I'm not dead yet.

[Big Frank]

I'm here. Thanks for all the well wishes and good advice. I saw my cardiologist Thursday and he said they put 2 stents in me, not 1. He let me quit taking the isosorbide mononitrate (ISMO) pills that gave me migraines, but if I have chest pains I can put one under my tongue like they do with nitroglycerin. I read online it doesn't work fast enough to be effective for that, but it's probably better than nothing at all. I saw my primary doctor today. I just got done reading what they did, in the cardiac OR, and here it is:

Procedures performed:
1. Selective left coronary artery angiography
2. Selective right coronary artery angiography
3. Right radial artery access.
4. Intracoronary nitroglycerin administration.
5. PTCA of the proximal to mid left anterior descending artery using a 2.5 x 12 mm balloon
6. PCI of the left anterior descending artery using 3.5 x 15 mm Xience drug-eluting stent

The total time spent managing conscious sedation was 90 minutes.


PTCA is percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty, and PCI is percutaneous coronary intervention. So it looks like they did angioplasty on the left anterior descending artery, then put a stent in. If I'm reading it right, I went from a 90% blockage to 0%. Drug-eluting stents have a polymer coating that slowly releases drugs like Taxol that kills cancer cells. It helps keep  the artery walls from growing thick inside the stent, causing a a partial blockage. They accessed the artery in my wrist using the Seldinger technique after giving me a shot of 1% lidocaine to numb it. They used heparin anti-coagulant to keep my activated clotting time greater than 250 before they did the angioplasty. "In the very proximal to mid segment of the left anterior descending artery immediately after the first major septal perforator there was a critical stenosis approximating to at least 80 to 85%." The LAD had a second stenosis of at least 40 to 50% at the level of the bifurcation with the diagonal. This particular stenosis in the proximal segment was subsequently intervened upon with poststenotic reduction in the stenosis to 0%. 

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/anatomyvideos/000096.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percutaneous_coronary_intervention

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activated_clotting_time

I had one of these TR Bands on my wrist with 8 or 10cc/ml of air in it, and they withdrew 2 at a time, waiting 20-30 minutes in between. The report says I lost <5ml of blood, or less than a teaspoonful. My wrist wasn't as bloody as the guy in this video. There was just a small drop drying up under the band.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvwUgEKF4ts


My Left Anterior Descending artery was in bad shape but my Left CircumfleX coronary artery was "devoid of any critical stenosis." So was my Right Coronary Artery, but "there is mild luminal irregularity in the mid to distal RCA." There's evidence of small vessel disease and I, along with ~7% population have a codominant coronary artery system. Left dominance (~8%) and codominance are generally considered to be normal variants with no particular prognostic significance, but may represent less well-balanced myocardial perfusion and thus confer worse prognosis in acute coronary syndrome. Left and codominance are associated with modestly increased post-percutaneous coronary intervention in-hospital mortality in patients with acute coronary syndrome. Oh, great.  

[Rastus]

Too much information.  You are gonna make me pass out talking all of the medical stuff.

Are you going to be getting back to normal?

[Big Frank]

I went to a baby shower Saturday, and now I need to unpack everything in the car so I can start packing it again in a week or so. My friend is taking a 4-day weekend for his birthday and we'll be riding our ATVs again. I really won't have much time to spend on the forum until after that. Wing Tactical finally got the Next Level Armament NLX-5 Hi-Helix Flash Suppressor (5.56/.223) in stock, and they're $10 off the list price, so I got one last week. It was supposed to get here Monday but came early, on Saturday. The pitch of the slots causes it to tighten up if it somehow came loose, and it should never fall off even if it's only finger-tight. I don't even have time to work on my guns. I need to fix my laptop first. I want to get it up and running so I can watch movies on the side of the cook tent with my LCD projector.

https://www.wingtactical.com/firearm-parts/ar-15/muzzle-devices/next-level-armament-nlx-5-hi-helix-flash-suppressor-5-56-223/

https://nextlevelarms.com/product/hi-helix-flash-suppressor/

[Big Frank]

Too much information.  You are gonna make me pass out talking all of the medical stuff.

