A Site for Shore Eyes

For loyal visitors to my site who wonder where I’ve been for the past couple of months, the answer is that I’ve been mostly in and sometimes out of two hospitals.

In November I had a heart attack. I always thought that having a heart attack meant falling on the floor and having someone administer CPR. Sometimes that’s the case, but often it simply means they analyze your enzyme output, rub their chins, and declare that you either had or did not have a heart attack. It’s all Greek to me.

In my case, I had shortness of breath that got so severe we called 911. It seemed pretty traumatic to me, but definitely didn’t fit my vision of a heart attack.

Anyway, the local hospital sent me to Penn-Presbyterian in Philadelphia, for a heart cath, which showed 100% blockage in two arteries, but the even bigger problem was my mitral valve, which was not closing properly. After six days, they released me, and my intention was to have surgery on January 20.

By mid-December I started experiencing congestive heart failure, and checked in at Penn again on the 16th. I guess I had a pulmonary edema, whatever that is, and they put me into a coma for three days. They brought me out of it on the 19th, still on the ventilator that pretty much saved my life, but I don’t recommend it for any other purpose.

With this change in plans, they decided to perform the surgery on December 23. It involved repairing the mitral valve and doing a double bypass.

Since that time, I spent another week in the local hospital due to some complications, but I’m now on my way back. I hope to be writing regularly in the near future.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 1st, 2009 at 4:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.