Tiki Central Member Infirmary

Wow I don't look here for awhile and things get crazy.

Kraken, its good to hear there is hope for you to recover. You've been through the mill and now its time to bake the bread. Keep moving that's the best way to recover. Keep us informed.

GROG, we send you lots of hugs through the air. Take your camera and put your name on it. Give it to the anesthesiologist when he talks to you before surgery. They are board and don't have to be sterile so they can take a few photos or get someone to do it for them. Best wishes for you to be good as new soon.

Wendy

Best wishes GROG! I know you will recover quickly!

Grog
I'm sure Wendy or Mad Dog could make you a sweet valve!

All kidding aside, wishing you the best my friend.
Keep us updated.

Jon

They probably knock GROG out with rock so GROG not feel a thing.

Bowana hope surgery go well for GROG.

A big hug for your big heart from big bro, pal!

Thanks everybody. Got a meeting with the cardiologist on Tuesday, so GROG have a better idea after that of the timeline when this is all going to happen.

[ Edited by: GROG 2013-06-20 01:22 ]

Hey Ernie, It sounds like you got time to go on a nitro fueled
night of Drugs, Girls & Booze with us before you go under the knife
get a note from your doctor, burn it & make it a Saturday night of pure mayhem
with the crew from Hell!

Grog all my best wishes for you and also a quick recovery.

Ernie we'll be routing for you to get the best from the best since you are the best. Hugs, Wendy

From the NBCNews.com coverage of the death of James Gandolfini. “If a 50-something man dies, heart disease is the No. 1 suspect…’A quarter million Americans experience sudden cardiac death each year,’ says Dr. Michael Miller, director of the University of Maryland Medical Center’s Center for Preventive Cardiology. ‘Half of them experience sudden death as the initial symptom.’ In other words – there were no symptoms, no warning. ‘In many patients who have a heart attack, the first symptom is sudden death and they don’t even make it to a hospital,’ [Dr. John]Harold says…[There is the] artery known as the “widow maker”, Harold says: the left anterior descending coronary artery.”

I wrote the following almost seven years ago.

2006/08/19 04:30 I am writing this at 4:30 AM on the second floor of St. Joseph's Hospital cardiac wing. To tell this story properly I need to go back a year and a half or two years ago. At that time I had two friends, about my age that had died from heart attacks. I was particularly sensitive to the fact that it was very important to report any symptoms of heart disease as early as possible. Waiting, or toughing it out, I knew could be fatal. So, about two years ago I had some chest pains at work. It was more a discomfort than pains but it was a feeling I didn't recognize so I went to my primary care physician. He referred me to a cardiologist and I went and had an echocardiogram stress test done. I ran on the treadmill and then a sonogram of my heart was done. At this point I was given a clean bill of health as far as my heart went. I next went to a gastroenterologist and was diagnosed with an ulcer. Recently it has been determined that a majority of ulcers are caused by a bacteria. Of course I had the stress induced variety. I was prescribed HCTZ for borderline high blood pressure, a statin for high cholesterol, and Prevacid for the ulcer. I also had an endoscopy done to fix a stricture in my esophagus and a colonoscopy. I was good to go.

Over the next year and a half the stress in my life just kept increasing. It came on two fronts; both from work and at home from my oldest son Robert. This brings me up to Thursday morning August 17th at 6:30 AM. I woke up and was feeling fine. I was feeling a bit anxious about work perhaps but I was feeling fine. I started moving around, getting ready for work, when I felt a pain in the center of my chest. It lasted about ten minutes and then went away. I decided it was my ulcer acting up. About ten minutes later the pain came back. My wife Karen gave me four Tums antacid chewables and the pain went away. I told Karen I was fine and told her to go to work. She left for work and I got ready to take a shower. Before I could get in the shower the chest pains came back and this time I was having a hard time breathing. Also, I now had a pain in my left hand. This bothered me because I knew that one of the symptoms of a heart attack is a pain that radiates down your left arm. I called Karen, got her voicemeail, and left a message for her to come home and take me to the emergency room. As soon as I was done leaving the message the pain went away. I decided it was the ulcer but took an aspirin just in case. I figured it couldn't hurt. I got in the shower and felt fine. I figured when I got out of the shower I would call Karen and tell her to disregard the voicemail I had left. I got out of the shower and that's when the pain came back with a vengeance. Now, in addition to the chest pain, the pain in my hand, and the shortness of breath, I felt like I was going to throw up.

