Rich Z (WebSlave)

I just feel like a little weenie. Feel weak. Walking across the yard gets me winded.

Still got a bit of a cough from the irritation caused by that acid reflux episode, but I guess it is getting better. When Connie and I were in the emergency room yesterday, people were moving away from us like we were lepers. Oh well.. Can't blame them. I would have done the same thing.

A friend came by, heck, was it Friday or Saturday? I don't have a clue. Anyway, he brought some fresh tomatoes out of his garden for Connie. While he was here he asked me if there is anything he can do to help. Well, I sure wanted to get that mailbox installed that I started the day before my heart attack. What was left wasn't hard, but I just don't have the stamina to do even light stuff, it seems. We just had to put the plastic sleeve base over top of the 4x4 post, bolt it to the post, then mount the actual mailbox on top of it by just snapping it into place. I don't know why that seemed such a high mountain for me to have to climb.

But we got it done, and it looks pretty good. Maybe a little bit more wobbly than I would like it to be, but maybe I can figure out a way to fix that when I get to being more my old self. Lord, I HOPE I will become my old self. This being an old feeble man is for the birds!

Now, what is going to be interesting is that I have a 135 lb crate due to show up tomorrow via UPS. This was ordered before Connie's cancer was diagnosed, and certainly before my problem burst onto the scene. I have to run Connie to the hospital for her lung draining, so I hope I get back before UPS arrives so I can get the driver to put it on a wagon and I can just drag that into the garage until my muscles grow back and I can deal with it.

Being old wasn't too bad when I didn't FEEL old.

Originally Posted by Beyond GenetiX

So sorry to hear that Rich, don't worry about things here.

and !!

I am very glad you are doing better!!

Originally Posted by Beyond GenetiX

So sorry to hear that Rich, don't worry about things here.

and !

I am so glad you are okay!!

Hopefully the road to recovery won't have too many more potholes for either of you.

Sent from my SM-A716U1 using Tapatalk

I guess my biggest problem is that I just don't know how fragile I am right now. With the left coronary artery 60% blocked, am I in danger of another heart attack? Connie, of course, is watching over me like a hawk refusing to let me do anything strenuous. She is really worried about my right arm that they used to put in that stent, because the docs told us to be VERY careful of opening up that artery they used. I could lose a lot of blood very quickly if that happened. So Connie is scared to death about that.

One interesting thing happened when I was in the intensive care unit. They had me all wired up to monitor me, and had a blood pressure cuff that would take my blood pressure every 15 minutes to every hour, depending on how they had it set up. One of the nights I must have been having a pretty wild dream, because I could swear that some animal was swallowing my left arm. So using my right arm (the only that was used during the surgery) I just ripped the cuff off of my left arm. I woke up staring at this white "thing" that looked like some sort of swollen leech, that was buzzing at me. Yeah, alarms went off and people came in to see what happened. Kind of embarrassed, but they just laughed and said this happens all of the time there. But at least my right arm didn't pop that artery while I was defending myself from that arm devouring creature.

I am astonished at the number of people I have run into very recently that when I tell them I had a heart attack recently, they will say "Me too!" Yeah, and I had a stent put into one of my coronary arteries. "Me too! Two of them!"

Are there really that many people with heart problems, or am I just hanging around with the wrong crowd?

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Are there really that many people with heart problems, or am I just hanging around with the wrong crowd?

I really and truly believe, that many people, are having heart related issues.

Many Americans are obese and do not exercise at all, not only seniors but young people and children, more people now have diabetes type 2 and other diagnoses associated with cardiac issues. I'm sure that the after effects of Covid for some 'Long Covid' include heart trouble.
And of course there is the fraud subset, those who are falsely labelled and sometimes actually undergo unnecessary surgery by doctors who see that fraud as an opportunity to make $. Insurance/Medicare fraud in doctor's offices of all kinds is a huge problem.

Heck, I am down to 149 lbs now. So I dropped 10 lbs since Connie was diagnosed with her ailment.

Got an appointment with a cardiologist on 07-20. Not sure when my next stent insertion is supposed to take place.

In the meantime, I am just taking it easy. Still haven't opened up the crate that came in Monday with my laser. At least my friend came over and helped me complete the mailbox install, so I guess that is enough work for the month.

I do feel tired often. I would have thought blood flow opened up to the heart would have sparked more energy, but I sure don't feel that way. Coming home from dropping Connie off for chemo yesterday I could barely keep my eyes open. But yet when I laid down, I was too restless feeling to get much, if any, sleep. I did sleep like a rock last night, and got a good 9 hours of sleep. But still, I feel like I could take a nap right now.

But need to run Connie back to the oncologist today so she can get an injection for something to help with her white blood count. Supposed to make her joints ache, so hopefully that won't be real uncomfortable for her.

One good thing about the yellow flies marauding outside, it gives me a damned good excuse for not going out to do any yard work. That will just have to wait.

I just read through this thread again, and realize that I didn't post the symptoms here that I had when I was going through my heart attack. Perhaps it may help someone else to know what to look for if it happens to them some day.

Heck, I have always been moderately active, and VERY active in spurts. But this time of year, with the yellow flies rampaging the area, doing just about anything outside is pretty much an exercise in painful ridiculousness.

But that being said, on Sunday (day before "nearly drop dead day") I decided I wanted to install our new mailbox. We took it down years ago after local hoodlums kept on knocking them over or smashing them throughout the area a couple of times each year. And we were doing a lot of shows, so I figured just be done with it and get a post office box. Been pretty much nothing but headaches all along, but never reached the level to where I felt I should go back to the physical address mail box thing. Until recently.

