On February 13, 2011...

Hi Terry,
What a great analogy! You brought home the point very well. My father suffered from PTS from WWII and would have nightmares and go flying out of bed looking for his gun to fight off the enemy. So I know what you're talking about. Never heard of a heart surgery patient experiencing anything like that.
If you know Gene Banks (on the HVJ) he is back in the hospital with fluid in his lungs and an elevated heart rate which they seem to be getting under control. I mention it because he said he had difficulty logging onto the HVJ today. It seems his heart rate remained high following surgery and didn't come back to normal. They have him on NSAIDs and it has now come down and they're watching the fluid.
Does anyone know what causes the fluid in the lungs to occur?????
Ruth Howell

On February 7, 2011...

Hi again,

You mentioned in your most recent "One of the things that people in Canada don't realize is that anyone in the US can go into an emergency room and receive treatment."

We have been aware of that personally for some time as our daughter and son in law have been living in Indiana since 2003, as well as we have close friends in Minneapolis with a larger family and low income.

So there are state laws and benefits and well as what I would call the "mercy law", which is like you said, anyone can go anywhere and get treatment insured or not, especially if the condition warrants it. This cost is passed on to those with Insurance Coverage as I understand it.

Our daughter and son in law, while non Americans, had their delivery covered as they are both residents of Indiana and our little Jack is their "anchor child" obviously, and while they both attend Notre Dame, their stipend(s) do not push them over the affordability thresh hold.

In Canada insurance is just not an issue. You break a leg, walk into emergency and they fix you up, case closed. We have what are called walk in clinics for people with lower level chronic issues, such as congestive disorders, e.g.,. asthma, or just common cold, young or old it doesn't matter; you wait the 2 or 3 hours, see a Dr, get your prescription and away you go.

In our country, when hen it comes to life threatening long term issues people with cash ditch to the US to avoid the waiting time. Even if I could liquidate the cash I’d be wiped out for the duration. See

http://www.valvereplacement.org/forums/showthread.php?9307-The-bottom-line-cost-of-surgery-and-hospitalization

for total costs ($105,000-$110,000). So for me there is not other option, and I’m OK with the waiting because I just happen to believe that SomeOne else is in control of my journey and can intervene at any time and trump the plans of systems of mere mortals.

Just another note on Health Insurance in the US. My wife’s cousin married a fellow from Florida. They had premature twins at I think about 5 months. The insurance company was paying through the nose. I’ll just make a quote from the foregoing link as follows. Just to take off on that for a moment they found out the hard way that:

"By nature, Insurance Companies do their very best to pay as little as possible and even weasel out of things that are legitimately their responsibility to pay to start with. They typically only pay roughly 1/2-2/3 of the billed amount, and try to make people fall for the game of feeling responsible for the rest. Becoming a real pain in there sides is part of the game, by appealing, appealing and appealing.

First thing, always, is to get an itemized copy of your bill for everything for everyday. There will be all sorts of mistakes and most likely even some bogus charges on it. Make the hospital answer everything to question. A lot of the nonsense will get eliminated here which will leave the raw amount for the insurer to cover.And NEVER take anything at face value. Question everything and everyone."

Back to the family, their Insurance Company finally after a few months cut them off. Full stop. Apparently there is a federal or state law that essential gives the Insurer this right to terminate coverage should it be deemed that coverage of the insured will eminently place the insurer in a place of impending financial ruin. The bill, incidentally, had run into the 7 digit category by this time.

But as I mentioned previously, there is the “mercy” aspect to your system. The parents were trained in all the aspects of care giving. The hospital loaned them all the equipment. A highly trained nurse was scheduled daily to come and see how they were doing at no cost.

As a Florida resident you are the authority on the foregoing, what I’ve shared is probably
probably incomplete at best and no doubt inaccurate.

That about does it for today,

Cheers,
Paul

On February 6, 2011...

Hi Terry,

So glad you took the time to get back to "the right person". Every story is so unique and yet so similar in so many ways, so each one of us can write our own book.

Yours is what I would call "not unusual", in the sense that when we're healthy and take special attention to keeping healthy, our reaction is pretty predictable. Like you say, when we find out we're not superhuman after all it’s a tough pill.

