Coming Home to Ourdocsin

I'm a little confused. Feels like I've been away a long time.

Part of my writing-time has been taken up with yoga and light-weight-workouts. But the major portion of my time has been monopolized by a rigorous Cardio-ReHabilitation program I've recently undertaken.

Five months ago I had a health crisis that resulted when a prescribed endoscopy and an angioplasty hit head-on. BIG CRASH! Since then I've been preoccupied with a carefully monitored Cardio-ReHab program at Covenant Hospital. Three mornings a week I report to the laboratory attached to my local hospital, strap-on a heart-monitor, and try to keep my heart within a prescribed "normal" range while tromping merrily along on a treadmill, pedaling ferociously on an Airdyne stationary bike, and whirling the handles of an Upper Body Exerciser -- a half hour on each of the first two, and fifteen minutes on the UBE. I've had to patiently work UP to those figures. I've worked hard. But I'm slowly regaining my old strength.

Trust me! A guy could have a heart-attack doing all this kinda stuff.

Actually, NOT SO!

We experimental white mice all wear a monitor attached to four electrodes -- two measure heartbeat speed and regularity beneath each collar-bone, and two more keep a similar record from near my two lower floating ribs. This monitoring process produces a running picture of cardiac performance on a tv monitor that one cautious Exercise Physiologist watches like a hawk. Three other EP's try to enhance the performance of my group by whacking the backs of our legs with switches and poking us in the butt with pointy sticks. A fine sado-masochistic time is had by all. This program is just the sort of suffering I've always enjoyed.

I think I may be doing well. Only once, so far, has one of the EP's -- over-seeing my cardiac stream on the computer screen -- shrieked and made alarming faces, while simultaneously yanking me off the bike. But I didn't feel anything amiss. Spooky! All this alarm. . . and as far as I could tell, my heart was performing as I always thought it had.

Little do any of us know?! I thought I knew better than she what was going on in my chest.

But NOPE! When I made her SHOW me the source of all her alarm, there they were: Pulmonary Ventricular Contractions -- PVC's: ugly little pointy-blips, pelting down like angry rain-drops all over my customarily "regular" heart-beat patterns. And I couldn't FEEL the irregularity. Strange. You'd think a guy could FEEL his heart racing pell-mell along, as it panted and flipped around inside his chest .

But NO! "No sense, no feeling!" as my Sainted Gramma frequently opined while watching my antics when I was growing up. Only this time, Gramma is long gone. . .having died at approximately my current age. . .probably from flashing PVC's. I never knew exactly what took her -- her death certificate said "Heart Disease." But it might be that my "antics" had some woeful impact that shortened her life.

I'm told these PVC's run in families. Gramma died in 1959. And owing largely to improved medical procedures, I have already outlived her by almost seven years. Clearly, this is a better time to be alive. . .and an easier time to stay that way. But I digress.

About these PVC's: this recent departure from accustomed heart regularity surprised and worried me. All my life I've exercised vigorously. In early middle-age I trained-for and ran marathons. Over the more-recent years of my aging I've become a vigorous long-distance walker. Four or five days a week, before my recent set-back, I walked at a vigorous pace, no less than an hour out, an hour back. Sometimes as long as two hours out, two hours back. And in fact, I never experienced -- that is, FELT -- the PVC'S or any discomfort associated with them. Possibly there weren't any such symptoms. . .though they may well have developed over time as I aged.

Until my new doctor found a strange sound in my heart, and authenticated her worries with a heart-catheterization, I thought my heart was sound. I should have expected she would find something troublesome. I'd been experiencing an occasional sharp pain beneath my left shoulder-blade near the end of my walks. And over the past year I've been returning from my walks feeling tired. All this discomfort, I rationalized, were simply the result of my inevitable aging process -- a process I was determined to ignore. Or at least NOT surrender to. Many aging athletes, look for excuses to slow down or miss a workout. Not me. I'm too much of an idiot to malinger.

Compulsive athletes of all ages train themselves to ignore symptoms, explain them away, or defy them. As would any other NUTTY person. But my wife's recent death and the relentless-creep of my aging process have perhaps increased my nuttiness. I'm less intelligently-careful nowadays. It's not enough for me to maintain. I feel an impulse to improve! (Who knows? Dead may be better!)

