This is the third in a series of articles about the writer’s recent open-heart surgery and the recovery process afterward.

 

By Ty Cobb

Last time we found our old (I prefer “senior”) lifeguard perched atop the guard stand and “patrolling” the East YMCA pool. As a career Army infantry officer, I instinctively always felt I should prepare myself mentally and physically for any job (mission). Being a lifeguard was no different. I walked, lifted light weights and swam, which kept me in pool guard condition, as one never knows when one might need to call upon the old body. It came in the late summer of 2008 when I volunteered to lifeguard at Salisbury’s Lincoln Park Pool in order to allow the kids to stretch the swim “season” into one more week. (Normal pool guards all had to leave for college.) My first, and fortunately only, save occurred at the Lincoln Pool when a young adult got into trouble, requiring me to enter the deep end. The event allowed my old body (and heart) to perform to the necessary condition. (Thank you, Brigitte at the East YMCA, for keeping me ready to do the rescue.) No problem!

Time and body moved along but the old ticker was beginning to show the results of the wear and tear. Then it hit me, not badly, but it hit me. I was home walking briskly one day in September 2013, and when I started up a slight uphill grade back home I felt a “burning” in the middle of my chest. I slowed down and the pain subsided, so I geared back and went home. I sat down to watch TV and that burning pain came back to see me! As I had heard from friends, observed on TV and viewed on the Internet, “when in doubt, check it out.” So, my wife and I headed to the Novant Health Rowan Medical Center Emergency Room facility. On the way to the ER, I felt better and started to turn around and go home. My wife told me better, so we ventured on to the ER.

When we approached the ER desk, ER personnel asked what the problem was. Well, when I told them I had shortness of breath, all the personnel jumped into action. Immediately, sit in the wheelchair, mister! My breathing and blood pressure were checked and a host of questions was asked to seek how the shortness of breath had occurred.

I was wheeled into a patient examination room. A monitor was attached to indicate and record my heart beat (there’s that “tick”) and blood pressure. This allowed medical personnel to have a record of function of my heart over a period of time. An intravenous needle (a frequent companion during various hospital stays — ugh!) was inserted in my arm. This allowed blood to be taken for testing and for applying medicines directly to the blood stream. During the night two cardiologists saw me at various times; a variety of nurses checked me, monitored my vitals and generally saw to me. (BTW, hospitals are no place to get rest; I experienced that during all my stays that followed my first stay. However, the folks were just trying to do their jobs to tend to a patient’s health.)

Morning saw a whole new host of doctors, nurses and techs tending to my old body. A cardiologist, not from the evening before, attended me. Besides a review of my heart’s function since the previous night, he ordered an echo-cardiogram and a chemically induced stress test. The stress test showed no problems, but there were abnormalities in the echo-cardiogram — formation of the heart and its function. Primarily the problem was the function of the aortic valve; it was not closing and opening properly, causing oxygenated blood not to get from the heart to the lungs in the proper time. Thus, limited oxygen flow to the lungs caused shortness of breath.

My now-assigned cardiologist felt I was not in imminent danger, but wanted to check the heart function by echo-cardiogram every six months. I was released to continue on going tick . . . tick . . . tick.

Ty Cobb lives in Rowan County.