To: heartattack@yahoogroups.com
From: "lee groth" <elgr@...>
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 01:37:01
Subject: [heartattack] heart valves and hematocrits



. Report From the Front


Seven years ago My father felt tired and depressed from his wife’s death.
Based on an angiogram that almost killed him because of the dye, he had a
quadruple bypass. Now, I believe doctors over-specialize in acute illness.
They often relegate non-imminent patient problems to a forgotten future.
This predisposes their being taken by surprise when symptoms ‘suddenly’
reappear with the patient in a crisis. A year ago my father’s ‘world
famous’ cardiologist mentioned that his aortic valve would need replacement
in a couple of years. Several months later My father felt shortness in his
breathing and was told that he needed his left circumflex coronary artery
unblocked (again), and needed that aortic valve replaced soon.


I had prepared to help My father deal with possible prostate cancer, and had
spent a month with him on that. My father trusted his urologist and
cardiologist. I opposed most of what they said and did, so my father did
not trust me. I believe allopathic physicians take a ‘rough approximation’
approach to optimal treatment. They act like, “If we can get the patient
through surgery without major error, the rest is really academic.” I don’t
trust any doctor to give optimal care. I equate oncologists with Mengele,
and enter hospitals looking for trouble. My father didn’t like my
‘interfering attitude’ and pressured me to not bother his doctors. At times
he actively blocked me from quizzing them.


For those over 50 using a heart-lung bypass machine, some brain cells die
post-operatively due to oxidative damage caused by blood reperfusion and
bombardment from unfilterable microscopic debris, fat globules, etc. So
when my father’s post-op temperature shot up, I saw that as a possible sign
of his body’s reaction to this kind of damage. The hospital doc prescribed
Tylenol, ignoring cell enzyme readings that indicate cell death. My father
refused to even take my vitamin C for possible oxidation damage, but readily
took the doc’s Tylenol.


My father had reluctantly gone along with my first month’s program for
prostate cancer. But he opposed my hostile anti-orthodoxy, even after
seeing his rising PSA suddenly drop at the end of only two weeks’ treatment.
When My father felt bad and had diarrhea following a flu shot (that I
opposed) from his cardiologist (!), he used the diarrhea as a reason to
abandon my phytochemical regimen. At month’s end he stopped taking my
supplements.


Years earlier, when I had tried to put my mother on hydergine and other
neural-protective drugs for her Alzheimer’s, My father had stopped my
treatment based on a rash that she developed. Only after her death did he
mention that he had discovered his washing her underwear in bleach without
sufficient water had caused the emergence of that rash. I was waiting to
see the consequence to his PSA score from his decision to stop my regimen.
This was dropped due to the priority of his cardiologist’s sudden summons.


My father’s cardiologist had wanted my father to sell his house to a friend,
but my father received a better offer. During pre-op appointments the
cardiologist expressed his disappointment about the sale. He made some
cryptic comments such as, “What I say has meaning far beyond its literal
interpretation!” and “When you are about to die, you don’t deny God’s
existence.” They never discussed test results or details on the types of
valves available for surgery, etc.


Two months before his heart operations, on a regular visit I asked my
father’s cardiologist if he might prescribe epigen shots to raise my
father’s hemoglobin and red cell levels. My father’s hematocrit score was
then 41. I got a flat “No” without explanation. Whenever I had the
opportunity I would urge that level be raised, on general principle. By the
time we were involved with cardiac physicians my father’s hematocrit score
had fallen to 38.3. Even then I was told “No”, without explanation. I
hoped to raise his score to 45, as his heart condition above all cried out
for an optimal oxygen delivery system.


Six days before my father’s stent catheterization hematocrit was 38.3.
Immediately after that operation the surgeon ordered a blood test
specifically measuring red blood cell related counts. It showed a drop to
30.3, a 20% loss in blood! Where could the blood have gone and how did the
surgeon know to check on blood counts? My father was told the operation was
a success and sent home without restrictions. We were not informed that he
was now severely anemic. To the contrary we expected improved respiration
because of his now opened left circumflex coronary artery.


I had actively opposed doctors’ demands for an immediate valve replacement
operation. No ejection fraction was given as justification. On my own I
found that his valve was classified as stage 3 out of 6, a
moderate-to-severe condition. It was as if the cardiac physicians had
purposely sent my father home anemic to make him feel bad enough to decide
that he really better have that valve replacement done soon! If so they
were more than successful. After a day home, a dinner, and a walk, my
father’s heart physically malfunctioned for the first time in his life,
going into arrhythmia.


We were immediately back in the hospital, with plans for valve replacement
at full pace. I obtained my father’s medical records. They revealed his
hematocrit’s 8 point drop to 30.3. Now I checked my father’s hematocrit
level after each blood count. I asked the attending doctor if he would
raise the hematocrit level. “No”. I did get a nurse to grudgingly supply a
little oxygen. I asked for some recuperation time away from the hospital,
before the valve replacement operation, so that my father might recover from
the stress of his arrhythmia. The surgeon complied to this final request,
giving my father a single epigen shot and sending him home for a few days.


