Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2012/07/14

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Subject: [Leica] OT My night and three days in the hospital
From: grduprey at mchsi.com (grduprey at mchsi.com)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2012 00:27:36 -0500 (CDT)

Herbert,

Sorry to hear about your heart problems, and all the screw ups by the first 
doctor.  Glad to hear that you are on the way to getting better with the 
pacemaker installed.

Cheers,
Gene

----- Original Message -----
From: "Herbert Kanner" <kanner at acm.org>
To: "Leica Users Group" <lug at leica-users.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2012 3:54:55 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central
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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