sweanders

Louie, stay well! I want to come visit one of these days!

Jim M.

Louie, get well soon, but don't rush it. It will all be waiting for you when your back to 100%.

Jim Mayzurk
93 GTS 5-spd

John Speake

Well Louie, take care and get better very quickly !

Niklas sends his "virtual greetings" also. I will send you some special SharkTuner software with bigger "injectors"...

the flyin' scotsman

Louie........our best wishes in your soonest full recovery.

As they say back home..........'may yer lungs aye reek'

Louie928

That's what was done. The scenario was like this. About 7:30 pm I was hooking up a dead 928 being stored at my neighbors place to tow it to my place. I got a rather severe lower chest pain and thought it was gas/indigestion. Burped a few times. That didn't reallyhelp. Towed the car over and got it pushed into a shed. About then I knew it wasn't any connection to gas pain with pain in my chest, left shoulder, left side of neck and left arm. I put my GT in the shop, turned off the shop computer, and scanned the area for anything else I may have left on. Went in the house and told my wife somethng wasn't right and I'd better head for the hospital. I took an aspirin. My neighbor gave me a fast & smooth ride in to the emergency room about 1/2 hour away. I almost passed out on the way, but didn't, and felt some better when I got there. Emergency room folks were great and got me stabilized with O2 and nitro pills and a couple of IV's of something. I think blood thinner and potassium. There isn't a cardiac care center here so it was a middle of the night ambulance ride to Northwest Portland about 90 miles away. I spent the rest of the night in ICU. My first night ever in a hospital. At 8am, the cardiologist saw me and told me what was going to happen. He'd do an angiogram, and if blockage wasn't too severe, put in a stent. If it was, I'd get immediate bypass surgery. I went to the angiogram room and got some good drugs. The doc said one artery was 90% blocked and he put in a stent to fix that. I didn't question him regarding the other arteries, but will the next time I see him. The rest of the day was spent trying to get the bleeding to stop where they put the angiogram tool into an artery in my groin area. It looked like he had to poke around several places until he was satisfied. I've got some amazing under the skin hemmorage bruise like area most of the way around my leg. Very colorful. Heart monitor on all the time, vital sign checks every hour 'round the clock and blood suckers appearing too often. Echogram to actually see the condition of things inside the heart and measure heart/valve function. Couple days of that, and I got to go home.

bigs

^
Remind me never to have a heart attack!

macreel

Louie... go easy on Chris... tell her when you're going
to lie on the floor... or take a nap (unless you snore loudly)...
or take a 'shark' for a few laps.

Our prayers are yours (you 2).

G'luck.

bigs

BTW Louie -

Good move taking the aspirin quickly. Pay attention you other Rennlisters of heart attack age!

Louie928

The emergency room people and the cardiac doc thought taking the aspirin was something that did help a lot and mentioned it. If I knew it was really that good of a thing to do, I'd have swallowed the whole bottle (not really). Apparently when you feel the big pain, you are damaging heart muscle due to not enough blood flow. The longer the pain goes on, the more damage will happen. Anything you do to let more blood flow to the heart is a good thing. Me being tough, and dumb, finished towing the car, putting it away by pushing it into a shed, putting my GT away, and tidying up the shop only made it worse. That probably took nearly 1/2 hour. I wasn't short of breath so I figured all was probably ok except very uncomfortable pain which I'd take care of later. Not smart. Soon after I decided I needed to go to the hospital, I got very anxious/agitated feeling and doubt if I'd could have driven myself the pain got so much and I was so spaced out. The fact that the discomfort lessened 20 min after taking the aspirin was probably the aspirin doing it's job. It has to be aspirin and not Tylenol, or aspirin substitute. Previous to this, I had thought of taking a low dose each day like is sometimes recommended. I don't know if that would have done much except delay the inevitable. Now, among the pills I have to take each day forever is a full 325 mg aspirin tablet.

atb

Porken wrote:
Don't get him going Ken, next thing you know Louie will be designing a high-flow ported and polished Jarvik 2000 with step-down arteries and venturied capallaries that also has brew meister ancillaries so he can make beer in his sleep.

Thurston wrote:
Snow tires?
It looks like we are in for a postponement of the tour for sure. I'll post to our local list and see what we can do for dates in June.

GregBBRD

Louie:

Sounds like you "got away" with one.....the aspirin probably did even more than you can imagine. Good that there was minimal damage to the heart muscle....and good that they only had to do one stent. Hope you feel a lot better quickly.

greg brown

John Veninger

Louie,

Speedy recovery!

WallyP

Louie,

"Me being tough, and dumb, finished towing the car, putting it away by pushing it into a shed, putting my GT away, and tidying up the shop only made it worse. That probably took nearly 1/2 hour. I wasn't short of breath so I figured all was probably ok except very uncomfortable pain which I'd take care of later. Not smart."

That isn't what I would have expected of you! I would have expected you to have already investigated the possibilities and the appropriate actions long ago. Oh, well. As the Ductch say, "Too soon old, too late smart!" I'm really, really glad that you got away with it!

Get well soon. Perhaps a rehab trip to the mountains of North Carolina would be a good thing...

SharkSkin

Louie, sorry to hear of your setback, and I hope you have a speedy recovery. All the best!

worf928

Louie,

whoa. What to write? Shocked that you had a heart attack. Glad you came through it.

Do what the docs say so that you can recover quickly. Get some of the other local's to come over and turn wrenches while you sit comfortably and 'supervise.'