A Fateful Remembrance

January 3, 2010 my life changed. Every day since then has been a blessing. Today, I am celebrating 15 years of survival.

15 years ago today, my world changed in an instant.

A little prelude

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010, we had gone on a planned hike. The trail was in Sabino Canyon park in Tucson. The hike was a brutal 1.9 mile trek to the top of Blackett’s Ridge. You climb a bit over 1,900 feet in that hike, and there are two tough parts. When we got to the first one, I felt “off”. I just couldn’t find a groove. Thinking I was just having a blood sugar crash, I munched on some fruit we carried.

That didn’t help, and for the first time ever, I turned around on this trail¹.

I thought nothing about this at the time. I just felt “blah”.

The next morning, Sunday, January 3rd, I woke up as usual around 5 AM, ate my usual breakfast (my memory of this is crisp. It was about a third of a cup of Grape Nuts in about 2/3 cup of skim milk.

I change into my gym clothes and hit the local gym.

My plan was to spend an hour on the elliptical trainer, burning my usual 950 or so calories, but again, I fell off.

Additionally, as the machine monitored pulse rate, it was telling me that I just couldn’t get my heart rate into my usual 150-165 bpm, but instead it was stuck in the mid 90’s².

Furthermore, I never really broke a sweat.

As I said, I felt “off”.

I didn't even finish my hour, bailing out after 50 minutes or so, and I headed home.

I said good morning to my wife and I went to take my morning shower. As I stepped into the shower it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Shooting pain in the arms, and my chest felt like I had Dom Delouise standing on it.

Something was definitely wrong.

I stumbled out of the shower, and hobbled down to my wife’s office (where she was siping coffee and reading the news) and I told her I needed to go to the hospital.

Naturally, my wife panicked and she in her addled state did exactly the right thing. She dialed 911, and summoned the ambulance.

The EMT’s

They put their EKG machine on me, and said that it all looked fine, that I probably had pulled a muscle or something at the gym.

My wife wisely told them to take me to the hospital. On the way over they gave me a baby aspirin, and a nitroglycerin tablet to put under my tongue.

When we arrived, they rolled me right in and hooked up the full EKG to me, discovering that indeed, I was having a heart attack.

This got me an express ride to the cath lab, and a Boston Scientific Taxus Stent. I had a 100% blockage in the descending node of my right coronary artery.

Since I have a shellfish allergy, they also hit me with a massive dose of Benadryl to prevent a reaction to the iodine they used to find and place the stent, so I didn’t get to feel them insert the catheter into my groin to feed it into my arteries. Oh well.

I woke up about an hour later in the ICU, feeling rather weak.

Actually, I felt weaker than a kitten in a downpour, just like crap. But I was alive. Later in the day, I got a visit from my new specialist — a cardiologist — who placed the stent.

Oh boy!

Anyhow, he said that he played roto-rooter on my blocked artery, placed the stent, and definitely saved my life. There’s a reason that Cardiologists have a god complex.

Anyhow, that was the beginning of my recovery. But I was just famished, and I was not allowed to eat anything until the next day.

Remember that my meagre breakfast was about 150 calories of Grapenuts and Skim Milk, so I was a bit cranky.

But I also was wired to a remote EKG telemetry unit, and a technician was monitoring all my vitals. Every hour or so the nurses would come in and check on me, and I learned that they check pulses on the ankle to look for Peripheral Artery issues (PAD). That will be something that happens at all future check ups with my cardiologist.

Anyhow, I got through the day and night, and I even sweet-talked the nurse to take pity on me overnight, and she gave me some jello that helped ever so-slightly with my hangry.

The Recovery Begins

First, I had to call my boss and tell him that I wouldn’t be flying to Seattle to do the annual planning. And I told him about the event.

I had to go on short term disability, as I was out for almost three weeks before I could get in for an echocardiogram that would have cleared me. I was also signed up for cardio rehab, 12 weeks of gradated exercises and tests.

About a week in, I was advised to start short walks around the neighborhood (more of a shuffle at first). I have to tell you that getting winded in a trip around a fairly short flat block as you shuffle around it is humbling. Especially since a few days before I was jogging 5-7 miles 5 days a week, and a couple trips to the gym per week.

At the time I was in the best shape of my life. This was definitely a downer.

My first visit to rehab started with a longish conference with the exercise physiologist. We talked about my health, and what I was doing. I explained about the regimen of exercise and my diet, and he was understanding. I was frustrated, but he said that often this was a genetic thing, especially at my age.

I was 44 years old when I had the event.

I was the youngest person in rehab. By a LOT. That was an eye opener.

Anyhow, I was on a wild cocktail of medicines. As I had a family history of hypertension (high blood pressure) and high cholesterol, I had been on a statin and an ACE inhibitor for years, as no amount of exercise and abstention of sodium and a very low fat diet had virtually no effect on my readings.

I got more statins, added a beta blocker (they are the fucking devil), and an anti-coagulant to prevent restentinosis. Oh, and a daily 81mg aspirin.

For the rest of my life. Bleargh.

When I had my first stress-echocardiogram, I got some great news. My wife had freaked out and done exactly the right thing by calling 911. There was almost no damage to the muscle.

Note: if you have symptoms, don’t fuck around, get an ambulance to whisk you to the hospital ASAP, as time = muscle, and once the muscle dies, it never comes back.

Anyhow, Dr. Desai, my Cardiologist, told me that if he hadn’t been there that day, and inserted the stent, he wouldn’t be able to tell that I had an event.

The Aftermath

Well, considering that I would have certainly died had I not gotten to the hospital, it is not surprising that I had some long term effects from the event besides the metabolism destroying beta blocker.

But, there was something that I was determined to be able to do.

The prior year, we had planned to hike down the Grand Canyon, spend three nights at the Phantom Ranch, and hike out. The schedule was to start on Sunday March 6th, and there was no way I was going to miss that.

All through the rehab, I had been working closely with the exercise physiologist to get healthy enough to make the journey. I even got a second stress echo to make sure I would be OK, and my cardiologist gave me the thumbs up.

8 weeks to the day after my heart attack, we made the hike down from he south rim (South Kaibab trail) to the canyon floor.

We had snow at the rim, and it was 80F at the bottom, and that $6 can of Tecate they sell you at the Phantom Ranch never tasted so good.

Three days later, as we climbed out Bright Angel, when I got to the top, I felt absolutely triumphant.

This is me at the first rest stop on the way down, 8 weeks to the day after the heart attack

So, every January 3rd, I do a little remembrance. This time I am sharing it.

If you want to see the pictures from the climb down, you can access them at this Lightroom link

Thank you for reading.

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1. Red flag #1

2. Red flag #2