Seven years on

Seven years ago on this day I had a massive heart attack that nearly killed me. Thanks to the cardiologist on duty that night in the Baptist Hospital in Knoxville (Dr. Stephen Hoadley who is still my cardiologist in case you're keeping score at home), Sparky (my long suffering girlfriend who looked after me so well in those dark days when our world changed forever), and the stocky little bald surgeon who did my quadruple bypass, I'm still around.

Hopefully I can cheat death for another 30 to 40 years so I can keep writing this blog.

Five years ago...

...my love affair with cigarettes,
candy bars, and fatty foods came to a crashing halt when I had a heart attack right before I was going to go onstage with my improv comedy group in Knoxville, TN.

I had been having pain in the upper center of my chest for moths before that fateful night but I dismissed it as indigestion. Turns out my heart was trying to shut down because my arteries were clogged. I also had all the classic signs (high blood pressure, pain in my arms when an artery shut down a year or so before my heart attack, a family history of heart disease) of having heart problems for a few years leading up to the evening of August 4th, 2004 but all the doctors who I had seen, all of whom were graduates of the ETSU school of medicine and who's names I'll gladly give you in person so you can avoid them like the plague, kept misdiagnosing my symptoms, thereby prolonging my problems and weakening my already bad heart.

That night in Knoxville I was feeling lightheaded as I walked in to the nightclub where we performed and I was also short of breath. I walked in, climbed the steps to the third floor, sat down, and began gasping for air. Next thing I knew I woke up on the floor, I was sweating buckets, gasping for air, and looking up at the people who were hovering over me. Then a few minutes later the ambulance got there and they whisked me off to the hospital where I met this guy:
That's Dr. Stephen Hoadley my cardiologist. He saved my life that night and because of that we still see each other once or twice a year. He likes to see me partially naked when we get together so I take my shirt off and I let him feel me up. Then for some crazy reason I have to pay him, instead of it being the other way around. Actually, he's a good guy and a damn fine cardiologist.

Dr. Hoadley put a stent in me five years ago tonight. But in the long run a stent was only a stop gap solution, so about a month later I had a quadruple bypass, Bill Clinton had his around the same time as I had mine. If you've ever wondered what they do to you in a bypass operation, this is what they do after they saw open your breastbone:
I had four of those. And in about 8 to 10 years I'll have to have another bypass because the bypasses don't last forever. But mine will last a quite a while because I not taken smoking back up since my heart troubles. I am five years free of cigarettes and about it's been about 12 years since I smoked marijuana. I also cut out a lot of the bad fat in my diet and I stopped eating and drinking stuff that has High Fructose Corn Syrup in it.

So, so far I've beaten the disease, with the help of my girlfriend Sparky who has been a true champion through out all my health problems and without whom I'd probably have been long gone by now, that claimed my sister, my mother, and a couple of my uncles on both sides of my family. However I've got quite a ways to go before I surpass my Uncle Bob, he had about the same thing happen to him when he was my age, even though he didn't smoke a pack and a half of Marlboro Lights a day, and he's still around today. I believe he's in his mid to late 70's so that gives me something to shoot for.

Happy anniversary to me and if you ever have pains in the upper middle of your chest, don't wait to get them checked out, go to the emergency room if you have to, just make sure you get checked out, it may just save your life.

I know my heart will go on

I just got back from my cardiologist appointment in Knoxville, I have to go every six months for a check up to placate the douchebags at Met Life Insurance, my last employer had a disability policy with them and lucky for me they did or I would have been without income for the year and a half it took me to get my SSDI benefits. No worries on this trip which was good news, Dr. Hoadley told me I seem to be doing well and he says that he's glad to see me coming back in these six month increments because that means he's been doing a good job of keeping me alive.

He and I have a funny doctor patient relationship. He was the cardiologist on duty the night I had my heart attack and he was the one who put the stent in me that night. He also was the guy who recommended I get bypass surgery and despite my sometimes bad behavior towards the medical people in Baptist Hospital in Knoxville, he's still my cardiologist.

