The Appointment

Well, I finally had a chance to visit with my Cardiologist. I posted back in November about how I haven't feeling very good these last couple months and how I figured it was time to catch up on that missed appointment from August. I had booked an appointment to see Dr Boyne for Dec 20 and that day has finally happened.

Unfortunately the news wasn't all pleasant. It turns out that in the last six months, new research has been published regarding drug eluding stents. I happen to have a drug eluding stent. So you can imagine I was on the edge of my seat listening intently to what the Dr had to say. The short of it is that although initially it was believed that drug eluding stents were thought to be better than bare metal stents, there is a small percentage of the candidates that receive them that have complications. It is a small percentage, less than 1% (actually 0.6%), that can suffer these bad complications.

So let me back up a bit and give you a bit of background first. If you have a blockage in one (or more) artery of your heart and it is not completely blocked, then you might be a candidate for Angioplasty like I was. Angioplasty is basically a procedure that uses a balloon to inflate the artery at the blockage. A catheter is inserted, and the balloon is directed to the site of the blockage and is inflated, re-opening this artery. However, in a fair percentage of heart attack patients, this previously blocked area can collapse again after surgery. The artery wall can be weakened by the procedure and oops.... there it goes. Of course the artery not only risks collapsing, but it also has a good chance of re-blocking, whether from scar tissue, as the artery heals itself, or from other means. The re-blocking of the artery is called restenosis.

To help combat restenosis, doctors found a way to wrap the balloon in a metal stent (looks like small chicken wire). This tube of metal wrapped around the balloon, is inserted into the artery and when the balloon is inflated, the stent expands to prop up the artery wall. This stent is sometimes referred to as scaffolding. The balloon deflates and the stent is left behind. This stent was found to reduce the occurrence of restenosis quit considerably, but many patients still had a 1 in 4 chance of having the artery reblock itslelf. The down side to this bare metal stent, was that the body didn't adapt very well to it and often times blood platelets would collect around it forming a clot (I think its called Thrombosis). If you get a clot in your heart you have a 1 in 3 chance of dying as a result. Very fatal. So, to help prevent clotting, a drug is used to make your blood slippery. Quite often Plavix is prescribed as it was in my case. Very often Plavix and Aspirin are prescribed together. Works like a hot damn. So, patients with a blockage these days can expect to get Angioplasty and a bare metal stent inserted to improve their survival rates. The medication that is prescribed usually only has to be taken for about 3 months. Then the risk of clotting goes away but there is still a decent chance that the artery will reblock.

To improve your chances even more, doctors developed a stent that is drug eluding. It is basically the same bare metal stent, but it is coated in drugs that help prevent scaring around the stent and the formerly blocked area of your artery. The scaring is probably what causes restenosis to happen the most often. The way the drugs work, is to slow down the healing process so that scar tissue doesn't form, but instead you get smooth skin cells. You still need the Plavix after surgery to keep clots from forming, but because the healing process is slowed down so dramatically to prevent scarring, you have to take the Plavix for a much longer period of time after the surgery is complete. Instead of being healed in 3 months, you now have a period of up to a year before the body has adapted to the stent without scarring. Now your chances of restenosis go from 1 in 4 to about 1 in 100. Yaaaay for drug eluding stents.

Initial studies showed that if you had a bare metal stent or the drug eluding stent, then your chances for scarring or getting a new blockage were about the same. If you didn't get it within the first three months then you weren't likely to get it at all. Now the studies are seeing that there are actually 2 periods post surgery where you can be at risk for restenosis - right after surgery, and about 9 months to a year after. So just when you think you clear the first hurdle, the 9 month mark catches up to you, and then suddenly you are at risk again.

Well... I am at the 9 month mark. Oddly enough I am suffering some chest discomfort too. Hopefully it is just coincidence. I really hope it is just side effects from the medication I am taking. When my doctor saw me yesterday and heard about my recent discomfort, he immediately booked me in for a Thallium Stress Test. Basically, this is a test that pumps radioactive die into your blood so that they can take pictures of your blood flow to see if you have any new blockages. It's possible that I may have suffered from restenosis or that I have a new blockage in another place in the artery or even in a different artery altogether. The worst case scenario is that I have a blood clot. Yikes! That thought makes my bladder want to release. A clot is a hard thing to fix. You don't want to mess with a clot... if it moves you're dead. I think the only way they can treat a clot is with medication to try to reduce and shrink it. I think the risk of it moving during surgery is just too great so they don't try to operate on clots. If it is a blockage, well then that is serious enough all on its own. You still have the risk of another heart attack (potentially fatal too), but they might be able to stent the blocked artery (possibly with just a bare metal stent this time) or they can always try bypass surgery. A blockage has options, and a clot doesn't (usually with only one outcome).