I'm sure you read my story, born with bicuspid aortic, never noticed anything all my life. The off time when I'd go for a routine checkup the Dr would mention something about a "murmur". One time he let me listen to it. He called it the trumpet valve. There was no tricuspid "duh doon" sound, it was just a "whump, whump, whump". The as it calcified it started sounding like a buzz saw. much like the lips of someone playing a trumpet, except it takes 4 - 5 times the effort to blow a trumpet than to just breathe through nearly closed lips.

You are correct in saying that if you're in cardiac distress or arrest in Canada you go straight to merg and they start dialing the team as they get ready for the op. The difference otherwise is a little different than I perceive your perception to be, which is not to be unexpected.

In Canada we don't pay health insurance. That means that if you live on the streets or in high society, a heart is a heart, and in socialism you get treated as a number, more than you do an individual human being.

Now we both know that socio economics play a BIG role in individual health stats. And we both know that the "lower" echelons of society and others for that matter, have health issues and habits that by enlarge lead to cardiac problems.

So in socialism you have no option as to how the system deals with you. For example, they have given me to 2012 with my condition. That means that I am a perfect "shuttle buffer" for the system. No matter where I might be in some imaginary order of priority, someone can come along that is worse off than me, which means that I get could be shuttled to the back of the bus.

In my current condition, there are enormous life style changes that we are still adapting to. Let's just say that such things as conjugal relations (there, I said it for the whole planet to read!) are enormously effected. Can you imagine the impact that this has on a relationship.

We're in our 40th year but we were both child bride and groom, so our love we know is strong enough to withstand anything, which we attribute to our faith.

There is hardly anything I couldn't do a year ago that hasn't been seriously impacted. Today, for example, I cooked supper and fixed a shelf. Oh, and walked a block and a half to the corner store to get some groceries.

I'm not complaining, God has done miracles in my life to enable me to accept these limitations and still cultivate an "attitude of gratitude". But how do I keep myself in shape, with some degree of physical strength and conditioning?

I can walk very slowly and spend about an hour a day stretching, if I go beyond that I start to look like one of the pictures in my photo gallery and then my love gets worried. So we are constantly adjusting and refining with great detail how to relate and stay close during this time. What keeps us going, again, is our faith and friends.

On a bit of a different note, I notice that my heart is "happier", I mean my literal physical heart, when I am with people that know and love me and reciprocally obviously as well.

I've run on by far long enough for now, but I will add a picture of "when we were young" on my photo page. In retrospect these things happen in one way or another to everyone on the planet (1 out or 1 people pass away) and they can be helpful in reminding us of our mortality and hopefully in preparing us for the place where we will spend immortality, my own hope being in the Man from Galilee, through whom I live in Peace.

Great chatting with you Terry.

God bless you,

Paul (thumper) ....which I tried to avoid but in closing I must say I have found that a cardiac journey is a journey of the heart!

On February 5, 2011...

Hi...I'm wondering if you're the Terry C journaling with Darren from PEI. I'm the thumper on his page, always bringing the focus to God (except I use hopefully politically correct nuances?!). In Canada you have to be careful.

I lived in the US for a couple of years, grew up along the border and have 3 siblings, sister in law, nephews, that are American or USA/CDN dual citizens and a grandson that's 51 Stars and Stripes American. So I hope I'm on safer ground with you in Florida.

I really am interested in the science part of all the cardio stuff being trained as a scientist. As I grew older I discovered the wholistic approach to health, I'm not against Yoga or New Age, etc, but for my own journey I don't think I'd be where I am now without this wholistic approach as well as the most iportant ingredient which is my faith along with a whole army of people praying for me from all over Canada and the US as well as Asia, (Here I'm thumpin' again.)

I wanted to tie into the thread that you were talking to Darren about as per the misconceptions as to what constitutes heart wellness of illness. For myself, when i had the angi gram the staff were very intrigued when they got the results and after a lot internal discussion announced to ne that I had the heart of a much younger man,

If you read my journals, warning, they're lengthy, I try to explain my frustratiion of living with a perfectly healthy heart and a bad congenital bicuspid aortic valve with acute stenosis. Obviously, as a non emminent event candidate, I'm the perfect patient to shuffle, as in no specific date. On the 50% mortality graph I'm supposed to last until late 2012. That would drive a lot of people crazy and it did give me my monets, but when I abandoned that part of the journey to God it sort of simmered down to next to nothing.

Hope this resonates with you. My wife and I are waiting to get me fixed up so she can accept an offer to work in the US. She graduated form St Cloud State MN.

All the best again to you.

All the best to you and God Bless America