Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Well, it’s been a most unusual week on my planet. On Tuesday, I went to my doctor about some recurring chest pain I’d been having. He gave me an EKG and a complete physical. He told me that there had been some changes since my last EKG (in 1985), and then asked me something I greatly hope that not one of you ever gets asked. He asked me, who was my favorite cardiologist?
I allowed as how I didn’t know one cardiologist, and I’d never given the question a moment’s thought.
So I said that my father-in-law, who is 85, had a cardiologist I’d never met. I’d take his. My doc said go. That was Tuesday
Early Wednesday morning, I found myself in the cardiologist’s office. He turned out to be like my doctor, warm and informative. His assistant hooked me up to another more complex EKG machine. Then they gave me an “echocardiogram”, that was fascinating. I could see my heart beating, and watch the valves open and close … astounding.
However, when the cardiologist read the EKG and echocardiogram charts, he told me that I’d suffered a heart attack. He said it was an inferior myocardial infarction. Inferior? Really? I have a heart attack, and it’s second-rate?
He made an appointment with the surgeons for the next morning. He said said they would thread a tube through my veins into my heart, release some dye, and take pictures to see exactly what was going on.
But there was more. He said they did the whole thing in one go—after the dye test, if the plumbing was clogged, they’d likely put in a stent.
He also said that if it was really bad, they’d cut me open right there and and do bypass surgery … dangalang, that’s not the kind of thing a man wants to hear, and certainly not before 10 AM. He gave me some nitroglycerine pills to take home with me … that was Wednesday.
Thursday I checked in to the cardio unit at the local hospital, accompanied as usual by my gorgeous ex-fiancee, who is a Family Nurse Practitioner and my main medical squeeze. First thing, they shucked me out of my clothes and had me put on one of those hospital gowns, the kind I call “fundamentally drafty” because the draft is on … anyhow, the nurse was asking me all these questions and came to “Are you taking any medications on a regular basis?” I said no … she said “Really? We hardly ever see anyone in here who isn’t taking some regular medication”.
“Not me,” sez I, “not even aspirin.”
She looked at me with a wry smile and said matter-of-factly “Well … that’s over.”
Dang.
The surgeon came in, again a warm and encouraging man. He said if they could put the catheter in through my arm and I had to get a stent, I could go home that day. But if they went in through the groin, I’d have to stay overnight.
“OK,” I said, I was only a pawn in the game at that point.
So they took me away to the Operating Room, and I woke up with a stent in my heart. They put it in through the arm, so that same day I came home. That was Thursday.
The whole crazy sequence of events has been relatively painless, except for my arm where they put in the catheter. That still aches, but that’s minor. And I’m enjoined from pounding nails or lifing anything heavy or doing anything strenuous for a week.
So no condolences or the like are necessary. I count myself among the most fortunate of men. Heck, since I can’t work at house building, I’m free to do more research and writing, what’s not to like? …
What do I take from all of this?
Well, it sure was great to wake up after going under. And it is always good to be reminded of my mortality. It let me know that I need to keep the pedal pressed firmly to the floorboard, and that I need to produce during my days, for the night is assuredly headed my way, wherein no man can produce …
Finally, it is very strange to think that I have a piece of metal mesh in my heart … first step to being a cyborg?
I go back to see my new favorite cardiologist on Friday.
My best to everyone,
w.
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Phrases for you to adopt, Willis:
“When I was your age,…”
“Young people today…”
“When I was a boy, …”
“How much? It used to cost…”
“[Negative] + any more.”
“Is s/he still alive?”
Willis,
Don’t know how much you have read about cholesterol and heart disease, but, in case you haven’t, it is a wild goose chase. The body uses Cholesterol that it produces to cover inflammation in the arteries. You need to find a doctor who can attempt to address the inflammation and not one who tries to put you on cholesterol drugs which are more damaging.
The other bad news is that using a stent to forcibly expand an inflamed artery means you are physically weakening the artery wall even more than it already has been weakened by the inflammation. Again, start looking for a doctor who is not stuck in the past and is aware that the old solutions are based on incorrect guesses.
Just noticed Lou above is giving you the Consensus view which is incorrect!!!
Willis, while the stent did the job, in the long run its only temporary. The same is true if you have a bypass. The other thing to think about is if your cardiac arteries are clogged, what about other arteries in your body. Other than the carotids, they never really mention the rest of the body. So, with that said, I would suggest that you look into EDTA Chelation therapy. Most cardiologist will say its a bunch of bunk, but people have been getting positive results for many decades. The only that is that there is not multiple double blind studies to prove it efficacy.
The original intent of this treatment was for heavy metal toxicity, lead poisoning, ect. But, one of the components of many arterial plaques is calcium and the EDTA will remove the calcium from the plaque causing it to break down and removed from the body. You will need to find a doctor in your area that practices complementary or functional medicine who will be of the mind set to do the treatment for you. Regular cardiologist are like the warmist, they believe what they believe, facts be damned.
