Don’t worry, this’ll all be interesting when I’m dead.

I went to the cardiologist’s today. It was mainly a follow-up from the time when, a couple months ago, when I was feeling awful and couldn’t even take a few steps (unless the ground was flat) before feeling short of breath and nearly passing out. I had an echo done then and everything looked fine. I have been thinking the medication I’m on may be contributing. It’s designed to make the heart pump with less vigor. I’m taking it as a precaution, though, to keep my heart from pumping out of control and erratically…. which may or may not happen. It’s basically helping me keep an even rhythm. And yes, it theoretically could be contributing.

But my most recent EKG is showing a new problem; one that’s started since (and most likely DUE to) the surgery I had in January.

I now have what’s known as a Left Bundle Branch Block (LBBB).  As I understand it, this means the electric pulses which flow down to the left and right ventricles, causing them to beat in sync, were damaged on the left side during surgery (which, by the way, was quite successful in what it was intended to do; reduce the gradient, allowing the outflow to become normal). I’m given the impression that this is common after the surgery because the tissue they have to take out is right where the electricity flows down through. So, now, my right ventricle pumps and the left one pumps just a wee bit behind it. This could be contributing slightly, perhaps fully, to my recent inability to move without feeling short of breath (which has subsided somewhat, as of 2 weeks ago).

The next step is to get an electrophysiologic study, which is kind of like a heart catheterization, but much less risky, severe, and less difficult to perform. They will be testing to see how the right side is doing and determine if I’m at risk of ventricular arrhythmia (i.e. an irregular heartbeat). If the test is clean, we can sit back and even try getting me off the medication I’m on now. But if the test shows that I am susceptible to a wacky rhythm, then I will be urged to have an ICD put in. (i.e. A pacemaker)

So…
I’ll probably be scheduling the test sometime in September. It shouldn’t be a big deal. I’ll be able to go into work by the next day and everything.  I was seriously thinking this pacemaker/ICD talk wouldn’t happen for at least a few years after the goddamned surgery.  But I suppose I’m not that lucky.

I think I realized this blog was really only existing for one person. I have no interest in sharing such intimate details with anyone else. I didn’t/don’t care that anyone else reads. So now, since I’ve shut her out of my view and assume the opposite has occurred, too, I have little use for this space.

Besides, only one person even bothered to ask for part 2 of my surgery blog. Just goes to show how many are truly interested. I’m not hurt by that, because it’s not surprising.

I will probably end up changing this layout… maybe to something more appropriate to my online life. Less focus on this rotting corpse of a blog and more on Twitter and/or other things.

I need the record to show that I have done quite well with my withdrawal of Lee Anne. It’s been a little scary, though. I’ve always said that the thing that keeps us going is knowing there’s something to live for, something better than here and now. So when I put every ounce of hope into a particular dream, knowing that will make everything better, allowing it to be the one and only thing I was living for… well… it’s a little scary to let such a thing go. Will I lose faith in life? Will I succumb to complete and total apathy and put an end to this now-pointless life?

Nope. I know there’s something (see: someONE) else out there. I believe in my heart we were meant to be together, when we met, but it didn’t happen. I also know there can and will never be anything as great and powerful as what we experienced. But there are so many facets to our relationships with people, there stands the possibility that I will have something equally as important and equally as fulfilling in due time.

I was never bitter about the situation. Disappointed, to say the least… but never bitter, never jealous. Just thoroughly confused about how something so completely right was just not able to be possible. No, I was never bitter. And for a while, almost 2 years, I was a better man because of it. I could revel in the enlightenment I achieved from knowing her. I was at my best in that year following their marriage. I was the fittest I ever was, I was all-around healthier, too. But things quickly changed after all the ups and downs.

Dysthymia seeped in at some point. I’m now fully engulfed by this disorder and oh, how it touches so many around me. The dysfunction it causes it only strengthens its grip on me.

