Weak In Rock

To be honest, today marks 22 days since my CARDIAC EVENT!

Sorry, I had to put an exclamation point after it. Those are big, important words, and I'm too sarcastic and snarky not to try to work them for laughs in some way. I mean, if I don't laugh about this I'm likely to cry a bit.

How am I doing? Well, I'm not doing so bad. I'm more tired than I'd like to be - as in, I will literally just NEED to take a nap and there's no negotiating about it. For instance, one of our doggos was not feeling well and we were worried that she had some kind of intestinal blockage so we took her to the urgent veterinary care center yesterday. Since we live about ten clicks from the middle of nowhere that meant a drive into Concord and a full day expended waiting for the vet to figure out what was going on. By the time we got back home (doggie is fine, by the way) I sat down on the sofa, leaned over to half-assedly lie down and crashed for the next hour. 

This was not a choice. I simply crashed.

Then there's my right hand. 

Here's a peek behind the curtain for those of you who have never had a heart attack - when they wheel you into the ER it's not like any other experience you've likely had with a hospital. You're not going to wait for anything. They will zip you into a procedure room and immediately start prepping you for surgery because there's something like a one-to-one relationship between a heart attack and a blocked artery. The heart is misbehaving because it's not getting oxygen and nutrients because one of the branch arteries that feeds it both is blocked in some way. So they do what's called a cardiac catheterization that's got two objectives: 1) determine which artery is blocked and how badly and 2) open it back up with a stent if needed.

To prep you for the cardiac cath they prep your wrists and groin. The cardiac cath is a tube they insert into your artery, and they'd rather do that through your wrist because it's a shorter trip to the heart and also has less chance of complications on down the road. They prep both because if they have any trouble at all feeding the catheter into your wrist they will go in through the groin. From what I understand, the groin entry is far more prone to healing poorly or getting infected. Glad they were able to use my wrist. 

In my case the diagonal branch artery is where the blockage is. And it was so severe they decided trying to open it back up was more risky than leaving it be, and it's a rather minor supplier of oxygen and nutrients to the heart muscle, so no stent for Joe. So far so good. Except my hand is messed up a little.

The wrist is full of tightly packed nerves. Priority was preventing another heart attack and making sure I did not have significant damage to my heart, not protecting those nerves. I've got a bit of nerve damage, which manifests itself as tightness, tingling and pain in my right hand. I've also noticed a little bit of lost dexterity. Swell. 

All things being equal, glad to be alive and all that, but it's a bit sucky dooty right now when I try to play guitar or bass. I can still play, but my hand doesn't obey my brain exactly the way I want it to most of the time. Was sort of hoping for some impact to my ability to type (since that's a thing I have to do for bleah yucky work stuff) but no dice. Typing doesn't seem to be impacted. Fooey.

I used to spend a lot of my time working with CAD. AutoCAD, to be specific. CAD, in this instance, refers to Computer Aided Drafting or Design. It's been a long time since I'd worked with that software, or did that type of work. Maybe if I was still spending my working time plotting vectors on a virtual piece of drafting paper I wouldn't have ended up staring at my medical records, slightly confused because those three letters were staring back at me and I was pretty sure they had nothing at all to do with commercial interiors, design or drafting.

Not this time. Nope. CAD, in this case, stands for Coronary Artery Disease. 

Whee!

On October 8th I was running sound for a live music event at the Alpha Acid Brewery in Belmont, CA when I had a heart attack. My band, The Bonstones, was due to play third on the bill after Hank Manninger and The Trouble With Monkeys. I'd hauled my PA from home, set it up and run sound for Hank's set. Moved the mics out of the way and got set for Trouble With Monkeys, who were either playing their third or fourth tune of the day when I broke out in a torrential sweat. I wasn't exerting myself. I was sipping a glass of water, tweaking controls on the mixing console to try to get rid of a kind of icky midrange honk on one of the vocal mics. Not exactly the sort of thing to cause someone to break out in a sweat. 

Then came the chest pain. It was like someone had wrapped several belts around my chest and was tightening them more and more, while simultaneously driving a stake through my heart. Specifically, a barbed stake, coated in acid. It really hurt. 

This was followed by pain shooting down both my arms and up both sides of my neck and into my jaw. 

Naturally, I immediately stopped what I was doing and sought help.

If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.

I went and sat in the shade. My friend and bandmate, Rich, came over and asked if I was ok. Once again, I smartly told him my symptoms and asked for his help.

Nope.

I went back into the venue and tried to distract myself with more audio tweakery. Then I remembered one of my college professors, Dr. Pollack, who some of my fellow students found sitting in his office long after classes were over for the day, looking pale and decidedly unwell. He'd had a heart attack during class earlier that day, and figured if he was going to die he wanted to do it while teaching. Very noble (and stupid). Instead of succumbing he'd spent most of the day, miserably and in great pain, waiting to croak in his office. I had an epiphany that expiring whilst mixing vocals for a Monkees tribute band in a suburban microbrewery was a lot more like fading away than burning out, so I found my friend, and singer in the Bonstones, Rob and told him I was about 90% certain I was having a heart attack and needed an ambulance.

That was 16 days ago. 

I obviously survived. Big thank yous - on the level of there's no chance I can repay you ever - to Rob, Rich, Mark and Nancy, for being there with me and seeing to it that I got the emergency care I needed. Also for loading up my gear in my truck.

More than thanks to the EMTs, the nurses and the doctors who took care of me. A few days in the hospital wired up to the various machines that go BING will do wonders for extracting one's head from one's ass regarding the various things you're obsessing over that you really should just let go. 

There are no words for how much I appreciate Karen for sticking by my side and telling me she'd really, really, really prefer I keep breathing. No words. I love you, to the moon.

Karen and I met with my cardiologist (because, apparently, you have one of those after you have a heart attack - who knew?) yesterday and the news is pretty good. I have a blocked diagonal artery and 100% had a heart attack (feels weird to type that), but the heart muscle damage seems to be very limited and prognosis for the future looks good. Gonna be on meds for the rest of my life, in all probability, and I've still got some recovering to do, but, as the doctor put it, the good bit is to take this as a warning that didn't cost me all that much in the grand scheme of things.

I've been trying to apply the Derick Sivers method (Sivers Razor?) to my life more in the past few years - if the answer isn't “hell yes” then it's a no - and I think that razor's going to get good and sharp now. 

I wrote this because I want my friends to know what's going on with me. Super short version - I had a heart attack. It didn't kill me, or disable me permanently. I'm recovering and will be back to normal stuff soon.