[Leica] OT My night and three days in the hospital

[jhnichols at lighttube.net (Jim Nichols)]

Herb,

I think your doctor who ordered the EKG was very much on the ball.  Glad you 
got the job done.

My late father-in-law received a pacemaker at about your age, following open 
heart surgery.  It worked out fine for him.  Since we were 75 miles from the 
hospital in Nashville where it was done, we received a device that allowed 
me to connect him by telephone once a month, so they could see that all was 
well.  I'm sure things have progressed in the intervening years.

I'm not sure he ever really felt that the PM was intervening with the 
heartbeat, but, for peace of mind, you can't beat it!

Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Herbert Kanner" <kanner at acm.org>
To: "Leica Users Group" <lug at leica-users.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2012 3:54 PM
Subject: [Leica] OT My night and three days in the hospital


> Sorry, no photographs. I am the proud owner of a brand new pacemaker. Here 
> is the story:
>
> Ever since April, I have been having some bad days where walking a block 
> was a problem; I'd get painfully out of breath. The evening that I met 
> Richard Man at a gallery was the third of three consecutive days when this 
> problem got severe--I barely managed to stagger from my car a block to the 
> gallery, though by the time I had been there for a few minutes, I felt 
> fully ok.
>
> The following Monday morning, I saw my pulmonologist on a scheduled 
> appointment. (Now I have to decide whether to fire him for extreme 
> inattention to a possibly dangerous situation.) I described the increase 
> in my symptoms in detail. One of them was missed heartbeats. It started 
> months before, when I noticed that after activity, I would lose one 
> heartbeat out of ten. I had already mentioned this to the cardiologist and 
> got no reaction; an internet search indicated that if not accompanied by 
> chest pains, not to worry. But it had worsened to where, after any moving 
> around, it got to where, after two beats it would skip one, then maybe 
> after a bit, three beats then skip one.
>
> Well, especially since it could very well have been partially due to a 
> side effect from a new drug he had prescribed, he wrote out an order for 
> blood tests and for me to come back the next morning. When I took the 
> order to a lab, they pointed out that he had forgotten to put his name on 
> it (!!!!!) and they had to call him on his cell phone to get 
> authorization.
>
> The next morning, July 10, he looked it over, saw anemia--again yet 
> another one of the myriad side effects of this drug--suggested stopping it 
> for two weeks and seeing him them. What bothers me is that he was not in 
> the least alarmed.
>
> I had a standing appointment for an annual physical that very afternoon, 
> did not feel up to it and phoned to cancel it. About an hour or so after 
> that, I decided that I was getting scared, called back, told what was 
> going on, and the doctor's nurse said to come in--that they'd fit me in 
> and would do an EKG.
>
> I cooled my heels for a while after the EKG. The doctor was not happy with 
> it and took it to a cardiologist, came back and told me that sending me 
> home was too risky and that she had arranged for me to go right to the 
> emergency room. I phoned my wife, who had a bit of trouble absorbing this 
> startling info in a hurry over the telephone, but eventually got it and 
> ferried me there--I had an ok on leaving my own car at the doctor's 
> parking lot.
>
> After a relatively short time, considering that it was an emergency room 
> at Stanford Hospital, they told me that they were admitting me to the 
> hospital. That was Tuesday night. All day Wednesday, the 
> electro-cardiologists were trying to make up there mind whether or not I 
> should get a pacemaker. I wound up making the decision for them. Around 
> noon on Wednesday, my wife was visiting while I was eating lunch--hospital 
> food has sure improved--and just as I leaned forward to pick up a shrimp 
> by the tail and bring it to my mouth, I felt dizzy for just two or three 
> seconds. Thought nothing of it. Didn't even remember that I was supposed 
> to tell the nurse if I got dizzy--got mildly chewed out for it later. 
> Early that evening a cardiologist walked in with a printout in his hand, 
> asked: "Were you dizzy today?" showed me a monitor printout that indicated 
> that my heart had stopped for about six seconds. He said: "You need a 
> pacemaker".
>
> One was installed the very next morning. The amazing thing is that it's 
> all done with local anesthetics and extremely mild sedation. The procedure 
> took about an hour. I didn't get out until late the next afternoon because 
> it took all day to arrange a couple of ten minute procedures: an x-ray to 
> make sure the pacemaker wires were where they should be, and a session 
> where an expert nurse-practitioner who tested and reprogrammed the thing 
> by inductive coupling to a specialized computer program.
>
> That's how I spent a week. No photography.
> -- 
> Herbert Kanner
> kanner at acm.org
> 650-326-8204
>
> Question authority and the authorities will question you.
>
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