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

[richard at richardmanphoto.com (Richard Man)]

Make sure you get the Leica quality pacemaker!

And thank you again for dropping by. Hope for speedy recovery.

On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 1:54 PM, Herbert Kanner <kanner at acm.org> wrote:

> 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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>



-- 
// richard <http://www.richardmanphoto.com>