The shot wouldn’t have enough time to spur production of red blood cells, so
I asked my father’s cardiologist if she would let my father have at-home
oxygen. The cardiologist refused, and openly explained to a family friend
and myself that if my father were to get that oxygen, he might feel good
enough to change his mind about the valve replacement operation! MY
PARANOIA - CONFIRMED! You might justify withholding painkillers that made a
patient feel better, because they conflicted with the patient’s condition.
But since when had doctors begun withholding treatments that made a patient
feel better AND benefited his condition, because they conflicted WITH THE
DOCTORS’ FEELINGS!


The medical records disagreed with my father’s carry-with-you stent card.
Four stents were listed on the card, but according to records, only two
stents had been placed during the catheterization. The surgeon had placed a
3.5 mm “penta” stent mid, and then a 4.0 mm stent proximal, in the left
circumflex artery. He then ballooned 20 atm, distal and proximal, while
trying to deploy a small 2.5 mm “pixel” stent ­ four times! Failing to
succeed, he finally gave up and closed the artery.


The surgeon was not reachable for several days. Now I was FREAKED OUT!
When I finally reached him, he said that he had tried to place stents in
tributary arteries. He was unable to “find the names of these arteries” on
the stent card’s list of arteries. Then he left, ending the discussion.
What specifically had gone wrong and how much of my father’s coronary still
remained blocked? My father’s influence and the doc’s quick departure kept
me from finding out.


I had been thrown into this heart disease whirlpool unprepared, as I had
focused on his prostate cancer. Further, my father did not have faith in my
reliability. But my alarm and paranoia scared him. I have only described
half of what disturbed me about his treatment during these three months.
But my father got to hear it all, and became more and more agitated. He
reached a breaking point, and told me to go; go as soon as his sister could
fly out and arrive to take my place.


She arrived and I awaited my plane’s departure date. We had a week’s
overlap. I had been boning up on heart disease, trying to figure out what
was going on. I read a book by Gould, another by Ewald. On the drive back
from my father’s hospital room, I mentioned to her Ewald’s theory that heart
germs might be the real source of heart disease. She got very mad and
exclaimed, “I don’t want to hear about that! I’m not interested.” She then
accused me of aggravating my father’s doctors. She said that when she met
them her opinion of them would be entirely different from mine because she
would approach them with trust.


Now I had avoided stepping on doctor’s toes as much as I possibly could. I
never repeated questions over again, or asked “Why not?” or said “You’re
wrong!” My tone was always submissive. Originally I had wanted to delay
my father’s aortic valve replacement so that he would have some time to
recover from his previous stent catheterization. . . and from the fear he
had caught from my paranoia over his treatment by these doctors. He also
very much feared going through this open heart surgery. The surgeon had
objected, and my father wasn’t going to go against the surgeon.


Two days passed by in the hospital room. Then the day before the scheduled
operation, the surgeon arrived and told us that my father could go home for
a few more days and recuperate. Well, that’s good, but that’s also bad,
when you have spent the last couple of days ‘steeling’ yourself for the
scheduled operation, only to have it cancelled. It’s like an execution
reprieve, in reverse. My aunt argued with the surgeon in very stressed
tones, basically saying that she had planned on a shorter stay and that this
would invalidate her return flight ticket. The surgeon replied, “But you
asked for a delay”, referring to MY request. My father literally stared
daggers at me for having ‘caused’ this change in plans.


During the reprieve time at home my father pointedly made my aunt his
financial executor, conspicuously driving to the bank without me, etc.


Once he wouldn’t allow me to put my quarters into a parking meter. Instead
he required me to walk back to his car and locate his own quarters that were
hidden in a tray in his car whose location he vaguely described.


The toaster had burnt toast and I had come from the kitchen. My father
remarked, “What’s that burning?” My aunt followed through, saying to me,
“That’s toast! How could you burn the toast?” I replied to my aunt, “That
was the toast you put in the toaster earlier. It burned up and I had to
take it out.” Everyone now lost interest in the details of who was at
fault. There were no more questions about how such a thing could happen.
No one smiled much these days. It definitely was time to leave.


After the surgery, my father’s hematocrit dropped as low as 27. I finally,
more aggressively asked the surgeon, “I don’t mean to be contentious or
difficult or anything, but why NOT raise the hematocrit level?” The
surgeon’s nurse said, “What! To 40?” I said, “Yeah. Would that do anything
wrong?” The surgeon said, “You should become a doctor.” And walked away
without answering the question.


Two days later I was on a plane going home, thinking about a Steve Martin
skit on Saturday Night Live. The Medieval Barber: “Now, who’s the barber
here!”.