The image is a good friend of mine cranking some Austin limestone a few years ago (Forget it guys, she’s happily married). It’s good to remember, as the year draws to a close, what a person can do and the kind of things I used to do, casually, without thinking much about it. Climbing, skydiving, partying hard afterward, or less eye-catching but equally risky activity, you name it, it all seemed a matter of course. Spare me the jokes about jumping out of perfectly good planes — jump planes are a far cry from perfectly good!

But it was exactly one year ago when I felt a new, weird sensation in my upper gut, for a few moments it was almost like I got my wind knocked out. A lingering burning feeling just below the sternum persisted, it was initially diagnosed as an ulcer, then a torn diaphragm. It wasn’t. [Read more…]

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Someone asked about health issues, for now my health continues to improve incrementally, the pic below was taken a few mins ago right out of the shower. That’s me at a lean, spanking 155 lbs, down almost 50 lbs from my obese max. Having a heart attack and, as it turns out, an underlying blood chem disorder that facilitated it, the scare the former causes and the loss of appetite that ensued from the latter, has a silver lining, I guess. [Read more…]

The recent unexpected death of James Gandolfini from what could be a heart attack really hit home. He was marvelous as Tony Soprano. Gandolfini pulled off a near miracle: playing a compassionate family man sociopath so brilliantly we found ourselves cheering on the modern day don. It’s common to hear what a swell person someone was after they die, but by all accounts Gandolfini really was a great guy. What caught my attention is he was only 51 years-old, same as me. I’m not sure when his last cardio check up was or if that’s even the cause of death. But a simple cath, maybe even a stress test, might have saved his life.

I survived my massive heart attack with little or no damage. How or why some do and some don’t is a good question. I also suffered complications after a stent was put in, specifically, what looked like a hole opened up between the two chambers causing a panoply of weird, terrifying symptoms. It was about a centimeter in width, that’s a good sized PFO and it would have to be fixed surgically. It’s not official yet, but there’s good news there, that hole appears to be healing on its own. The bad news is the good news will probably make it harder to qualify for disability — not Big Gubmint disability, it’s between me and CIGNA that both I and my employer paid for out of pocket. It’s not much, it works out to about $200/week, this is not a big score. But it’s critical to me: if it doesn’t come through I’ll end up dead broke at the end of this month and possibly fired for taking time off to look into it. Which could leave me homeless with no employer sponsored health insurance while recovering from a major heart condition that requires expensive drugs to be taken everyday for many more months. All at a time when I’m supposed to avoid stress. Only in America huh?

You know that hole between the two main chambers of the heart some babies have that has to be fixed? Well, it usually closes fine on its own, but when it closes up it leaves a weak spot behind, and guess how cardio docs get the cath through from one side of the heart to the other when they balloon clogged arteries or put in stents? That’s right, they shove it through the weak spot mother nature leaves behind. News to me.

Sometimes that newly created hole doesn’t close up on its own and I may be one of those lucky duckies. I’m told it’s relatively easy to fix, it means another cath, and in some cases they don’t have to do anything. My cardiologist will decide which group I belong to, but there’s no fear of another minimally invasive cath here and leaving a hole there can be a stroke risk, that’s one reason heart surgery patients have to take blood thinners for a year or more after getting a stent (Or bypass). I’d just as soon get it fixed asap and not fuck around.