So this is what I need to work on, now. That and a body which is worse-off now than it was before the surgery. The past 3-4 weeks, I’ve been eating healthier than ever before. I actually am making my own salads using fresh ingredients and preparing them the night before! Dinners are all turkey & cheese, tuna, and/or baked beans. …But I’m still not losing weight.

I’ve not made mention of it, but I can’t even go up a flight of stairs without it totally knocking the wind out of me and making me feel like I’m going to pass out. I have to sit down after standing up some times. And the test is scheduled weeks in advance so I won’t know for awhile if they see anything wrong. My knees, at times, feel like the cartilage in the joint is thinning. The good news is, I’m not coughing up blood since the surgery.

Anyway, these subjects are pretty much all I write about on here anymore. Boring!
I advise you to not check here often, since there won’t be much going on.
Not for awhile, anyway.

This is very difficult for me, because I have no idea what I’m going to write.  I usually have a few points; a few ideas or moments I want to convey before I sit down for something like this.  But I’ve not a single moment that stands out among the rest.  This is kind of the reason I am doing this; to connect back to it, to embrace it, to understand what made a difference and where I detached.  My therapist tells me this is important.  I agree.  I wasn’t going to do this.  I never seem to write about the big, huge events in my life.  Not because I intentionally try to avoid them, but because by the time I realize I should write about it, it’s not affecting me and seems boring and self-gratifying.

It’s also not usual for me to preface something prior to writing it.  My prefaces usually are written afterwords.  Maybe I’ll add something here before giving it to you.

So, as I attempt to even think of where to start I’m realizing there wasn’t a single moment where I had any heightened emotion and to try and document this thing one step at a time would be the absolute most boring thing I’ve ever written and you’ve ever read.  So this may go a little differently than we expected.

I acknowledged what was about to happen.  The week leading up to the surgery was pretty hellish.  It began with a dental examination and pulmonary (lung) exam on Thursday which was made in an attempt to figure out why I cough up blood all the time.  Without much warning I would just begin to feel my lungs fill up with blood and I’d have to cough it all up while I wait for it to stop.  It went on for 2 and half years and no one could figure out why.  I was giving these doctors a week to figure it out.  They told me to have the surgery and see if it still happens.  So I wasted 4 days worth of hotel costs.  Hotel costs that, by the way, were up in the 3 star price range but 1 star quality.  Thanks for that, doc.

The wind chill outside was -22.  Temperature was -1.

The dental examination led me to an emergency endodontist’s office the next day, Friday, where this other guy could give me 3 root canals, back-to-back-to-back in one sitting.  This resulted in a missing tooth just left-of-center in my smile.  Except for dealing with the missing tooth, there wasn’t much pain involved and it didn’t affect me too much.   They needed to do this in order to ensure I’d have no infections in my mouth which could travel down to my heart while it was vulnerable during post-op.  A fairly common precaution, actually, and could be fatal.

The sprinkler system malfunctioned in the hotel on Saturday.  The alarms were going off everywhere.  I rushed out of the room and attempted to find a stairwell. No one else was out of their rooms.  No one was in the stairs.  Wh… ummm…what?  The stairwell I found led to an alarm-sounding door to the outside.  This didn’t seem right.  The fire alarm stopped. I went back upstairs.  Still no one was around, so I went to the elevators and took them to the lobby where there I saw the glass vestibule walls were cascading with a constant flow of water.  I had no idea what was going on until I asked the girls at the front desk.  Seems to me this would have been a good time to utilize their P.A. system and announce there was no fire, everything’s OK.  But apparently those types of thoughts don’t occur to these girls.  I developed a severe migraine and the Eagles ended their playoff run that night.

Sunday night began a fasting.  I had a bunch of tests the next day and wouldn’t eat again until Monday afternoon.  I also met with my cardiologist who promptly ordered a neurological exam and colonoscopy because of some passing comments I made about two recent, odd events: a Transient Ischemic Attack and a little blood in my stool one day.  Nooooooo.