None of those options is very appealing to me. Quite frankly they all scare the shit out of me. The last time I was in this situation I was faced with 2 evils for my condition. They didn't know what I had when I first went to the hospital and they were trying to figure it out. It was either a heart attack or paricarditis. I was hoping for paricarditis which is a serious condition but much easier to treat. Pericarditis doesn't usually require any surgery and can be helped with medication. All signs pointed to paricarditis but when the final ballots were cast, it turned out I had the heart attack and 90% blockage in one of my arteries. Thus I am sitting here with a drug eluding stent in my heart pondering my luck and the chances that I am just being paranoid. I wasn't that lucky the first time (lucky enough to still be alive though), so although I am hoping for the best, I am already fearing that I might have another blockage. Shit.

I don't want to face the prospects of another blockage (or worse - a clot). My life is just getting back on track. These options just suck. I hope it's just the medication. On the plus side, the ECG that the doctor did on me yesterday didn't show any irregularities (a good sign), and my blood pressure was even better than my last visit with him. He said my heart sounded good too - no irregularities in my beat. I hope there is more good news like this when I have my Thallium Test done... I want to live - I choose life!

The Book Corner

I’m not a prolific reader, but I do like to sit back with a good book once in a while. Since I’m not particularly driven to finish a book right away, I usually have 1 or 2 on the go all the time. When I was a kid, I could be found reading all the time, but usually it was science fiction or fantasy. I would devour about 10 – 15 of those types of books in a year. Unfortunately those books get a little expensive (now over $10.00 per copy) so it was a fairly costly hobby to be in.

The problem with science fiction/fantasy is that it really doesn’t do a whole lot to enrich your life. It is escapism literature and it definitely helped to feed my imagination. I could get lost in a story and put aside my day to day worries and stress with one of these novels. Sometimes you just wanted to be somewhere else and these sorts of novels helped to take you there. It was nice to escape into the fantasy world for a while and not have to deal with life. The problem is that life keeps going and at some point you have to come out of your reverie to sort things out and stay on top of the challenges you were avoiding in the first place. I’ve since learned to put those sort of books aside, and although I read them occasionally now, I don’t burn through them like I did when I was in my teens.

Despite the fact that these books didn’t offer a lot of nutrition for the mind, they did stimulate the imagination and they also helped to increase my vocabulary somewhat. A few years ago I read an interesting statistic that has helped motivate me to change my reading habits. It indicated that those people that were in the elite part of our society (multi-millionaires) did more reading than the average North American. They read, on average, 5 non-fiction books a year whereas their less successful peers read less than 1 non-fiction book a year. The idea is that non-fiction provides a learning opportunity and the implication is that the motivated and successful types are continually learning and this somehow contributes to their overall success in life. Of course you cannot draw a direct line between reading more (specifically non-fiction) and earning more money.

However, I have always felt that any time you want to be good at something; you emulate the activities of those that are already good at what you are striving for. Pick any sport and any athlete. If you want to be as good as the best player, you do what he/she is doing. The same holds true for business and the successful entrepreneurial types. Do what they do, act like them, and you’ll eventually achieve the same things. So I figure that I would pick up one of these habits… and heck… if nothing else, I’ll be a little smarter for having read a few more books. I now choose to read biographies and profiles of people and businesses.

The biographies are not always on successful people, but since I am reading for entertainment too, I pick people with interesting stories to tell. I look for books with Canadian content first, then I tend to swing to successful people, and the last criteria is generally some famous celebrity. Sometimes I get lucky and the book satisfies all three of those aspects. Some of the books I have read are on people like Michael J Fox, Don Norris, Sean Connery, Neil Young and companies like Bombardier, Google, or the Disney Corporation.

