Horrific month

Hi. Yes, it's been over a month since my last post, but I have an excuse. My husband, Fred, went out to Kelowna, B.C. for a three day conference, ended up having a cardiac arrest, and then on to the hospital for a double by-pass.

That's the short version.

He actually died on the dance floor (I told him that's what he gets for dancing with another woman), and needed 18 minutes of CPR before the fire crew arrived with their defibrillator to shock his heart. Thank the fates that be that there were two doctors there who quite literally became his heart and lungs for those 18 minutes. They did the most amazing job of keeping blood and oxygen flowing so that when Fred finally gained consciousness in the hospital, there was NO brain or heart damage.

Dr. McLeod did his breathing for him, and guess what...Dr. McLeod plays the bagpipes for a hobby. Talk about having the lung ability for a job like that.

Dr. White learned how to do proper chest compressions while at Oxford in England. He made sure to touch the sternum to the backbone every time in order to keep the heart pumping. When the medics arrived, one of them spelled off the poor exhausted guy, but Fred's face took on a blueish hue, so Dr. White kicked him off and started in again.

Anytime, anywhere else and Fred wouldn't have lived, or he would have survived with a lot of damage. Whew.

What followed was three weeks of twiddling our thumbs in the hospital in Kelowna, a medivac flight to Victoria, and finally surgery. I have a sneaky suspicion that Dr. White may have pulled a few strings to get Fred to Victoria because every one else who came and went in Kelowna were transferred to Vancouver. Once there, we found out that our surgeon, cardiologist and anasthesiologist were the best of the best. A dream team.

As you can tell by my cheery, flip comments, Fred is fine and recovering quite well from his surgery. As he has been having chest pains for a number of years, he'll be a new man when fully recovered. And, yes, he did check into his chest pains about four years ago. He was given all the tests and told that there was nothing wrong with his heart, it was probably acid reflux. So, all this time, he's been treating his chest pains with pepcid AC.

So running around strange cities on the other side of the country and worrying about my husband has prevented me from posting to my blog. Hopefully it won't happen again.

To your health,
Cathy