Sunday, July 29th, was shaping up to be a really nice day, and then I died.
No kidding. Really.
It was right around 8:15 A.M. and I had just finished beating one of the top racquetball players in the state, the first game anyway, but because we had an odd number of guys, and I knew we had planned for about a 3 hour play time, decided to let my opponent play the other guy who had gotten there a few minutes after we had started to play, while I sat out and watched. So there I sat, watching two of my other friends through the back-wall glass, when all of a sudden I awoke in a hospital.
Talk about being confused. I was surrounded by my wife, a number of friends, a couple of nurses and some doctors. When I asked “what happened”, I was told that I had passed out while sitting in the chair at the club; while at the same time executing a 2 & ½ gainer; and landing on the floor behind the chair, where I preceded to go into some sort of seizure, shortly before my heart stopped and I died.
Luckily for me, there was a medical doctor playing on an adjacent court. He came right over, about the same time that a club staff member brought over an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) device. This piece of equipment is required by state law, to be readily available in each health club, YMCA, etc. Anyway, he hooked me up to it (or so I’m told) and turned it on. It goes through a series of self-tests, then looks at the patient (victim) and then determines to either administer a shock or not. In my case, it recognized that I required one, as my heart had stopped. It was that machine, coupled with the fast acting doctor and gym staff that allows me to relate to you this story. Otherwise, you’d be reading my name as part of an FCIF, and knowing pilot humor, a number of you would be saying “Thank God, at least that old bastard won’t be coming back as a captain if the Age 60 rule changes.”
Anyway, the neurologist, in consultation with the cardiologist, prescribed a bunch of tests to figure out what happened to me. Angioplasty was the final procedure that was required as it is the definitive test of the heart. Prior to that, I took a electrocardiogram, echocardiogram, a stress test as well as a nuclear stress test, a bunch of heart related and neurologically related tests (even though they probably didn’t know I was a Fedex pilot. go figure) as well as other tests that would provide both information about my condition, as well as some financial aid for their kids’ college tuition. A very fair tradeoff in my opinion.
Initially they expected to go into my heart, via the angioplasty, stick in a few stints, call me cured, and make a 2 P.M. tee time. It reminded me of the original M.A.S.H. movie. Anyway, once inside, they found a large number of blockages of the coronary arteries, so they backed their angioplasty probe out of my heart, back down through my leg and out of my groin. An hour later the cardiologist was in my recovery room, explaining to me that the arteries that carried blood to my heart, so that the heart itself could do it’s pumpy thing, were, for the most part, mostly blocked, and that they would have to do By-pass surgery on me. Being a Type A person, like the majority of us are, I was at least relieved that they had found the problem, and that we should get “right on it.”
Surgery happened the next afternoon at about 1 P.M. and lasted until about 7 P.M. While in surgery, they did 5 heart bypasses, which basically gives me a new heart. Recovery was, well, the worst event that has ever happened to me in my long and very eventful life. I awoke from the anesthesia, many hours later to find myself completely disoriented, with tubes sticking out of every part of my body, and my arms and legs tied down to the bed, so that I wouldn’t pull out the tubes that had been placed down into both my throat as well into my lungs. The sensation of not being able to take a full breath, and thereby not getting enough oxygen, was overwhelming, and very frightening and debilitating, partly due to not being able to catch my breath, and partly because I couldn’t pull the tubes out of my mouth to let me draw in air. I only hope I don’t have nightmares for years to come about that moment. Anyway, they soon removed those two tubes and then they moved me from a Post-Op recovery room, to a normal cardio-recovery room, where I spent the next few days, being prodded, probed, plugged, filled, and emptied. About 24 hours after the surgery, I was up walking around the floor with the help of a walker and under the watchful eye of a nurse. Soon I was cleared solo.
I left the hospital this past Tuesday afternoon and have been home since then, enjoying the sensation of only being woken up in the middle of the night by the urge to pee, as opposed to any of the other 50 reasons that they would wake me up every few hours, each day, at the hospital.
Here’s the interesting part, the part that I wanted to really share with you, because everything that happened above, is sort of just filler to the important lesson (that I learned) below: But before I share what I learned with you, here’s my personal data, the type of information that they looked at in the hospital to help them understand why I came down with this problem to begin with: I’m a white male, aged 61; 5’10” and 178lbs; currently (at least it was thought) in excellent health, but having survived two bouts with cancer, the latest one being in the year 2000; a non-smoker from birth; a non-drinker from birth; with the only possible bad habit of exercising too much and too frequently; a red meat eater, but not to excess; a very uncomplicated lifestyle; with a normal degree of stress; and parents who suffered from heart disease.
Now, here’s what I’ve learned: Each and every trait that I’ve outlined in the preceding paragraph could have played a part in this disease. Certainly smoking and/or drinking to excess, both increase your odds of getting heart disease, as does being overweight, which probably has a much more detrimental effect than the majority of the other issues. Exercise and diet, along with blood pressure and cholesterol lowering medications will help keep it at bay. But the big winner in this heart disease lottery is Heredity. If your parents had it, there’s better than even money that you either have the beginnings of it right now, or will have the disease, itself, in the future. There are some things you can do to help yourself, if you have bad genes. Watch your weight, eat right, exercise, take meds, and finally get yourself tested with periodic stress tests and angioplasties. It’s my understanding that the angioplasty is the definitive test for heart disease.
So, anyway, that’s my story. Hope you enjoyed it, while at the same time, gained some understanding of heart disease. The key is prevention, because, believe me, you don’t want to subject yourself to the cure. For now, I’m walking about a half a mile, 5 times a day, allowing my body the time it needs to heal, while at the same time trying to build my strength and stamina back to pre-problem levels. The doctors say I should be "better than new", what with a brand new heart beating in my chest. My breast bone should be healed fully in about 8 weeks, and I’m hoping by then to be strong enough to be able to get back on the court. After all, I still have to finish that match, what with me leading 1 game to none and all.
