I almost joined the Hereafter

Charles Lent

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Last Sunday night 4/17 I began realizing that I was having some chest pains at about bed time. All I had been doing for several hours before was watching TV. I took a nitro pill and then 15 minutes later I took another. Then I had my wife take me to the hospital (about 3 miles away). The pain went away while I was in the waiting room, but my EKG wasn't quite right, so they kept me.

On Monday my heart doctor (know him well) did a catheterization of my heart and added another stent to my collection. During this surgery my heart stopped beating and they had to shock it into beating again. When I came to my tongue was swollen and hurt significantly, but I wasn't sure why because I wasn't there when it happened. I believe that I bit my tongue when they shocked my heart into beating again. This is a first for me. I've never left in the middle of the surgery before. I've had considerable difficulty eating all week, but I'm doing much better now and my tongue is a normal pink color again.

I had triple bypass and a valve repair back in Feb 2000, and this is my 4th trip back since then, each time after the 2000 trip was just for collecting additional stent hardware. I now have 6 of them. This one, and the last two, were installed through the artery in my left wrist, which is now very bruised and with a Band-Aid covering the tiny wound under my wrist watch. I was back home Wednesday, dealing with visiting relatives and friends from all over this half of the country who wanted to make sure in their own minds that I'm OK again.

I saw my heart doctor again yesterday and he cleared me for work. I'm 74 and retired, but recently took a job with the city. I'm running the small scale C P Huntington amusement park sized train in the city park this year (one of 6 railroad workers for the park train and the soon to be complete new carousel). I've always loved trains and carousels, so this job is for fun and I don't even care if they don't pay me (please don't tell them that). I also design and build exhibits for the State Science Museums part time. I hate doing nothing, but hate watching daytime TV even more, and I've had my fill of both since all this started. I love my active retirement and I'm glad that I can keep doing it.

Attached are pictures of the train and carousel.

Charley
 

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Charles,
Very glad you chose to remain among us this time. One of my friends retired from a hectic job and became an engineer for the train at Busch Gardens Williamsburg for several years. He loved it and I bet you will enjoy your train too.
 
I've been there, and it ain't no fun at all. I am curious; did they stent the replacement arteries? I had quad bypass, and inside a year the smallest of the bypasses was blocked again. I wondered why they didn't stent it, although they said they wouldn't worry about that one if the others are OK. Take care.
 
The train and carousel look like a lot of fun. The rest didn't sound like so much :eek: Glad you got in quick and hopefully it's fixed up enough to keep it rolling for a good while so you can keep enjoying the other!
 
Glad everything ended well, that train looks like giving a lot of fun and the carousel is gorgeous. One thing on my to do list is to carve a carousel horse, which I haven't done yet for lack of space to put it.
 
I've been there, and it ain't no fun at all. I am curious; did they stent the replacement arteries? I had quad bypass, and inside a year the smallest of the bypasses was blocked again. I wondered why they didn't stent it, although they said they wouldn't worry about that one if the others are OK. Take care.

Roger,

One of my 16 year old bypass arteries was 95% blocked right at the connection with the heart artery when they looked at it this time. He didn't insert a stent, but he used a balloon catheter to open the connection back up and I have full flow there again. They don't make stents for T connections, so I guess this is the best way to fix it. I know I'm not going to last that much longer, but I have a lot of woodworking projects and other things left that I want to do. I hope this surgery at least bought me a few more years. I've had similar work done every year for the last 3 years now. The cost is very high for heart surgery. Fortunately, my health insurance and Medicare pay most of it, but I'm still left with $3-4,000 to pay out of pocket..

My dad had 5 brothers and one sister. All died of heart attacks between the ages of 45 and 55, except for the sister, and all were smokers. I've never smoked, but didn't expect to live much longer than him anyway. My dad was 48 when he died. I was 58 when I had my first heart problem. Back when my dad died, they didn't have much ability to even treat you, much less fix a heart problem. After his first attack at 45, the doctor gave him some nitro pills and sent him home to rest for a month. Nitro Glycerin in very small doses enlarges your arteries to make blood flow better. It also gives you major mygrain type headaches. (I'll take the headache over the heart pain any day). Taking aspirin thins your blood to make it flow better, especially through restricted portions of the arteries. This is about all they could do for my dad back in 1961. I now take a time release version of the nitro pills every morning and carry the quick acting version in my pocket every day. I also take a low dose aspirin every morning and again at night.