At one time I pissed him off and he told me to find another cardiologist closer to my home, it's an hour and a half drive to his office from our home, but we've since smoothed things out and Sparky and I still make the trip every six months to see him. After he found out I was one of those patients who reads up on his disease he treats me with much more respect than he would some idiot who never modifies their behavior or lifestyle after a life changing heart attack. He also found out I used to do improv comedy and so he likes to joke around with me when I go see him. Here's a snippet of our conversation in his office today:

Dr. Hoadley: You need to find a personal physician so you can see them in emergencies.
Me: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will. I promise.
Dr. H: You also need to have one because it's a long drive up here and something may happen to you, no let me rephrase that, something will happen to you eventually...
Me: Like?
Dr. H: Something like an accident or you could get cancer. So that's why...
Me: Well, odds are one of us is going to get cancer at some point.
Dr. H: Most likely it'll be you. (Laughing)
Me: Geez, you need to work on that bedside manner. You're a real barrel of laughs and full of bad news today.
Dr. H: (Laughing) Well, as long as I'm giving you bad news, you're ugly too.
Me: Sez you baldy. (Pointing to my still hair covered head) See? I still have my hair. Oh, what happened to yours? Why it all fell out! Nah, nah, nah.

He's no Henny Youngman but the guy does have some comedic game and he's a nice guy so you can see why I don't mind driving an hour and a half to see him instead of finding some quack around here in Johnson City.

Unfortunately, almost everyone else in his office sucks ass. There receptionists are a group of women who Sparky and I have dubbed The Coven due to their rudeness and witchy bitchy behavior. They scream out people's names and have no problem shouting out personal info about patients if they like. They seem to think that because the majority of their patients are elderly that all people who come into the office are heard of hearing. The gal who took my blood today also suffered from thinking I was deaf as well. I was standing not four feet from her when she shouted my name and demanded that I follow her. I asked to to not shout at me and she seemed to think I was joking. She said loudly, "I hope I don't have to shout at you." When I told her I was not deaf and that I would appreciate it if she used her "indoor voice" when speaking to me she finally got the picture.

But having a doctor who will joke around with me while he makes sure I stay alive makes me keep going back to Baptist Hospital in Knoxville every six months.

After we left with my good cardiac report and a promise to schedule a cardio stress test later, Sparky and I went and had lunch at the Gourmet Market on Kingston Pike. It was meh, nothing special but we enjoy browsing in the kitchen and cooking utensil part of the place. After that we hightailed it to one of our favorite Knox-Vegas haunts, McKay's Used Books and CD's where I picked up a couple of travel and food related books and a Kirsty MacColl CD and Sparky bought herself some novels by Peter Mayle and Anne Tyler as well as a travel book that I'm sure I'll end up reading someday as well.

All in all not a bad day and I sure am glad I'm home now so I can blog like crazy and read all your wonderful blogs too.

Monkey 2.0, finally the mystery of why I blog so much is solved

It was almost three years ago when my love affair with trans fats, red meat, and cigarettes came to a crashing end when I slumped to the floor in a restaurant/bar in Knoxville TN. I had no idea that I was having a massive heart attack but I had a pretty good idea things were not going well for me that hot Tuesday night.

Wait, let me go back even further than three years to about 4 and a half years ago. I woke up one morning and I showered quickly, got dressed, kissed my sleeping girlfriend goodbye and I left for my appointed rounds on my sales job for Myers Tire Supply. But shortly after I left I noticed the I had developed an incredible pain in both my forearms and it shot all the way down to my wrists. I could barely steer my truck, hold my pen and order pad, carry my product catalogs, or hold a Marlboro Light to my lips without giving myself sharp searing pains in my arms and wrists. It got so bad that I finally stopped at one of those shitty walk in clinics and asked to see a doctor. They said they did not take my insurance so I left and drove to one nearer to my house. Finally I found one nearer to home and I went in. After a bit some quack came in and he asked me what was wrong. I told him about the pains in my arms and he gave me the once over. He took my BP and said it was sky high. He left and then when he came back he wrote out a prescription for Vioxx and he told me I had a variation of Parvo Virus. I figured out later the pain was from some of my arteries shutting down.

I thought that I must have picked it up from out from behind our condo. My gf and I used to play tennis quit a bit on a court where our idiot neighbors let their dogs shit and piss. So I took the quack at his word and I went home for the rest of the day. I still had searing pains all day and all night. It slacked off the next day so I went back to work.

Fast forward to a few months before I collapsed on the floor in that restaurant. I had been having tightness and pain in my chest off and on all that summer. I passed it off as heart burn or acid reflux. It would come and go so I thought nothing of it.

Now fast forward to that night I fell off my chair in Patrick Sullivans in Knoxville. After I collapsed I passed out for a bit and when I came to some dudes were fanning me and asking if I was okay. I had trouble breathing, in fact I could not catch my breath because it felt like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir was standing on my chest. I was sweating buckets and I felt like I was going to vomit. Some astute person finally called an ambulance and they came and got me and they took me to Baptist Hospital in downtown Knoxville.