So anyway, my new doctor pressed me to have a variety of tests and exploratory surgical procedures, so she could better understand the degree of my physical deterioration, though she smiled as she said "physical health" instead. She's the glass-half-FULL sort. Still, she had, no doubt, already reckoned from our introductory interview that my mental health was beyond repair. So she scheduled a whole bunch of tests and surgical procedures she hoped would develop a baseline for her "study" (as she said) of my physical health. . .which she resolved to improve.

I got a surprise when I saw what she had seen on my most recent EKG. The heart catheterization she then ordered revealed that all three major arteries on the left side of my heart were blocked about 98%. So she had my heart-guy roto-root them and place some stents. The before and after pictures astonished me. BEFORE, those arteries appear as piddly-little strings all full of blockages. AFTER, they appear large as my index finger, engorged with flowing blood. What'll they think of next?! These days they can fix anything.

So, my eyes popped out when I saw the improvements in that AFTER-picture, and I thought: "Hmmmmnnnn!? A marathon in my future?" But my surgeon -- apparently reading my so-called mind -- cut THAT thought short, with: "Nope. . .we have to do considerable work before your heart FUNCTIONS as well as it LOOKS! (Good thing he doesn't even know about my destroyed knee replacement, and the sadly-worn condition of most of my other joints. )

He put me to work immediately. Cardio-Rehabilitation has taken over a large chunk of my every day.

I work three days with monitored supervision at the hospital, and I work at least three more days at home, using one of those chest-strap monitors and an automatic blood-pressure gizmo. I work methodically, INTO and OUT-OF my home regimens. Whether or not I'm "throwing off PVC's" -- as my OT's so colorfully put it -- I have no way of knowing. Can't feel 'em. But I AM feeling progressively stronger as the weeks roll out. And I've regained most of the strength that slipped away from before and after the angioplasty. Soon I want to improve.

I've also overcome a more-serious surgical mishap that occurred in November. I'm especially thankful. . .because this past Thanksgiving month I very nearly didn't survive. One of the exploratory surgeries was one of those lovingly intrusive endoscopies we all enjoy so much. As I said above, he removed a bunch of benign polyps from my lower bowel.

Once he removed the polyps, he cauterized the hole, which left one large scab on my bowel. Five days later, I had the angioplasty, and the stents required the blood-thinner, Plavix. The Plavix washed away the scabs in my bowel, and I lost a frightening amount of blood.

Worse, my heart-guy and my bowel-guy disagreed. One said I definitely needed the Plavix to seat my new stents correctly -- which was true. The other dug his heels in, saying they should take me off Plavix. . .until my bowel healed. Catch-22.

Few people have TWO choices about how they will immediately die. We chose a third option: three critical days without Plavix -- which we hoped would stop the bleeding, while we replaced some of the lost blood. For a brief scary period it seemed like a case of "IN-one-end-OUT-the-other." But I retained much of the new blood and got out of danger.


So that's my Long-Version excuse for not posting to my blog. The short version: I haven't written because my days are filled with Cardio-Rehabilitation tasks, yoga, and regular light-weight workouts. Plus, for a long time I was too dizzy to think and write. But now, the OLD dizzy is gone. My NEW dizzy compulsion is to reclaim my former good physical condition. My home-work-outs are longer and more rigorous. I'm determined to regain my solid physical condition, or at least leave a well-conditioned corpse.

And I plan to do this while posting to my blog.

My daughter and her guy, and my two rambunctious grand-children (five and seven years of age and filled with explosive energy) are providing what care I need -- which is not much. I'm well able to take care of myself.

ONE Worst Thing: Tara is a super-good cook. I've regained my lost weight and MORE. Currently, I'm working-on getting thinner. . .a chancy process, given the current condition of my heart.

TWO Best Things: Cardio-ReHab is strengthening my heart. And this house is once again full of family noises and stories I plan to tell you.

Life is good! I'll tell you about my new family in one of my future blogs.

Meanwhile: I'm back to ourdocsin!
And I intend to post several times a week.