Recap of why we're talking about hearts & caretaking and all that

In summer/fall of ‘08, after some odd health blips in past few years, Michael went for a check-up and the docs found what they thought was a mild heart murmur and said probably not to worry, no rush. But, based on advice of well-knowing family, he went to cardiologist for a work-up anyway. Initial tests (stress echo) were not good and indicated one kind of serious problem for which they ordered a near immediate cardiac catheterization, causing much panic around here. But it was a false positive - no blockages, no heart attack imminent- but bad news was it confirmed he had an uncommon, genetic based heart disease.

This condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (or go here) has messed up the muscles of his heart and the left side is enlarged, the whole thing is stiff and doesn't flex or pump well, with blood getting obstructed and not pumping out to the body like it should. Always short of breath, palpitations sometimes, near fainting others, and is generally miserable and no longer to be active like he wants or needs. We've seen tons of docs and he was under care of specialists in this condition in Boston since January ‘09 -- with thought that medicine could control his symptoms and give him back some better quality of life -- that's true for most of patients with HCM.

But not for him. By late this summer it was still bad, maybe worse, and there were really no more medicine options for him. So it’s now January ’10 and we’re at the preeminent heart center in the country, maybe the world, for him to have open heart surgery to do a myectomy and cut out the obstructing part of the inner heart muscle and give him back a better working heart and better life.

Peace.

Didn't think I'd want my own blog during this, but...

For anyone reading this, it’s likely you’ve found your way here because you know Michael or me and perhaps got the email from someone about his surgery and his desire to communicate all health news via the Web and his blog...or I posted something online ...or I told you directly about my own blogging efforts.
If you’ve randomly stumbled across this blog, well, I’m sorry, and you can just hit some giant ‘NEXT’ button, or go back to Google, or wherever and continue your surfing. Because you’re probably not gonna find much of interest here. It’ll be full of inside references, jokes, acronyms, and generally not make much sense to anyone else. Or heck, perhaps not even to me. But hey, if you want, stick around

You see, I’ve started blogging on my own because I may have jumped the gun and overstepped things when I started posting to Michael’s heart blog BEFORE his surgery – apparently I wasn’t supposed to be doing the updating to the world until after he was duly incapacitated. Oops. Darn.
Well, I liked the posting and being able to leave longer notes or thoughts than on Facebook, so dammit I’m posting on my own blog now!

It may cover some of the same stuff as ends up on his blog, redundancy is big in health care isn’t it? But maybe also from a different angle, from the caretaker and the sitter-around-waiting person rather than the patient, or the patient’s temporary blogger. So read both if you want, read neither, whatever.

Peace.
JEB