My pal Todd rode with me and he stayed with me until they figured out what was going on. The cardiologist on duty that night Dr. Stephen Hoadley told me that I was having a massive heart attack. He told me that if I wanted to live that they had to put a stent in one of my arteries to let the blood out of my heart. Even though I had no health insurance, the company I worked for at the time had cancelled my insurance because my sales figures fell below the targets they had set for me, I told him to go ahead and put that stent thingy in me. I told Todd to call my gf and to tell her what was going on, she was back home in Johnson City which is about 100 miles east of Knoxville.

Dr. Stephen Hoadley

So Dr. Hoadley puts a stent in me and my life, and my girlfriends life, got turned upside down. I asked him about going back to work but he said to not worry about that and that there was a chance that I may never go back to work. I was shocked. So was my gf.

They discharged me about a little less than a week later and Hoadley told me that I may have to have bypass surgery, if my weakened heart could take it that is. It seems that my heart had been bad for quite some time and I did not know it. It was enlarged, almost grotesquely so.

I went back to see my cardiologist and he said that I would probably be a good candidate for bypass surgery but he would let a heart surgeon make the final decision. So I went up another floor in the hospital and I met with a stocky little barrel chested guy who was a heart surgeon. He examined me and said sure I could stand up to the surgery and that if I wanted to have it done I could get it done in about three weeks from then. I looked at my gf and I did not think twice and I said, "Let's do it."

So three weeks after meeting the chest cutter I had quadruple bypass surgery. This was right at the same time that Bill Clinton got his, almost to the day. Trust me when I tell you that you do not want your chest cut open and have to be on a heart lung machine or have a tube shoved down your throat, but if you do, then it might just save your life even though it will hurt like crazy afterwards.

This all took place just before my 42nd birthday. How is it that something like this could happen to me at such a young age? Genetics is one reason. Both sides of my family have heart disease problems, and on my fathers side we have not only heart disease we also have mental illness. I guess I was lucky to get only one of those traits, he said with a maniacal laugh to his invisible minions.

Another reason I had heart problems at a young age was my diet. This is a typical conversation I might have had when I was younger:

Me: What's for dinner?
My Aunt: Meat.
Me: Fried meat?
My Aunt: Fried meat, baked meat, grilled meat, boiled meat.

Me: Vegetables?
My Aunt: Not many but what there are will be, will be swimming in lard.

Me: Desert?
My Aunt: Meat covered in jam and meat cakes with chocolate, with a side of meat.

And all of that meat was red meat or fried chicken or pork.

I also used to smoke a pack and a half of cigarettes a day. I quit cold turkey the night they put a stent in me.

Stress and lack of proper exercise also did me in. I went to live with a rageaholic control freak after my mother passed away and I must admit I learned all her bad habits and I took them to the nth degree.

My gf did her best with me when we got together, she taught me to eat better but we still ate lots of trans fats, who knew all that chocolate cake was so bad for me? She also got me to calm down some and she taught me to let some things go. After the heart attack and the bypass surgery she was a saint. My bad habits and genetics put her through hell but she stood by me and she nursed me back to a reasonable healthy place. I would have been dead without her, and I know some days she wishes she could kill me but thank goodness she doesn't.

So the February after my heart problems my cardiologist told me that while the surgery helped me and that I would live many more years because I got it, it could not correct the damage I had done to my heart previously. He also ran some tests and found out my ejection fraction, that's the rate blood flows out of my heart, was hovering near 30%, which is the level the Social Security Administration says someone is disabled. So Dr. Hoadley put me on disability.
To look at me you can not tell I have a weakened heart or that my ef is low. I look healthy and I feel healthy but I know my heart is damaged and that the stress of working will make it worse faster. I'm not allowed to engage in some activities that will make my heart rate go up drastically, like playing tennis, and it's not good for me to be outside very long when it's over 85 or below 40 degrees. But all in all I'm glad to be alive. I can deal with those limits and we focus on what I can do and we do not dwell on what I can't do anymore.

My diet has changed dramatically, no more McDonald's, no more chocolate cake (except for when we have our birthdays), no more sausage, no more red meat five times a week, no more trans fats, and as little salt as possible. We eat much better now and I've learned to cook more Indian and Chinese foods because they can be made with little fat and they have a high amount of flavor.

So now you know why I blog so much. I have lots of time on my hands but when it gets a bit cooler I'll play golf a couple of times a week, the walking is good for me, but I'll may still blog a bunch because sometimes I get a touch of insomnia. But I'd rather have that than have another heart attack. Them things are a bitch. And if you don't have a great girlfriend like mine to help you afterwards, then you're screwed Sparky.