I called Karen again and this time she answered the phone. I told her to come home and take me to the emergency room. I was waiting for Karen and now for the first time I started to think that I might die. The pain wasn't subsiding. I tried sitting. I tried lying down. I couldn't find any position that brought any kind of relief. For some reason that I don't recall I decided to start walking. I walked out to the end of our street and that's where Karen picked me up. She said, "Where do you want to go?" I was thinking St. Joe's, but at this point I wasn't sure I'd make it there. Karen suggested urgent care at the Dewitt North Medical Center and I said okay. So, that's where we went.

Karen dropped me at the emergency room door and then went to park the car. Right from the start the nurses and the doctor at urgent care seemed the most concerned by how much I was sweating. I told the nurse I had just gotten out of the shower and that's probably why I was damp. "Oh honey," she said, " you don't look good." They laid me on a bed there and the pains went away. The chest pains I had then have never come back. I felt fine. They insisted I be transported to St. Joseph's Hospital and an ambulance was called. They did an EKG while we were waiting for the ambulance and everything looked fine. At this point I thought it was a false alarm. The doctor said better safe than sorry. He told me that a higher percentage of heart attacks are fatal at my age, late forties, because your body hasn't had time to develop "work arounds". When you are in your 70s or 80s and you've had blockages build up your body has had time to compensate with other vessels. When you are 49 you just die.

They tried to start an IV but were having a lot of trouble. After sticking me 4 times with no luck the ambulance had arrived. They decided to let the EMT start the IV in the ambulance. The two people from the Fayetteville Fire Department ambulance put me in the back of the ambulance. They started the IV, first time, and put me on oxygen. I felt really stupid riding in the ambulance because at this point I felt completely fine. There was nothing wrong with me and I was wasting everybody’s time. That's what I thought. At the St. Joseph's emergency room they did another EKG and they wanted to start a second IV. The nurse had a terrible time trying to start the second IV and after sticking me another three times she called an IV specialist. The specialist was able to get the second IV site established. The cardiologist came in to see me. He said I was not presenting as a heart attack. My EKG looked fine. The first blood test had come back fine. He said it was probably my ulcer but that they were going to keep me overnight for observation. He said on Friday they would give me a stress test and then depending on how that looked they might take me in for a heart catheterization. I told Karen to go back to work. She was missing lunch at Red Lobster with her co-workers. Karen decided to hang around a little longer.

The doctor came back in and at that point everything changed. I guess something was now showing in my latest blood work. It was definite that I had had a heart attack. We were skipping the stress test and going directly to the heart catheterization and it was to be ASAP. Dr. Alfaro-Franco, who was going to do the the heart catheterization, came in to give me the odds and to get the consent forms signed. I didn't have much time to think about any of it. One in a thousand dies during the procedure. Three of every thousand lose a limb. I signed a consent form that said if they couldn't fix things with the heart catheterization they could crack me open and go to open heart surgery. On two occasions I've had lunch at Trappers Pizza Pub, played quick draw, and won enough to cover lunch and then some. The odds for that are more than a thousand to one.

As I lie in the emergency room waiting for the procedure what kept popping into my mind was a scene from Taladega Nights. I had just recently seen the movie. The character Ricky Bobby, played by Will Farrell, is in the hospital after a car crash. He's lying in the bed and his wife and the doctor are standing at the foot of the bed. His wife says, "I know it's a hard decision to make but I've decided I want to pull the plug." The doctor says, "He's sleeping." The wife insists, "I want to pull the plug." "No," says the doctor, "He's just sleeping. He's not in a coma. There is no plug" I had to tell that to all the nurses. They wheeled me up to the catheterization lab. There were at least 7 people working on me and that's before the doctors got there. They were going into the femoral artery through the groin. A couple of the nurses were arguing over who was going to shave me. Apparently shaving my groin was one of the good jobs?? That's about the last thing I really remember from the cath lab. I wasn't under general anesthesia but I wasn't feeling too much.