Here is a link to a book about Chelation Therapy. It was written several years ago, but is still very valid. There are others that you can read too.
http://www.amazon.com/Chelation-Way-Complete-Book-Therapy/dp/089529415X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1384140598&sr=1-1&keywords=the+chelation+way
There are three ways to do this. The old way, and the most effective, is a slow drip method and it takes about three hours per treatment and you will have to have several treatments over several weeks. There is a fast drip method that I have heard about, but my understanding is that it is not as effective. The third way is Oral Chelation, where the give you a bunch of supplements to take over a period of weeks. This is relatively new and I don’t know much about that.
Good luck and best of health.
Hi Willis, we’ve never met but welcome to my world, even to the “inferior” bit. My favourite cardiologist, who I’ve never met since, was the one in the emergency room who said “if you’re going to have one of these things, this is the place to have it” (to be precise, the anterior descending artery, hence inferior). You may be pelasantly surprised how normal things will probably become, probably fairly quickly. I was promised all sorts of restrictions but most fell away and life, over a period of eight years, has returned to relatively normal. The one restriction I dreaded was “only one cup of coffee a day” so I determined then and there it was going to be the best coffee money could buy. So now i enjoy a little more than one pot (yes, about 6 cups) every day of the most glorious Kona coffee that I buy green and roast myself. The dreaded medication regimen reduced to just Lipitor and either Plavix or aspirin (I find Plavix gives confidence); the ace inhibitors and beta blockers were found to be unnecessary and perhaps the Lipitor is as well but I tolerate it so no problem. You may well be asked to go to cardiac rehab – I found it the best support group there is going and discovered one thing common to almost all my fellow sufferers – the common symptom is not a massive pain but vague discomfort accompanied by a feeling that something is terribly wrong but you can’t quite put your finger on it!
Good luck and hang in there.
Brent, you might consider finding a cardiologist that is also certified in functional medicine. They are much more open to the idea that the body functions as a complete unit and treating it as such. Here is a link
http://www.functionalmedicine.org/practitioner_search.aspx?id=117
Be well, Willis. Get ready to take pills for a year including the dreaded statins for chloresteral lowering and Plavix, which is a blood anticoagulant. The worst pill is pravastatin because it can cause peripheral neuropathy which usually starts in the toes. Most cardiologists don’t realize this side effect of pravastatin. You wouldn’t wish neuropathy on Roy! The first symptom may be pain in your toes when you orgasm. If so, discuss this with your family doctor or with a neurologist ASAP. Don’t settle for pain relief pills, insist on treating the root cause.
After your wrist heals a bit you can type to your heart’s content. Having been all over the world, your bucket list is probably not too long but fulfil in due course whatever it has on it.
I look forward to reading your epistles for many more years.
Glad to hear you are on the mend, Willis. I will guess that you arrived home with a bagful of pills. As others have mentioned, research these carefully. As for the statin they gave you, I urge extreme caution. They did some serious damage to a cousin, and my wife still has two nagging side effects one year after tossing them out. (She was a “treat the number” patient. A frequent swimmer, she did not have any CV “risk” to speak of to begin with!)
I recommend you check out Dr. Duane Graveline’s spacedoc.com and The People’s Pharmacy.
Stay well.
Cardiac medicine is wonderful these days. Like the other men in my family I had a heart attack right on schedule at age 51. It came on at 2 in the afternoon and I was out of the OR by 9 that evening with a stent. The worst part was having my groin prepped. They must have gone to the drugstore and bought a bag of the cheapest disposable razors they could find to shave all the hair off. Ouch. Fifteen years later, the doctor gives up on the stress test when the treadmill gets tilted up to 45 degrees.
At age 70, my father was given six weeks to live his heart was in such bad shape from having been a three pack a day smoker into his forties. He had eight hours of open heart surgery to bypass all five of his heart arteries, that’s the maximum possible. It worked just fine and he passed away four years ago at age 96.
Good luck Willis and follow the doctor’s orders, you’ll be just fine. Modern heart medicine is great.
Good health to you, Willis. I think you will be around long enough to write about post-AGW climate:
“Mr. Eschenbach, tell us again the story about how humans used to believe that the atmosphere was dramatically warming and how you helped the world to see the truth!”
Will your reading at the breakfast table prioritise the Obituaries; jsu to make sure that you’re not in there? 😉
I had been taking low-dose aspirin (81 mg) preventively for a long time, as I have a family history of heart disease. But when I read about a study claiming an association of aspirin with macular degeneration (family history there, too), I discontinued it, assuming, as all these studies routinely imply, that correlation is likely evidence of causation.