I already had the post in the back of Connie's truck so I just put some tools in the bed of the truck along with the post and backed it up the driveway to the end where the mailbox was going to go.

I had to get up early anyway to bring in a grocery delivery made by Publix, and since it seemed rather cool out, and I wanted to wear long pants and a long sleeved shirt to fend off the flies, seemed like the perfect time to do this job.

So I spent several hours with a post hole digger digging down 56 inches so that the 8 ft long 4x4 treated post would leave 40 inches above ground, as needed by the sleeved mailbox I had purchased. I will tell you, that was pretty hard work, especially towards the end, when there wasn't much handle on the post hole digger remaining above ground. It was pretty tough going jamming the post hole digger down into that hole and then spreading the arms so I could lift the load of damp sand out of that hole. I knew I was in for some hurting muscles the next day.

I took several breaks when the heart started pumping pretty hard, and to gulp down some water to stay hydrated. Then after I had the post perfectly vertical, with a bubble level, and then tied in place with stakes, I dumped 200 lbs of Quickreet quick setting concrete into that hole. And the level of concrete came up perfectly even with the mark I had set for the 40 inches needed above ground. I was feeling pretty proud of myself, too. Of course, my clothes were soaking wringing wet by then and the temps were increasing. Why that heart attack didn't hit me then, I have no idea. I probably would have died then, because Connie wouldn't have had any idea that I had passed out down at the end of the driveway. So unless someone passing by noticed me, there I would have been for who knows how long.

I have worked just as hard many a time before, and never even had a thought of an impending heart attack cross my mind. I am not THAT old, I thought.

Monday morning I was expecting sore muscles, especially in my chest, arms, and shoulders, because the motion of closing the jaws of the post hole digger to lift it out of the hole with the damp sand coming up with it, was using those muscles a lot more than they have been used any time in the recent past. And yeah, I did have chest pains, but not until after I had gotten up to urinate, and then laid back down again. Then I just could not get comfortable, with those muscles yelping. Then I noticed that my left arm was feeling rather numb. Uh oh... That is odd. The left arm hurts and is numb feeling at the same time.

I was sleeping on the couch in the family room, because Connie was sleeping in the recliner and I still needed to help her in and out of the recliner. I got up quietly so as not to disturb her and got the blood oxygen sensor from the end table near the recliner. We were using that to monitor her vital signs.

I put the blood oxygen sensor on my finger and noticed that the pulse rate was only 44 bpm, but the oxygen was around 97%, so that looked pretty good. But the graph of the heart beat was very flat. Hmmm.. Almost flat lined looking, which certainly wasn't normal for me.

Connie was over in the recliner, still asleep, and I was thinking about how it was going to upset her when I asked her to take me to the emergency room. But I was beginning to think that was probably a real good idea right about now. It was then like someone threw a bucket of water over top of me, because I became soaked to the bone with sweat. I may have passed out then, but darn i I know. Next thing I knew, I felt fine. It was like the pains and the left arm numbness just went away. Still, something wasn't right, because of what just happened.

Just to play it safe, I woke up Connie and asked her to set me up on the blood pressure monitor to see what that looked like. I was still feeling OK, but pretty spooked by those earlier symptoms. So after I got her out of the recliner, I was getting ready to sit down on the stool near the recliner to let her wrap the gizmo around my arm to see what my pressure looked like. I had barely started to sit down, when the room began to spin and I started feeling pretty clammy and sweaty. So I straightened up and turned towards the recliner, figuring that would be the safest place for me to be if I was going to pass out. Next thing I knew, I was again soaking wringing wet, Connie had her hand on my chin shaking me, and was talking on the phone. I heard her say, "yes, he is unconscious, and not responding to me." I asked her who she was talking to, and she said "911". She was shaking like a leaf and crying. I am sure she thought she had just watched me die.

They got to our house within minutes, or at least it seemed that way to me.

Oddly, the thought uppermost on my mind was "Damn, Connie is going to be pissed if they don't take their shoes off when they walk on the carpet." I guess it didn't matter to her at the time, as the two guys came in and started checking me out.

Best I can tell, I was conscious the entire time, so they must have been pretty quick getting there. Interestingly enough, Connie told me that she was looking at me when my head fell back on the back of the recliner, and my pupils had dilated so much that she couldn't see any blue from my irises. Then my eyes just rolled up into my head, and that is when she dived for the phone. Quite likely she saved my life by doing everything right to get 911 out here pronto.

They hooked me up to do an EKG, and the one guy was looking at the squiggly lines on the paper. He just said something like "Hmm, you know, you may want to think about having us take you to the hospital." So, I am like "Sure. Can I get dressed first?" I was just in shorts and a light T-shirt.

I walked to the front door and onto the porch, but from there they put me on a gurney. When they had me loaded into the back of the ambulance, the guy who read the EKG told me, "Mr. Zuchowski, we didn't want to alarm your wife back in the house, but you really REALLY need to get to the hospital as soon as possible." Apparently, from what a lot of people told me, he was correct. And I was real lucky to have gotten there fast enough.

Anyway, may be some gaps in my memory, but that is how I remember it going. I remember thinking how strange it was being in the back of an ambulance watching the road from the back of a vehicle. They gave me four aspirin tablets to chew on and I remember every now and again someone asking me if I was still OK back there. Yeah, I guess I was.