So Happy to be Here

Hello, my friend the Blog. I'm so happy to be here, alive and kicking. Happy for air conditioning as the THI is 101 degrees right now. Happy to be watching the Cubs lose another one. Thankful to have had a small bout of Prairie Path rage as a cyclist barely hit me this morning during my morning walk. I'll see him again and say thank you, my heart rate got to 150 beats per minute. It still works and I am very happy ... Life is Good. I visited Cardiac Rehab today, hope I can get it covered under my insurance plan. This health setback is just that and only that ... a setback. I'll be back. Oh, that's right, you don't know. Well, I had a slight heart attack last Monday evening a week ago. On Tuesday I had angioplasty to clear my fourth blockage in my circumflex coronary artery. Yes, it's true, my cardiac gene pool turned out to be a cesspool. While I love my Dad and my Grandfather, I sure wish I didn't have their heart DNA ... it is just my luck. But thanks to running, the other three coronary arteries are functional otherwise I would be fast like a Ghost. I am so moved by the loss of my neighbor. Forty-four years of age, an ex-Baldwin Wallace basketball player and all-around nice guy. Dead in four weeks due to colon cancer. Colonoscopy before year end for sure. My commitment to myself is to find a way to help the kids, three wonderful kids without a Dad. How wrong. I told his oldest daughter the Lord needed Craig more than we did. I will find a way to help. Another goal for sure. I'm a little scared I'm coming back too soon. I have walked every day since discharge slowly increasing my heart rate each time. My weight is less, down about seven pounds to 215. Two hundred is the first goal by Sept.1, I'll do it. Again. I am so Happy...even going broke, struggling trying to communicate with my Son, worried about my Daughter, wondering about my Dad, and thinking ahead to Pearl. I am so Happy. Even without Two Buck Chuck! Thank you, Lord. So ends the most recent ramble. Over, Ricky.

3 For 3 - A Very Personal Triple Play

Hello again my friend. A quick ramble to complete my whirlwind life. Three for three, stents that is, to heal my heart. The cardiologist said the blockages where quite serious and one was right at a critical branch of the artery and 95% blocked.
I'm lucky my runs didn't end in some ashes on the Prairie Path. Tuesday was a crazy day. Checked into Central Dupage Hospital at 11:30am, on the operating table at 1:00pm, finished up at 2:50pm and then the fun began. I was assigned a bed in the cardiac intensive care unit and had to lay absolutely still for twelve hours to make sure my femoral artery heals. That is where the a catheter was inserted to do an angiogram and then insert the 'ball point pen springs' to hold those blockages open.
I did not sleep more than two hours overnite and now I'm two days into no showers because I don't want to disturb my wound yet. But I'm alive and I'm thankful.
Well, thanks to the Lord, I didn't buy the farm out on the Prairie Path. I'm good for a few more runs anyway. This triple play really awakened me to what is truly important, diet and exercise, and friends.

I Dreamed a Dream

Hello, Ms.Blog, so nice to return. Life just got more serious. Reduced blood flow, a 'cold spot' on your heart, watch out for increased chest pain, call 911 immediately for a trip to the Emergency Room. Wow, is this a dream, or what? No, it's life happening at warp speed ... Beam me up, Kenny, maybe it's time to meet for the first time? I listen to 'I Dreamed a Dream' and think the lyrics of that song are so powerful, so real, so applicable in so many ways to me right now. Why does the Lord make you test yourself? Death, what is it, only the next great adventure. If it pleases you, just remember, we all don't make it out alive. The Lord has hit me up the side of my head with a 2X4. I am ready for my future. I will tackle it with Faith in my heart and maybe a stent or two there also. Coronary blockage requiring surgery, that's the new news for the week. The engine is missing a cylinder or two, it's struggling for full output. Time to rotorooter the pipes and be whole again. Please be with me Lord. I am scared, not for me, but for my kids and my friends. Jesus says I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. I know and I believe. Patrick, what a self-absorbed child. Yesterday, I almost exploded when he poured chicken fat down the sink but he will only learn the hard way on almost all things. Lauren, she is becoming more mature with each day, but she too is so self-absorbed. Neither child knows what it is to put themselves second to a greater cause. May they learn what Contentment truly is. It is not a state of accounts but a state of heart. Heart, there it is again. The word for the week. Heart, you gotta have heart .... so I'm fixin' mine real soon! Please be with me Lord.
Over, Ricky.