heart trouble/car trouble

Sorry ma'am, the ambulance that your new heart was travelling in has broken down


(it's going to be a long day)

heart trouble follow up

negative heart cath.

This means the stents he got last year are still open. Doesn't really explain his minor chest pains. And we learned that I inherit my stubbornness from my dad

Heart Trouble part Deux

So about a year ago when I started this blog, my father had just had a cath and seven stents... Tonight my mom called me and apparently a routine followup stress test was positive again. He's going in on Friday for another heart cath. Likely a restenosis of a stent from what my dad says. So I'm talking to him about he feels... and being the retired physician he is he notes that he only got a little chest pain when he exercised but was otherwise okay. I could have killed him. That's denial for you.

Anyway. Last year I was all about lifestyle change... exercise, diet modification, etc. Well i'm not exercising, though I do have an exercise machine, my diet is pretty much the same (off and on) we'll see what friday has to show.

Heart trouble 2

My dad went in again (scheduled this time) for more heart stents. They put 3 more in. Kept him overnight. There was much waiting at the hospital. I'm buying a treadmill tomorrow.

Heart trouble

So, my dad had his heart catheterization yesterday. They found narrowings in at least 3 vessels. That's pretty shocking to everyone considering he had no symptoms prior to his test. Normally that would mean that he would need heart surgery. But one of the main vessels had blockages all the way down the artery. This means that if they were to do a heart bypass there would be no where to bypass the artery. So instead they put in four stents. Four! And then they stopped because they had used a lot of contrast dye to place those four stents. They kept him overnight and they want him to come back in two weeks and they want to put some more stents in. Yikes.



Anyway he had an uneventful night in the hospital. And we picked him up at the hospital after being dumped on by 8-10 inches of snow. It sucks. I shoveled the driveway at home and after an hour I had to shovel another 2 inches off... what gives.

Mortality

Nothing like mortality to bring you down to Earth. I see life and death situations most days at work, but you work through it because if you don't someone dies. It's different when something happens to family.

Yesterday my dad called me and told me had a positive stress test. That means that there is a high likelyhood that he has some blockage in some of the arteries of his heart. Tomorrow he's going in for a heart catheterization. They will place catheters in his groin, fish them up to the heart and then shoot dye into the arteries of the heart. If there is are blockages they may stent them open, or maybe he will need heart surgery, or maybe none of the above if the blockages are minor. All of these procedures carry their own risks. Likely tomorrow everything will be fine... but I've seen with my eyes bad things happen. Maybe I know too much. I rarely see the results at work of "normal" tests.

This brings somethings into perspective. Here I am. 29 years old. A physician. single. overweight. i don't exercise, i eat poorly. I think I need to make some changes. I've always known better. I just never had a reason to change.