There’s the Heart, Then There’s The Heart
Two cardio procedures, no problem. One lame dog, unbearable.
Two cardio procedures, no problem. One lame dog, unbearable.
I recently had the opportunity to come to grips with my mortality. Open heart surgery and inserting a pacemaker will do that to you.
I will start with the valve job. My aortic valve was done. Calcified. Needed to be replaced. My partner and I consulted and decided full open-heart surgery was the way to go. Crack open the chest, snip out the old valve, then insert a shiny carbon-titanium one. Month or so of recovery, then done. Less trauma to get one of the newer pig skin valves, but they only last a bit over ten years. Mine is good for thirty or more.
Prior to the valve, there was the permanent Atrial Fibrillation. A-Fib is a condition where your heart won’t keep to a regular rhythm. Just forgot how to dance. Twenty years ago, they didn’t know many of the things they know today, so the treatment was drugs. Better living through chemistry.
My cardiologist prescribed channel blockers and beta blockers. These things have horrid side effects. They cause dizziness, lightheadedness, weakness, nausea, flushing, constipation, headache, depression, and mood swings, to name a few. But these horrid pills have kept my ticker running at close to a normal rate.
Cardio rehab is an exclusive gym membership made available after cardiac surgery. You go to a supervised work out twice a week. A trainer is assigned to help you work out properly and to make sure you aren’t straining your heart. You will wear a portable electro cardio monitor allowing the trainer to keep an eye on your heart rhythm. Did I mention that I hate treadmills?
When experiencing A-Fib, the heart doesn’t behave like normal. A normal resting heart rate is considered to be between 60 to 100 beats per minute (bpm). My resting heart rate was usually around 80 bpm. Start a workout and that rate could jump up to 180 or higher. After a workout, the rate is expected to drop below 100 fairly quickly. For me, not so much.
One morning, after walking across the parking lot to the gym, my heart rate was over 100 bpm. The trainers were a wee bit concerned and didn’t want to let me work out without first being cleared by a cardiologist. They escorted me downstairs to consult with one. A full electrocardiogram (ECG) was ordered. Come back next week and repeat the ECG. Based on the observations from the ECGs I was referred to a Cardio Electrophysiologist — who makes up these names — really. Let’s just use CEP.
On visiting the CEP, he was ready to drop a pacemaker into my heart, then burn the electrical connection between the atria and the ventricles. This would free the ventricles from the misbehaving atria. I would still have a-fib, but it wouldn’t matter because the ventricles, the bigger chambers, would be paced by the pacemaker at a controlled rate.
This solution is a one-way street. Once on the pacemaker, always on the pacemaker. A door is closed. I chose to see if we could bring things back under control with more drugs. Ok, we can try that. Double the dose of beta blocker and get back on the treadmill. After a month, it was obvious that chemistry wasn’t going to do the job.
So, back to the operating room. I lay down on the table and was hooked up to the “Machine That Goes Ping” [1]. This was my heartbeat being repeated over a speaker. My “Ping” was more like… Ping — Ping — — — PingPingPing — Ping. And that is what I heard as I fell asleep.
While I was sleeping, the CEP and his team inserted a catheter into my leg, pushing it up and into my heart. The pacemaker was pushed up through the catheter and dropped into my heart. The same magic was used to ablate my AV node, divorcing my atria from my ventricles forever.
On waking up, the “Ping” was very regular. Ping — Ping — Ping — Ping … quite boring, really. The fact that I was awake, and the regularity of the “Ping”, I’ll take boring, thank you.
Ok, the drugs. On discharge from the hospital the next day, I was instructed to stop taking my blockers. That beta blocker and the channel blocker with all those side effects. Didn’t have to tell me twice.
First couple of days were good. Then the withdrawal began. Lots of chest pain, lots of just plain feeling shitty. I was wondering if the cure was worse than the disease.
A bit of research and I learned I should not have gone off these drugs cold turkey. Even after three weeks, the withdrawal symptoms were there, being annoying. Just not fun!
I’m cool now, right? Well, yes and no. The valve job and new spark plug are working fine, so physically, yes, I’m cool.
However, just as I was thinking about getting on with life — to get out and train on my bicycle — Liddy decides to have issues with her hind legs. She started having trouble jumping on the couch, climbing the stairs, and let’s not ask her to jump on the bed.
Off to the Vet. Full set of X-Rays of her rear legs. Vet found nothing he could say was the problem. We went home with arthritis medication and angst. It would be several days before the X-Ray analysis would come back.
After all the crap I have gone through in these last months, this had to be the worst.
Keeping Liddy from doing things that might make her condition worse was easy because I was moping on the couch beside her. I recognized that I was a depressed wreck. Not pretty.
Meanwhile, as I was experiencing how much she means to me, she was healing and getting over it. She was more or less back to her normal self before we received the X-Ray analysis. We don’t know what the problem was. The X-Rays came back with no obvious issues.
We were out on the Foothills Trail a week later and she was trotting along at better than eight miles an hour. Kept it up for half a mile or so before I had her jump into her trailer. So, Liddy is fine.
I guess I am too. Life goes on. When it’s time, it’s not about the one who left, it’s about the heartbreak of those left behind. I’m ready for the time when the fates snip my strings, but damn! It’s going to be hell when they take Liddy.
[1] Reference to Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
The world is a beautiful place. Share the beauty. Leave only footsteps.