the last heart operation, while opening up the critical primary artery (LAD) to save me, also cut off flow to a principal diagonal branch, reducing my cardiovascular capacity to the point where even though I could still exercise by walking, I couldn’t run. So I asked the Cardiologist, as if I really meant it, to do something to not only keep me alive, but improve what I came in with. Make my heart better.
For the first request, the Cardiologist told me if he needed to insert more stents in my heart, he would need to use medicated stents. Just like before, the body wants to throw off clots in response to medicated stents, so taking Plavix to prevent clots for a year is an absolute. He didn’t exactly roll his eyes when I made the second request, to make the heart better than before, but he didn’t say anything positive either. In fact, he didn’t comment on it at all.
They went in and found that the first two stents from 2007 were in great shape: no blockages there. They found two additional blockages that needed to be reopened with stents though. The bonus: while he was in there, he stuck a wire through the wall of one of the old stents into the old diagonal peripheral artery that had been cut-off during the previous operation. He made a big enough opening to insert a balloon and inflate it. The long inactive artery opened up and blood started to flow through it. I’ve got the peripheral artery back too! Who knew such a thing could happen after all this time. He says I should be able to run again! First I need to let the hole in the artery in my leg heal so I don’t suffer a blowout, then I can resume exercise and test the theory.
They kept me through Thursday night and sent me home today, Friday. Oh, and he says altitude should be no problem now too. We can relax and go to the reunion.
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