I haven't checked in with a post for awhile but I couldn't be happier with the way things are going for everyone......except Nigel. So let me post and ramble a bit.

Initially, you have reason to be scared. There have been so many studies done and knowledge accumulated over the years that they now are able to see and tell us how interactions of conditions often fit together and how things that used to be unnoticed are now linked. Now while that makes it scary when you have these things, it also makes them more readily dealt with by the medicos. And since you know you have them you can also do "right" things to help yourself.

I don't know how to phrase this exactly, but let me tell how "bad" I am. Ii 1997 I had 4 arteries virtually completely blocked and got a super rush job on a quad by-pass. Coming out of that surgery I had an atrial arrhythmia which couldn't seem to be treatable with drugs.   After 6 months of being very ill I had a mapping and laser ablation which made some significant difference but I still had the atrial fib which I have lived with since (14 years). I soon also began feeling tired and then about 6 months after I came to Mudcat (1998) in May of '99 I became extremely sick quickly and was life flighted out to a large hospital in Columbus. I had a dissected aorta which is what killed John Ritter. Mine was about an inch shorter so failed to reach into the heart. Getting out of the hospital weeks later, on the very day I came home, I went back.....bleeding internally somehow from a bleed they couldn't readily find. Turned out to be a carcinogenic small bowel tumor which had ruptured becasue of the stress my body had been under. They removed about a foot of small bowel. In 2001 I still felt pretty lousy at times and found my mitral valve was leaking. Had a new one put in in June 2001 and things got better.

All of this had weakened my immune system so that over the next 6 years I was hospitalized about once a year for infections or multiple infections which could also ruin the new heart valve. Obviously I also had mild emphysema and congenital heart failure. Breathing became even more labored at one point and I spent two separate bouts in the hospital getting that sorted out where it also became obvious after a stress test and echocardiogram that my refraction rate (heart function) had dropped below 30 (55+ is normal) and put me at even greater rish for Ventricular Tachycardia which will drop you in your tracks. So we put in an ICD (Internal Cardio Defibrillator) which will zap my heart to try to put it back in rhythm.

There's more, but I'm tired of typing. Now if you were to meet me on the street and go have a cup of coffee (or tea for you) and we'd talk and such, if you didn't know any of this you wouldn't know it by looking at me or hanging around. I look pretty decent for a 63 year old even though my charts read as though I should be bedridden and get around well and all of that. As they found more and more they also had new things and techniques to help me. For my part, I have some bad days but most are pretty good and I try not to review the above litany (and more) except to say, "Damn ain't I lucky to be alive," and enjoy every moment with Karen and the boys.....and my friends both in 3D and here.

They'll do some tests on you and do some things for you or to you to help you live a little longer. I feel bad because I know I won't live as long as I would like to but we kinda' got to accept that one......and that is the hardest part. I love my life, whatever it is and I don't want to leave it! But what the hell.....it was never going to last forever anyway. So I'll make damn sure every day I get I enjoy to the max!!!

But you knew all of that.....You're a good man Nigel. You'll be right as rain after the initial fear passes no matter what's going on. Truth.


Spaw