How’s it goin’? It’s just me, MikeWaters: part man, part machine. I’m like Robo-Cop! …or Robo-Jock! I’m a walking Sci-Fi character!! Sorry, I can get over dramatic at times…ope! Hold on! Mrs. Waters just yelled from the kitchen, “it’s part of your charm!” Sarcastically, of course.
Looking back at the last 6 months (hard to believe, it’ll be a half year since my entire life changed) It really was pretty surreal: I went to the walk-in with an odd pain in my back, 🚑 speeds me to St. Luke’s, lights flashing, siren 🚨 screaming, rolled up to the door, into a room where I was gassed to oblivion and before you know it, new stent! A week later, went back in, barely able to breathe. My left lung had collapsed from the pressure of 2.6 liters of fluid that had filled my chest. My damaged heart was like a malfunctioning sump pump unable to disperse the fluid to all my organs. Before ya knew it, I had a needle stuck in my back feeling like a tapped keg. Twenty minutes later, fluid was out and I was feeling a little empty inside, but in a good way. Next comes the Life Vest (a wearable defibrillator) which I wore for 3 months. A heart echo was scheduled to see if my heart was efficient enough, the result was 37%. I figured that was good news, being strong enough that I would no longer need the vest or a defibrillator. Wrong! It wasn’t that I was strong enough, it was the insurance company refusing to pay out unless your ejection fraction (The percentage of blood that leaves the left ventricle during a contraction) is under 35%. Mine was 37%, still not good, considered heart failure, but insurance wouldn’t pay. So, I got out my check book and wrote it for the amount of 537 thousand dollars. Ha. Haha. Heh. Ahem. Yeah, I’m a dj, so that wasn’t possible. Thank God my doctor had one more thing we could try. A muga! What?? You don’t know what a muga is???what’re ya? Ignorant? Radionuclide angiography is an area of nuclear medicine which show the functionality of the right and left ventricles of the heart, thus allowing informed diagnostic intervention in heart failure. A doy! The muga showed my ejection fraction was 29%! Yay! Weaker! Well, at least the insurance company was gonna pay and I could get a defibrillator and pacemaker.
This past Friday (June 10th) I made my way back to St Luke’s, ready for the operation. They made a small incision into my chest, on the far left side, just to the right of my armpit and went to work. Other than the fact that I woke up right in the middle of it saying, “hey, how’s it goin? Can I help with anything?” it went very well. They never really answered me, just gave me another pump or two of gas. The next time I woke up, I was rolling back to my room to eat food for the first time in 20 hours. That is the only time to have hospital food, btw…when you’re hungry enough to eat anything. 😄
Now, I have the pacemaker to coordinate the chambers of my heart and defibrillator to control any life threatening arrhythmias. And they all lived happily ever after. Just some time to recover and I can get back to work.
