What I Did On My Summer Vacation

So it's 4 o'clock in the morning and I'm sitting here thinking about my radio show for today. It's exciting to be back on the air after being laid up for a good portion of the summer and under doctor's orders. The last time anything like this happened to me was 50 years ago. It was the summer I turned seven years old and my family lived in Albany Oregon at the time. I remember it as being just like Mayberry on TV.
I got very sick one Sunday afternoon and ended up in emergency surgery to remove my appendix. I now understand that they didn't
Hold out much hope for me then. The organ had burst and the infection was serious. It was months before life got back to normal and I got back to the serious business of catching frogs in the city canal.

The reason all those memories dominate my thoughts this morning is a phrase spoken by two different Doctors separated by a half century of time. "You are very lucky. It is obvious someone wants you here". Interesting huh?

This year, in early July, I simply disappeared from the public eye. The silence wasn't intentional. Very little about my life has been private for the last three decades. In this case personal privacy laws prevented anyone at KAST from saying anything in public. The rumor mill was wild. Stories about a terminal brain illness appears to have been the most popularly accepted explanation although a few people held that it was more likely I was caught up in some scandal and had left quietly in disgrace (bless your black little hearts for that one!)

The truth is less interesting but provided the kind of experience I would wish on no one. My heart was failing. It had been failing for several months but it felt at first like a serious cold I couldn't get rid of. Fearing lung infection and noting that I just didn't look good my wife dragged me down to CMH urgent care. The last time I'd had any serious contact with Doctors was when my kids were born and it had little or nothing to do with me.

Doctor Little, following examination and some quick lab tests told me two things. First, I was suffering from some serious form of heart failure and second, that it was nothing to mess with. Before I knew it I had my first local primary care Doctor and he was working hard to get me into see the best cardiac guys he could find. That put me in front of the team at OHSU. August 18th I underwent open heart surgery for a quadruple bypass and I had recovered quickly enough to be back at work less than a month later.

I'll live with the heart failure for the rest of my life which, at this point looks like it will be a reasonably long period of time. Today with proper treatment, exercise and a diet based on moderation and some common sense a person can thrive.

The only thing I must guard against is excess stress and anger. I'll be sounding less angry on the radio. That may be a real challenge at times.