Afterwards the doctor explained that I had definitely had a heart attack. There was damage to my heart. I had a 99% blockage in my front artery. She said the blockage I had is called the "widow maker." They were able to insert a stent and open up the blocked artery. The hardest part of the whole thing was the next six hours. For the heart catheterization they had gone in through my groin and the femoral artery. They plugged the site with collagen and a suture. You have to lie still, flat on your back, for six hours or risk popping open the wound site. Karen fed me that night like a little bird while I lay flat on my back. It must still be true love.

Friday morning two undertakers came to my room. You could tell just by looking at them and the way they were dressed that they were morticians. I thought, "Gee, maybe the doctor didn't tell me everything." But, they were there to visit my roommate and not to measure me for a new wooden wardrobe. Apparently my roommate was buying a vintage car from these guys and they were up to make sure the deal was going to close. After they left my roommate called his wife and started screaming at her, "What the "F" is the matter with you sending "F'in" undertakers to the "F'in" cardiac wing." His wife had called 911 when he had chest pains against his will. It had turned out that he didn't have a heart attack or heart problems but had separated one of his ribs from his sternum while shoveling. His wife had spent ten hours sobbing hysterically and had called every possible person she could think of to tell them her husband had had a heart attack. Well, she and this motley crew came to visit him. Officially it wasn't visiting hours, this was around noon, and there were four of them. They were drinking, and they had brought beer, wine, and liquor to the hospital. They were getting pretty rowdy. It was entertaining listening to them discuss the various felonies they had committed including dressing up a 15 year old girl to look like her mother, feeding her valiums, and then sending her into the bank to forge her mother’s signature and clean out her bank account. Part of a divorce settlement I assumed. His big concern was getting out of the hospital in time to make the bank in order to get the vintage car from the undertakers. Once they were gone several people from the hospital, of increasing rank, came to my room to apologize for the boorish behavior of my roommate. Apparently the hospital frowns on drinking and partying in the cardiac wing. I figured them to be some real lowlifes and so I was amused when one of the nurses told me that my roommate was the chief of police for a local municipality.

The nurses told me once the IV was out I could get up and move around. They pulled the IV and so I decided to get up. I had electronic leads attached to my chest because I was on constant heart monitoring. I expected to be tethered to something but found out I was wireless. I could walk anywhere on the floor and I was still being monitored by a wireless connection. I bet they didn't have that a few years ago. That brings me up to early in the morning on Saturday the 19th. I couldn't sleep and I've walked down to the lounge where I am writing this. The moral of this tale is that there are really some marvels of modern medicine out there. But all of the wonderful medical technology we have is of no use if you don't go to the doctor. I am extremely lucky. Looking back on this I should have called 911 right from the start. I feel like I have a second lease on life and I plan to take full advantage of it. Everyone at St. Josephs has been absolutely wonderful. The nursing staff here is top notch.

[edited in an attempt to prevent googly eyes]

[ Edited by: khan_tiki_mon 2013-06-23 11:08 ]

Wow!
Glad you are ok.
My mom and dad have many bouts with heart troubles, Comes with the restaurant biz I guess.
I have also found that when a kinda young person dies of a "heart attack" it can be brought on
by use of rec drugs, I went to a school where extra money for things like drugs is on hand.
When people use say cocaine your can heart burst, and if you have enough money or good standing in
your town they will call this a "heart attack" for you when you die.
You see this a lot in Hollywood.

Were all getting old, don't it suck.

Good luck with your recovery!

khan_tiki_mon thank you for sharing your story. My sister and her husband decided to get divorced. She fell in love and so her ex had to move out. He rented a room from the next door neighbor. He was forty. She was a RN. He described how he was feeling one evening and she said, "you are having a heart attack". He didn't believe her because he was 40 and slender. She insisted they go to the hospital. He dropped dead in the lobby. No heartbeat and no breathing. A crash cart team was there in 13 seconds and revived him. He had a massive heart attack.