After the testing I’d fast again because I had a heart catheterization the next morning, which turned out to be a bigger procedure than I expected.  That’s where they shave your groin area, cut a hole and shove a tube into your femeral artery.  They guide the tube all the way up your torso and into your heart.  Then they inject dye while they take x-rays to see how the blood flows.  I was in the waiting room for this procedure while Barack Obama was being sworn in.  First I stood with another 20 or so people as we all gathered around a TV hanging on the wall.  Then was guided to another area where I was sitting with another 10 or so people, some of which were foreign.  The swearing in occured and there was some silence for a moment until one lady decided to start clapping.  I would have started it myself, but really, when you don’t know other people’s feelings on the subject, I didn’t want to get into any arguments.  But most everyone joined in the lady’s clapping for a few seconds and we continued to watch the ceremonies until I was led into the cath lab, which was pretty much an operating room.

I awoke to the inaugural parade and enjoyed it from my recovery bed.  This was not exactly how I wanted to enjoy these historical events, but whatever.

A couple hours later I began the preparation for a colonoscopy which was scheduled for the next day.  But I hadn’t eaten!  So I ate something and then waited a certain amount of time before drinking the god awful “medication” to clean me out.  Talk about binge and purge.  This was literally like drinking water straight from the ocean.  It’s not that bad if you get one or two mouthfulls. But a gallon?  In like, an hour?  Can’t be done.  Not by me, at least.  I drank about 75% of it and went to bed.

Woke up Wednesday morning and went to the neuro exam.  He orders a CT scan on my head and declares the TIA I had was probably not TIA and just random numbness.  Then the waiting began as I was unable to get to my next appointment on time to meet with the surgeon and had to wait until he got through with a surgery.  When he finally showed up, it was brief but friendly.  I also got to meet with his scheduler who’d been more of a help to me throughout this whole process than anyone else.  I had every intention to send her a thank you card, but still haven’t yet.  Dammit.

Well, I ran from his meeting downstairs to where my colonoscopy was schedule and to which I was late for.  I gained some sympathy from the attractive, young nurse — which reminds me… holy crap, the nurses throughout this complex were all so pretty.  Many could easily have a side career as models.  My completely deshevled appearance made for a much easier time interacting with them because I knew I had no chance in hell.  And yet, I was conflicted because I was still embarrassed by my situation and even still OK with gaining their sympathy, like it would somehow lead to some fleeting romance while I limped from the hole in my crotch, smiled awkwardly due to the hole in my smile, and tried to contain the air buildup from the probe that was just inside my ass.  Yes, yes… please love me.  Aren’t I adorable and helpless??? 

*pause for sarcastic effect*

So it was all done.  All the testing, at least.  I could finally eat again, too, but not for long because tomorrow was the big surgery; the reason I was really there, 400 miles away from home and 400 miles from anyone I knew.  To repair a damaged heart, in the most literal of ways.

You can see all the photos from this period in my life here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/auxzealot/Myectomy2009#

Last week it was sprung on me that I needed dental clearance before surgery. WTF?! My mouth is in bad shape right now. So… last night I went to the dentist’s. He denied signing off on me. I’m too much of a risk. But I should have the Cleveland docs call him to discuss it and they can get a better idea of what they’ll be dealing with.

Fuuuuhhhhhhk.

So this morning I called the surgeon’s office. They didn’t cancel anything and they didn’t see a need to speak with the dentist. Instead, I have a dental appointment first thing in the morning once I arrive in Cleveland… before the pulmonary appointment. I will be seen by a dentist who only deals with cardiac patients and he will know exactly what’s acceptable and what’s not. If necessary, there will be a little time to do some emergency work to try and get me “infection free” and ready for the surgery. No guarantees, though.

I was also told that I will still be able to get the pulmonologist to look at me and that alone may hopefully result in the trip being worth it.

So I can relax a little for now. Cross your fingers for me.
This has made for quite a stressful birthday morning for me.