Are you going to be getting back to normal?

If you mean A. B. Normal, I'm already back. I feel better than I did before I had the heart attack. My heart doc said to wait a couple more weeks before I start pushing the mower around the yard. It's looking really wild out there already.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1tj2zJ2Wvg

[Big Frank]

NO MORE JUNGLE!!! I mowed the front yard Wednesday and the back yard today. The tallest grass was about the same height as my mower, but it doesn't look that bad in the picture. There was only a bit here and there that got that high. I had about 7 yard waste bags worth of grass clippings, but filled up the compost bin before I filled 5 bags. I'll use my little red wagon to haul 2 at a time to the curb on trash day. Yesterday I went to see my psychiatrist, and finished unloading the Yukon. The last time I saw him, I had a heart attack when I started unpacking.

BEFORE and AFTER. I had to whittle down the second pic to make it small enough to post. I used a tank of gas to mow my postage stamp size front yard and (almost) another 2 tanks full in the back yard. I can normally mow everything without stopping for gas, and finish in less than an hour if I didn't let it get too long. It grows faster in the back and sometimes I can only mow half the width of the mower or else it won't mulch the grass. I forgot to check the oil before I mowed. I know I burned some up today. At least all my other mowers did if I tried cutting hay or a meadow with them.

[Sponsor]

[Big Frank]

Lots of weeds in the yard, especially toward the back where my garden was, but they're green so I don't worry too much about it. If the leaves are so wide they keep light from shining on the grass I pull them. There used to be a lot more plantain weeds everywhere, but if I carefully grab all of the leaves I can usually pull them out by the roots. I'd like to get rid of all the chicory between the street and sidewalk, but when you're the only one clearing them out, seeds blow in from  the neighbors so new ones keep coming in. If you've never stepped on a chicory plant barefoot after mowing it down, it's a whole lot like stepping on a nail. When I had a board nailed to my foot by stepping on it, I don't think it hurt as bad. The stems are very fibrous. 

[Big Frank]

I finally heard back from my older brother yesterday. He was at camp in the U.P. for 2 1/2 weeks. He said, "Well, if you went to the doctor and then had a heart attack I'd get a different doctor. What did he do to you?" My reply was, "He asked me how I'd been doing since the last time I saw him. That's about all my psychiatrist does besides keep filling my prescriptions." That was over 24 hour ago and I haven't heard anything back. If he does reply at all, he'll probably just say, Okay. That's the extent of his email replies back to me almost every time, no matter what I say.

My idiot brother is getting his truck fixed again. I don't know if he can make the 8 hour round trip of just over 550 miles without something on his truck breaking. But at least he made it home this time. This is the same idiot who had a brand new RAM pickup made in Mexico, said it was the worst POS he ever owned, and when it was time to trade it in, bought that year's version of the same thing.   My brothers and I all work for or retired from GM, but neither of them will buy a GM vehicle of any kind, because our dad had bad luck with a Chevy truck one time before any of us were born. He owned every American brand of pickup truck including Studebaker, and had problems with one or more of each brand. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker_E-series_truck
But before he bought another Ford pickup, my dad said Dodge trucks were the best, so these 2 idiots believe it's true and keep buying Dodge/RAM/Mopar cars, vans, and trucks. Letting someone who died more than a quarter century ago make your decisions for you to this day isn't just brand loyalty, it's idiocy. Idiocy: extreme foolishness or stupidity, utterly senseless or foolish behavior; a stupid or foolish act, statement, etc., extreme stupidity, a stupid action, or stupid behavior. No matter which definition you use, they're like people in the 2006 movie Idiocracy in real life.

[PegLeg45]

Get you some 20-0-0 high nitrogen Weed & Feed and it'll take care of the weeds and won't hurt the grass.

[Big Frank]

I'll have to try that sometime. And maybe some Preen N Green around my roses to get rid of the grass and weeds growing between them. I used it once, several years ago, and it worked great.