He was told that he had to go on a cardiac diet to live. If he went back to his high fat diet, even though he was thin, he would die in a year. He followed their advise and is now 77 years old. We need to listen to our doctors.

Here's Dan having his heart scan this week.

Dan's test came back negative. He's lucky. The fun part was that the test was done by my college sweetheart. We both because Nuclear Medicine Technologists after college. We had a great visit while Dan was stuck in the camera!

We wish you well. Wendy and Dan

My heart trouble was a fairly sudden speedup to
about 155 beats per minute, although I was resting
and had no other signs of bodily exertion. Would
have ignored it, but an advice nurse strongly felt
I should go to the emergency room. After lengthy
testing it turned out I have Atrial Fibrillation, a
serious defect in the electrical portion of my heart.
As a side benefit, a Persantine Myoview test given
me showed that the physical aspects of my heart
have no problems at all. Genuine relief.

Aside to khan_tiki_mon and Wendy (and a few other Tiki
Central regulars). When you type in very long lines, and
especially when, like ktm, you leave out paragraphing,
you make your posts very difficult to read.

Hey! How come when they check Dan's heart they use a scanner, and when they check GROG' heart they use an anal probe?

Thanks for the well wishes everybody and thanks for the story kahn_tiki_mon. GROG glad everything turned out well.

[ Edited by: GROG 2013-06-22 23:37 ]

Did GROG' doctor look like this?

How did you know?

I got googly eyes now from khan_tiki_mon's post, damn you!
all I can see are "swirlies" now....

Sorry for the googly eyes. My bad. I will try to fix.

GROG needs to get fixed quickly! Otherwise, TC will be a boring place!

Wishing you an uneventful procedure and a speedy recovery!!!!

Thanks to Wendy for the head's up to head over here to see what was going on with you. No punintended.

Hugs,

kraken the Myoview study will tell you if you have had a heart attack in the past, what your ejection fraction is, if your left ventricle is sending out enough blood when it contracts and if you are in immediate danger of a heart attack. It will not tell you if you have started building up plaque in your arteries if it is less than 40%. That's why Dan and I volunteered to do this study called a CT Angiogram. It will show plaque. So don't go eating lots of cheese and ice cream based on a normal Nuclear Medicine scan. Keep healthy my friend.

Getting these tests for free was like hitting the lottery. They are doing 10,000 people for the GLOBAL genomics Group, LLC clinical study for genetic loci and the burden of atherosclerotic lesions. The study is in Sacramento.

GROG we are waiting to hear how your appointment with the cardiologist went today. Dan wants to know if the anal probe was again used or maybe it was just the head of the alien inspecting your insides. Best wishes.

Wendy

GROG angiogram scheduled for July 11th. Not sure if GROG having the same angiogram procedure as yours. They're going to cut a hole in GROG' leg and run a catheter up into GROG' heart to release dye into the heart to make x-rays high contrast so they can check for any blockage to see if GROG going to need bypass surgery when they do the heart valve replacement surgery. They're just checking to see if they need to fix anything else in the engine while they have the hood open. Risk of death from this procedure is 1 in a 1000.

No anal probes on yesterday's visit to the cardiologist, but GROG' did get rear-ended the other day in Hollywood. So, now GROG have to deal with getting GROG' bumper fixed as well as GROG' heart.

There's a website called heartvalvesurgery.com where heart valve patients can post up a journal so that people can check on the progress of a patient's procedures. GROG thinking about starting a journal so that family and friends can check there to be kept in-the-loop of what's happening and how things are going. Maybe GROG should make it a little entertaining--- The Adventures of Zipperman (because GROG' going to have a zipper on GROG' chest.) GROG going to be a member of the Zipper Club (people who have had heart surgery.) GROG let you know when GROG start GROG' journal.

