1.
History
I turned 60 years old in February; I hardly expected any serious heart problems. I was about 167 pounds at a little over five foot 10. My diet wasn’t bad (very little red meat). I did, however, get diagnosed as diabetic a little more than a year before (but on the low end, requiring two pills a day). Yes, there was certainly heart disease in my family. Both my parents had bypass operations in their seventies. My mother had an actual heart attack and a triple bypass; on that day, I was called by the hospital and told to get right over. I will never forget my mother’s words to me as she was wheeled to the operating room on a gurney. In true show biz lingo she said “If I don’t make it through this, it’s been nice being on the bill with you.” How’s that to bring tears to your eyes? She made it through. In the recovery room, she displayed strange symptoms. She swore I had flown people in from California to her New York City hospital and was keeping them in another room down the hall. (The drugs had made her hallucinate. She came out of it a short time later.) Her recuperation was fairly easy, given that she had had a mastectomy decades earlier that numbed her chest in the area of the open heart surgery.
My father, on the other hand, was a different story. He had had quadruple bypass and aorta valve replacement…one of the more complicated open heart surgeries. I can recall visiting him when he was right out of surgery and it was almost more frightening for me than for him. You see, when they bring you out of this operation, they have a tube shoved down your throat until they feel you can breathe successfully on your own. For him, it was a tube surrounded by cold air (oxygen?) and no way to communicate except with your eyes. I will never forget the absolute look of terror in his eyes wanting me or someone to remove this horrible thing in his throat that makes you feel as if you’re going to choke every second that it’s in. Eventually, it was removed. I knew it was horrible, but I hadn’t a real clue how truly frightening it was at the time.
Both my grandfathers also had heart disease. My mother’s father had two heart attacks and my father’s father had had at least two. Medical advancements had not quite made the leap to help them in time.
So I was just sitting on a time bomb.
2.
The Clues Are Mounting
For at least six months prior to my ordeal, I had had some pressure in the chest area, a little pain and a little bit of shortness of breath. It was all very minor and seemed as though it could be stress related. I was always having trouble with my cable company or landlord or both so I was walking around with a lot of anxiety and anger. Now don’t get me wrong — I am not against those feelings. You would not be normal if you didn’t have something that pissed you off in this life. So when I was walking somewhere, I felt this sort of anxious feeling in my chest…and it was happening more often than not. I am not one to dodge the doctor. I called for an appointment. I told him my symptoms and he did an EKG and listened to my heart. No problems. So I went about my life thinking what I thought before — stress.
My life was going in a more positive direction than it had in years. I got married again after being divorced for 24 years. I had met Jeanne quite by accident through our conversations on Facebook. It was October 15, 2010 that we finally got together. We hit it off right away; she was a nurse who was also hip to the music business having already been married to a musician. We really got along well and it was the first time in all those years that I felt comfortable enough again to ask someone to marry me. They say you just know and I think that’s true. So we had a small wedding in our apartment and settled into married life with Jeanne working as a nurse and me continuing to write songs and all the other things I do in the business.
During this time I had gotten a call from a
History
I turned 60 years old in February; I hardly expected any serious heart problems. I was about 167 pounds at a little over five foot 10. My diet wasn’t bad (very little red meat). I did, however, get diagnosed as diabetic a little more than a year before (but on the low end, requiring two pills a day). Yes, there was certainly heart disease in my family. Both my parents had bypass operations in their seventies. My mother had an actual heart attack and a triple bypass; on that day, I was called by the hospital and told to get right over. I will never forget my mother’s words to me as she was wheeled to the operating room on a gurney. In true show biz lingo she said “If I don’t make it through this, it’s been nice being on the bill with you.” How’s that to bring tears to your eyes? She made it through. In the recovery room, she displayed strange symptoms. She swore I had flown people in from California to her New York City hospital and was keeping them in another room down the hall. (The drugs had made her hallucinate. She came out of it a short time later.) Her recuperation was fairly easy, given that she had had a mastectomy decades earlier that numbed her chest in the area of the open heart surgery.
My father, on the other hand, was a different story. He had had quadruple bypass and aorta valve replacement…one of the more complicated open heart surgeries. I can recall visiting him when he was right out of surgery and it was almost more frightening for me than for him. You see, when they bring you out of this operation, they have a tube shoved down your throat until they feel you can breathe successfully on your own. For him, it was a tube surrounded by cold air (oxygen?) and no way to communicate except with your eyes. I will never forget the absolute look of terror in his eyes wanting me or someone to remove this horrible thing in his throat that makes you feel as if you’re going to choke every second that it’s in. Eventually, it was removed. I knew it was horrible, but I hadn’t a real clue how truly frightening it was at the time.
Both my grandfathers also had heart disease. My mother’s father had two heart attacks and my father’s father had had at least two. Medical advancements had not quite made the leap to help them in time.
So I was just sitting on a time bomb.
2.
The Clues Are Mounting
For at least six months prior to my ordeal, I had had some pressure in the chest area, a little pain and a little bit of shortness of breath. It was all very minor and seemed as though it could be stress related. I was always having trouble with my cable company or landlord or both so I was walking around with a lot of anxiety and anger. Now don’t get me wrong — I am not against those feelings. You would not be normal if you didn’t have something that pissed you off in this life. So when I was walking somewhere, I felt this sort of anxious feeling in my chest…and it was happening more often than not. I am not one to dodge the doctor. I called for an appointment. I told him my symptoms and he did an EKG and listened to my heart. No problems. So I went about my life thinking what I thought before — stress.
My life was going in a more positive direction than it had in years. I got married again after being divorced for 24 years. I had met Jeanne quite by accident through our conversations on Facebook. It was October 15, 2010 that we finally got together. We hit it off right away; she was a nurse who was also hip to the music business having already been married to a musician. We really got along well and it was the first time in all those years that I felt comfortable enough again to ask someone to marry me. They say you just know and I think that’s true. So we had a small wedding in our apartment and settled into married life with Jeanne working as a nurse and me continuing to write songs and all the other things I do in the business.
During this time I had gotten a call from a
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