>From his wife Cindy: I hope you are sitting down as you read this Tom had a very, very mild heart attack at 6pm Thursday. That's the good news: it was a very mild attack!
I drove him to the little Fairfield Hospital. Dropped him off at the emergency exit and parked the car. He later told me he walked up to the desk and when asked how he could be helped he told the nurse, "I think I'm having a heart attack." He's never seen people move so fast. In less than the one minute it took me to get inside they had him in a Trauma room, shirt off and IV and EKG running. He was given two Nitro tablets, and morphine, and started on heparin to thin his blood. We learned that morphine also dilates the heart blood vessels. His blood test result for the enzyme indicator of a heart attack was 0.14 normal is 0.10. He had a chest x-ray and several more EKG's. After they moved him upstairs he had more chest pain around 9pm, and was given two more Nitro tablets, additional heparin, and morphine. The pain went away and I stayed with him until 11pm. Tom called the pain the gorilla that came and sat on his chest. Over night he slept very little because of various discomforts and chest pressure. Friday morning about 5:30 the pain came back and no matter what they gave it would ease up but not go away entirely. They shipped him up to Mercy Hospital in Iowa City at 7:30 this morning, and he was given an angiogram at 11am. The test showed one of the vessels that feed the front wall of his heart was 95% occluded, the other vessels that supply the back, side, and bottom are in good shape. A stint was inserted to hold open the blockage, and Tom was back in his room around noon. Because of all the heparin he was given he had to endure four hours of laying flat on his back without moving the leg where the angiogram was administered. It took ½ hour to remove the tube from the artery and hard pressure was applied to keep him from bleeding there. The pressure was slowly removed four hours later. He will finally be able to sit up slightly around 11pm after laying flat on his back for over 12 hours. And he will be allowed to get out of bed Saturday morning. Now Tom has a tiny piece of surgical stainless steel in his heart and has to wait until Sunday to be released. He told me the discomfort and pain is gone after the stint was placed and his appetite is back. Tonight he is on the road to recovery. For the first 48 hours he is home he cannot lift more than 25 lbs. The wonderful news is the Cardiologist saw no heart muscle damage during the procedure and Tom will have no imposed limits on his ability to do things when the surgical site is healed. I hope I didn't scare the heck out of you with this note. It was Tom's decision to hold off my telling you until we had all the information and knew the outcome. Love from both of us Cindy