I've been here this past 16 years because of what they have learned since my dad's death about heart problems and how to repair them. It's still kind of a Rotor-Rooter method on a micro fine scale, but they are getting better at it. A Stent is a kind of micro sized Chinese finger trap made from stainless steel. They put it on the end of a tiny hollow catheter over a tiny balloon that's attached to the end of the catheter. They somehow steer this catheter to get it in just the right position in the artery restriction, and then they inflate the balloon, stretching the diameter of the stent until it opens up the artery to the size that they want. Then they let the air out of the balloon and remove the catheter, leaving the stent in place to keep the artery restriction held open. Stents aren't always a permanent fix. Sometimes the artery restriction will grow back around the stent and re-plug the artery. They use medicated stents now, to reduce this problem, but it still sometimes happens.

The operating room (Cath Lab) that they use for this has 6 large screen flat panel monitors on a frame with tracks on the ceiling so they can easily move this frame all around. All of your vital signs are displayed on them, as well as several versions of a low dose X-ray image of your heart arteries. They use a hollow catheter to inject tiny amounts of X-ray view-able dye into different areas of your heart and it's arteries and they watch where and how fast it moves. From this, they can see how severely restricted that each artery is. I laid there watching what they were doing (side view of the monitors) and talked to them while they were working on me.

Charley
 
It's good to hear you're doing OK now, Charley! Medical science has sure come a long way!!!

I've been through similar stuff, including my heart stopping when being prepped for bypass surgery in 2010. They hit me twice with the paddles and I was out for a day and a half after surgery. Since then, I had to have two more stents added in 2015, making a total of three hunks of stainless steel and two bypasses now. But, I'm still having birthdays, so all is well.

Speaking of medical science, my father had a series of heart attacks in the 1960s causing damage the docs said would have killed a lesser man. He lived another 20 years but was never the same. He couldn't hold a job anymore but had good disability payments. He spent most of his time on his woodworking, so all was not lost!

After my father had his issues, I was much more aware of what was happening to me. If only the processes that were done to me had been available when dad had his problems!
 
Charles, glad you decided to stay around and enjoy more time with us and the train! They check the suture sites yearly on my arm where they put in the new artery. My doc claims the connections will narrow with time. Modern medicine is a marvel for sure.
 
Thanks everyone. It's good to know that you all care about this newbie.

I'm still taking it real easy, but my 3 acres of lawn was almost a foot high from me not being able to mow it. So this afternoon I mowed the part of it in front of the house. I'll likely do another section tomorrow, and if it doesn't rain on Sunday like they are predicting, I may get it all finished by Sunday evening. I have a commercial ZTR mower. It usually takes me 3-4 hours to do it when I do it all at once. The 62" wide cut capability gets things done pretty quick, and the Zero Turning Radius capability lets me almost eliminate weed whipping. The deck is front mounted, so it mows under bushes too.

Last year they planted palm trees next to the neighbors pool and couldn't get around their house with them, so they came into my yard to get there. They got the Bobcat stuck in my lawn and made a mess of it. They fixed it as best as they could, but it's still very bumpy when I'm mowing there. After getting bounced around some I decided that I should quit for the day.

Toni, I too want to carve a carousel horse. I decided to make a small version about 6" high first several years ago. It's about half carved and I haven't gone back to finish it. I'm not a very good or fast carver, so it's probably best that I started small.

Charley
 
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Well, the above was two weeks ago. This past Sunday evening I had another "Event" and was taken by ambulance back to the hospital. Catheter surgery again on Monday morning. The stent that they installed two weeks ago went bad and closed off a tiny artery with three branches beyond it. Repairing it without bypass surgery is impossible. I'm now on an extended release form of nitro and another medicine that improves the heart muscle's ability to absorb nutrients from nearby arteries easier. I'm back home as of tonight, and I feel pretty good. I never felt quite right after the surgery 2 weeks ago. I think it was beginning to fail right after they did it, but it took two weeks to fail completely. I hope this works, because there aren't many options left for me.

Charley
 
Sorry to hear about the setback, Charley. Here's wishing a speedy and complete recovery so you can get back on your train. :thumb:
 
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