Recently I picked up 2 books along that vein. The first one was by Ron Joyce and it is titled – “Always Fresh: The Untold Story Of Tim Hortons By The Man Who Created A Canadian Empire”. The second was called – “Traci Lords – Underneath it All” and written by Traci Lords herself. Both were great books and I finished them within a week of buying them. They were definitely compelling stories that make you want to read more.

Always Fresh is a book about the man behind Tim Hortons. This is the quintessential Canadian Success story. What is more Canadian than Tim Hortons? It is almost a part of the Canadian identity. When other people think of Canada, they immediately think of maple syrup. When Canadians think about Canada, Tim Hortons immediately comes to mind. Many people know that Tim Hortons was started by famous Canadian hockey legend – Tim Horton. What they don’t know is that although Tim lent his name to this franchise, it was really Ron Joyce that made this coffee and donuts chain a Canadian Empire. Ron Joyce grew up poor and struggled for every dime he made. He spent some time in the Navy and later was working as a Hamilton Police Officer before he bought into the Tim Hortons franchise. Ron reveals his struggles to make this operation work, and the challenges he had at the beginning. He also reveals the nasty side of the legal battles he had with Tim’s wife – Lori - in 80’s after the death of Tim Horton. Ron is also not shy when it comes to revealing inner workings of the Wendy’s Empire whom Ron had sold the Tim Horton’s line to in the late 90’s.

You would think this book would be a soft touch but not all of it is roses and candy. There is a seedy underbelly that Ron shows us. Of course Ron and the Tim Hortons Empire have left behind a great legacy too. The Tim Hortons Children’s Foundation will be around for many years to come, helping out underprivileged kids from coast to coast and even in some parts of the States too. This book is a great read – especially if you are Canadian.

Traci Lords – Underneath it All, is the second book I finished this past weekend. Another great read. Traci Lords takes us through her life and all the trauma she has suffered on her way to success and happiness. For those not familiar with Traci Lords, she born as Nora Kuzman, raped at 10 years old, an abortion at 14, a runaway at 15 and a career as a porn star for 3 years while she was on the run. She entered a world of drugs, physical abuse, and sex in an effort to escape her life of tragedy at home. When news of her story broke in the mid 80’s she became the poster child of abused children and child pornography.
While she was a runaway, she changed her name and lived life as Traci Lords and the media dubbed her the 15 year old Porn Queen. The media took every opportunity to sensationalize her plight and sell copies of the Traci Lords saga. Her past still haunts her today and this book takes the reader through the good and the bad.

The most interesting part of the book takes place after her period as a porn actress and her determination and persistence with turning her life around. She plays many roles in mainstream theatre, movies and television spots. She launches a successful music career. She has also started a new phase in her life as a director in the movie industry. She now lives with her second husband in California.

I’m sure it would have been very easy for someone in her position to fall through the cracks and remain at the bottom of society’s lowest rung on the ladder but she manages to turn it all around. In fact I’m sure many women living through her tragedy, would have given up and perhaps died, through a perpetuating cycle of drug abuse and exploitation. The way in which she turns her life around to find happiness and success is truly inspiring, especially when you consider the stigma she will have to live with for the rest of her life. This book is definitely a must read if you are interested in the stories behind popular culture and especially of Traci Lords – accomplished actress, musical performer, and budding director.

Pictures From the Suncor Christmas Party

Our company christmas party was held last friday and what a great time! It was the "Suncor Holiday Den - the purrrfect party" with a weird cat theme. Essentially they made a lounge atmostphere with serve yourself eating stations. They offered Turkey, Roast Beef, Sushi, veggies, and other types of finger foods. You could use a free photo coupon to have a picture taken of you and your guest. There were some interesting Ice Sculpture liquor dispensers. The idea being, that you picked your cocktail, and the bartender poured the contents through an ice sculpture down into your glass - cooling the mix on the way down. You could watch it serpentine it's way through, producing a pretty cool effect. There was plenty of music and 9 groups were booked for entertainment, free cab rides home, and discounted rooms at the Hyatt. You also had the chance to trade your free drink tickets in for a gift ornament as well. It was a pretty good shin dig with a reported million dollar budget. wow. Anyway... I had a ton of fun and have posted a few pictures up on my Gallery website (link is on the side bar). Not great pictures I'll admit but they are what they are. :) Enjoy!