Then a few months later, I suffered some left-leg weakness, and an MRI showed a minor brain (in)farct, as I call it, i.e. a stroke. Did discontinuing the aspirin lead to a ‘rebound’ and a tiny clot? So my wife (an internist) and a neurologist suggested. Of course, correlation is not causation, but who am I to argue with consensus? Fear (as the politicians and the left have discovered) is a great motivator. So I resumed the aspirin regimen, and was told to add 20 mg of pravastatin to get the ‘bad’ cholesterol down. No muscle aches from the low-dose statin, thankfully, and no after-effects from the (in)farct. I’ve decided this is just a bump on the road to starting my second biblical span.
Willis, I’m surprised that they told you they’d do a coronary bypass without even waking you up and letting you mull it over. Is this ‘major surgery’ (as I think of it) now as routine as putting in a stent? Modern medicine is wonderful, but it’s going to have to get a lot better if we’re going to get through our second biblical spans not only hale and hearty, but still able to tell the difference between correlation and causation.
/Mr Lynn
Allan MacRae says: “I was told if any of them were metal, they could be sucked right out of my body by the gynormous magnets in the MRI machine.”
No, only magnetic metal is a problem. Metals like titanium and cobalt are no problem at all. For example, some stents are made of a non magnetic alloy of cobalt chromium molybdenum. I would assume any austenitic stainless steel would also be okay.
++Lou: “Majority of us do not take enough vitamin D and magnesium every day. Best to invest in supplements for that. Will help a lot for the long haul. And cut out excessive carbohydrates from diet if possible.”
Reducing carbohydrates, and dramatically increasing fat intake seven years ago saved me from diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and heart attack today. Although obviously this stent intervention was necessary, the root cause here is carbohydrate intake, and you’ll do much better for your health if you avoid the statins and low-fat/high-carb diet you’ll likely be prescribed.
Hmm. . . . I wonder if the stent you had placed in you was one I helped invent that delivers an anti-restenosis drug directly to the affected artery wall?
WILLIS: This is eerily disturbing news, with a good outcome – that you’re OK. I say eerily because my competition license needs a new medical every 3 years due to my age (I was born in 1965.) My physician’s assistant looked over my cardiogram, and said that it did not look normal. So now I need to see a heart specialist. Ughh. I’ve been putting this off, because I am busy. Maybe you gave me a wake up call.
Best to you Willis.
Willis, so happy to see you came through everything and are doing well. May God Bless you and keep you.
I just prayed for you, Mr. Eschenbach, (and for your beautiful wife and for your daughter) and I will continue to do so in the months to come.
Good — for — you to set your jaw like flint and “put the pedal to the metal.” After such a diagnosis, you either “get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.”
He made it. And so will you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRBl0GPBm4o
Take care.
Janice
P.S. Remember (for those who believe in Jeshua), the very best is yet to come!
Glad your still with us Willis, Get well and take care.
v/r,
David Riser
@Mario Lento — praying for you.
Hi, Moderator — re: my post this evening at 8:43pm
Can you turn the second video link into a control screen? It would sure make a nicer post.
Thanks! (if you can)
Janice
[Control screen? Huh ? – mod]
Willis – I’m sure you will be better than ever, and that’s a high level to surpass considering all you have done in the past year. I’ll be seeing a doctor in Santa Rosa in a couple of weeks; I assume that’s where you went for treatment. I ruptured a disc again jogging, this time on a treadmill going up the Mississippi on a big steamboat. When I did it the first time 37 years ago, it was running in a gym to escape the deep Illinois snowbanks on Scott Air Force Base. Well, once each 37 years isn’t bad. At this rate, I’ll be 108 the next time, and jogging at that age should be a kick.
I have faith that medical advances will occur at just the right rate to provide whatever we need in maintenance and repairs to our bodies, but keep taking good care of yourself so the doctors won’t have to dip too deep in their bags of medical miracles.
Willis, hell doesn’t want you and heaven isn’t ready for you yet, ‘nite
” I’m too damn young to be this old !!” he grumbled.
Willis – welcome to the club which counts me as a reluctant member for the past seven and a half years. I had two stents put in after my MI and was awake for the procedure – quite fascinating watching the blood flow return to my heart in real-time. Best of wishes to you.
Willis, I am happy for you that you caught it early and improved you life expectancy .
All the best.
@ur momisuglyChuck ,
We are not “designed” for forty years. The low life expectancy at birth in the ages before this one were due to child mortality, lack of inoculations, uncontrollable diseases from ignorance of microbes and hygiene , typhus, tuberculosis etc ( in case I forget some), and of course continuous wars. Life expectancy if one survived all this to adulthood was similar to present times.
The Bible is a great folk statistics repository :
The length of our days is seventy years– or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
Psalm 90:10“
And since this subject came up I will share this told be a professor and friend of mine when in his seventies:
When I was fifty and I heard that somebody I knew vaguely, died , I payed small attention. It was like being far away from the front of the war and hearing a random shot. Now that they are falling left and right and ahead of me, I realize I am at the front. line .