Well, I am fairly certain I sent a billion tweets out for no one but myself. I guess that’s OK.

The end result of the trip is that the doctor recommends I have the surgery. He’s not even comfortable with waiting until the Spring, when I wanted. He recommends January. Now I have to figure out how I’m gonna do this because I apparently can’t do this on my own. So… most likely my mom’s gonna have to come out with me and then when I come home, I’ll be staying with her for a little. However, we’re not sure how she’s gonna pay for all that. So it’s kind of up in the air but I have to make a decision within a week or so.

If you’d like to see the pictures I took during my ride, my stay, and my ride back, you can sit and stare at these or just go directly to the album by clicking the link underneath the slideshow. You’ll also get to see them full-size if you click ‘em.

*sigh*

http://picasaweb.google.com/auxzealot/ClevelandTripNovember2008#

EDIT:
The other day I mentioned a video of the hotel room. Here it is.

On Sunday morning I’ll be departing on a long drive headed for The Cleveland Clinic in Ohio to meet with one of the nation’s top specialists in the world of Hypertrophic Obstructive Cardiomyopathy. I haven’t seen it, but I heard the most recent episode of Grey’s Anatomy featured a patient with this condition.

I will go through a full day of testing to determine if I qualify for a septal myectomy (an open-heart surgery). There is a very good chance I will qualify, at which point I will be scheduling the surgery for this coming Spring.

Today was spent trying to work out approvals, etc. to make sure I’ll be covered for all this. Quite a headache. I disagree with any company outsourcing their call centers overseas, but I particularly hate that health insurance companies do it now. Having worked for a health insurance company and trying to deal with people in another country who really have NO idea how things work over here and don’t have a clue what anything you say means, it’s especially awful when I’m an actual patient trying to get answers. They might as well be robots. I feel like hanging up as soon as I know I was routed into an overseas call center. So I just allowed them to give me all the wrong answers and get me upset only to get a totally different set of answers once I spoke to someone here in the states.

So I’ll be spending 2 nights in OH once I arrive, drive back Tuesday morning and I’m back to work on Wednesday with a clearer idea of the future that lies ahead of me.

For those wondering what’s going on with Circuit Theory, here’s the answer: Tom and I have agreed we want to continue working together writing songs, but we’re burnt out a bit at the moment – plus with things like my impending surgery, our lives are kind of preventing us to take anything seriously. So with any luck, we’ll toss ideas back and forth for awhile and once I’m healed, we’ll look at the possibility of seeking out additional band-mates… but the earliest that could happen is probably Summer ‘09.

I added a search bar to the left.  You’re welcome!

Soooo… Monday is my surgery for the removal of my gall-bladder and well, I couldn’t care less.  I guess I’ve got bigger things on my mind.  But moreso, the whole thing’s just been a huge inconvenience leading up to now.  Aside from the cripping stomach aches the stone would give me and the ER trip which made me miss a day, I’ve had to intterupt my work day 6 times in the last 7 weeks to see doctors or get tests done.  Gimme a break.

So here we go again, another year’s vacation time used up by sitting at home recovering from something.  And next year’s out of the question, too, if I’ll indeed be out 8 weeks or so due to the possible heart surgery.

Anyway, this little thing on Monday isn’t scaring me at all.  I am looking forward to a little time to myself and hopefully I’ll be well enough to sneak away for something.

Oh – and this cancer scare with my grandmom… the tests will be back tomorrow I think.  If it turns out it’s cancer, it will be the first instance of cancer in my family that I know of.  Pretty weird and interested in that respect.  

Quick run-down of things happening at this moment. Forgive the negativity, please.

• Beginning pre-op procedures for surgery in 2 weeks to get gall-bladder out.
• Mom’s in the hospital now for unexplained stomach pain. Going to visit her now.
• Got told I need to get to The Cleveland Clinic for examination ASAP.
• Was also informed I should probably look into heart surgery to be done this coming spring.

How, what?  Ugh….