GROG miss Tiki-Kate

[ Edited by: GROG 2013-06-26 16:22 ]

Our tests were easy. You are getting the whole tomato or is potato? I'd say shebang but that doesn't sound as nice. We are so glad your condition got caught in time to give you the opportunity to join the zipper club. You can ask for a curl to go around your belly button to make it cute. No kidding, I've seen those. We'll be arriving at Tiki Kon just as you get your test. Please know you are in our prayers. Wendy and Dan

Dang Grog...sorry to hear about getting rear-ended...but better than probe!!!

Dan & Wendy...your alien scanning looked interesting.

Oh No GROG your rear end too! I hope you get both ends fixed and come out looking perfect. Best wishes, prayers and hugs on the 16th. Wendy

If you want to keep up-to-date with what happening with GROG' heart surgery you can read GROG' journal here:
http://www.heart-valve-surgery.com/journals/user/erniekeen

Don't worry. It not written in GROG-speak, so you not have to interpret caveman lingo. Be forewarned, there may be some exaggeration in the writing for humorous effect now and then.

GROG miss Tiki-Kate

[ Edited by: GROG 2013-07-09 14:19 ]

Good luck tomorrow, GROG! (And after tomorrow, too.)

Hang in there Ernie, Not fun but pretty standard procedure
you cavemen are extra tough!

Thanks ya'll.

Grog - Sending lots of Sunshine & a Giant WooHoo Your Way!! Cavemen can make it through everything :)

[ Edited by: WooHooWahine 2013-07-11 11:24 ]

Read some of your journal. You're a funny guy! Hope everything goes well with your procedure and you have a speedy recovery for that job!

Grog - I hope your angiogram goes very well. I hear that rocket surgery is a lot more difficult, so you will be back to dragging cave women to your cave very soon. Best wishes buddy!

And don't rule out those super powers. There is still a chance your pants can be spliced with insect DNA!

See you soon and I still owe you a drink.

Grog, hope your Angiogram went well today and they finally are able to figure out just what the heck is wrong with our favorite caveman. Keep us posted.

• Dale

I hope everything goes well Grog. I had no idea how involved this procedure was until I read your blog, I'll be keeping my fingers proverbially crossed that you will recover in time for the job in October. Well wishes, Mr. caveman.

Well wishes and benevolent vibes today for Benzart, who's going in for another coronary catheter under a new doctor (according to his FB page).

Knock it out of the park, Benzart!

Grog, I just read your thread and found I was thinking of all the wrong dates. I'm so happy it went well. I hope they have a good report for you soon. Hugs, Wendy

Thanks everybody.

GROG taking it easy today--doctor's orders. Thankfully today GROG have an excuse for being lazy.

Feeling a little GROGGIE!

No. Not in the mood. Plus, not supposed to do anything strenuous and groin is bruised and a little achey from the angiogram for anything like that.

GROG miss Tiki-Kate

[ Edited by: GROG 2013-07-12 16:29 ]

Here's to hopping the each day you feel better. Sending you a big get well smile, Wendy

Thanks Wendy.

E

On 2013-07-12 16:29, GROG wrote:
...not supposed to do anything strenuous and groin is bruised and a little achey from the angiogram for anything like that.

GROG, I hope your groin feels better soon and that the angiogram results were within expectation.

BTW, did the nurse that I sent over to your house show up ??...

Yep.

GROG was taking a nap. She showed up, gave my roommate a sponge bath and left. Didn't do GROG much good. GROG' roommate enjoy it, though.

Grog- I think you should have hit a cute nurse on the head with your club and dragged her home for multiple sponge baths.
Get well soon brother...

Jon

Worst sound ever, slurp of an empty tiki mug through my straw!!!

[ Edited by: hang10tiki 2013-07-13 12:30 ]

Hey Grog-

Sending you healing hugs. :) Hang in there.

Much appreciated.

http://www.heart-valve-surgery.com/journals/user/erniekeen

I just left your web page blog and I couldn't get to the photo of your swollen groin dang it. Where did you hide it?

Good to hear you are progressing well and soon will be looking for the nurse to give you the sponge bath. It's good to
have such considerate friends!

I'm sending many get well hugs, Wendy