Aftermath

Since I have last written here I have been trying to make lifestyle changes. My hardest challenge on the lifestyle changes is probably candy. I love candy, even knowing that it is not good for me. Or as my son taught me many years ago, it may not be good for you, but it is good for me! Seriously, though, that is the hardest thing for me. I have cut down on it, but can't quite quit the habit.

Probably the reason the regular food isn't so hard for me to give up is because my wife has taken it upon her to make sure we don't have some of the other foods in the house. She threw away my Marie Calendar pot pies that I had in the freezer and I have been reduced to eating the more healthy frozen entree's. The Healthy Choice steamers aren't too bad. I have only had two of those in this past week. Mostly we have been watching what is in the food as far as calories. Oh, another hard thing for me is going to be cheddar cheese. I still eat it, but have cut way back on it.

I have also quit drinking cokes. That hasn't been difficult for me. I simply have chosen not to drink them. I haven't even had a carbonated drink since that fateful Saturday evening that I went into the Emergency Room of St. Marks Hospital. I continue to drink my water the way I should. I cheat a little bit and use a generic version of Crystal Lite to put in the water. I drink 32 ounces of it that way at work and then fill up my cup again for up to 32 more ounces of water while working. That's one of the healthiest things that I do.

Over this last little while the biggest problem that I have had is where they put the catheter in my groin. It has been a bit painful to me. Of course I have been told to not lift anything over five pounds so I have had people around our home doing all of that for me. I wasn't feeling bad enough to not go into work. I went to work on Wednesday morning and got told by Debi that I am a workaholic. She thinks I should've taken more time off work. I saw no reason too as I haven't been feeling that bad. It's been good for me, but I did tell people at work not to stress me out (just kidding). At work, there is one of the other programmers who went in with this same type of problem over New Years weekend. He works on RiskMaster just like I do, so we decided that this is probably the problem of our stress and thus our heart attacks. You know how it is, you have to blame somebody for your own problems.

I finally went for a walk with some of the people at work today. This was the first time I felt up to a real walk. They walk about a mile and a half. When we got back we went to a health fair that work had in the conference room. I'll have to look at a couple of websites now for some health tips.

Anyway, I am eating healthier foods, I have cut out carbonated beverages (I'll still have these once in awhile) and I am going to start walking most days. I will be healthier than I am now if it kills me.

On Monday, I took a day of sick leave because my wife wasn't feeling well. I mostly had to get the kids off to school and then spend the day lounging about the house in case my wife needed anything. We decided to go to Dr Daynes as a new family doctor. He is in our ward and we have heard good things about him. We got an appointment for that day at 1:30. It went well, and I was impressed with him as a doctor. I still don't know that I can go to him when I have to turn my head and cough. Our daughter has also been sick today as well as last night. My wife took her to Dr Daynes and she has a viral infection rather than the flu which we thought she had.

Heart Attack

Well, once again, its been a bit since I last wrote anything here. One difference is that I do have something to say.

First let me say that I am getting sick and tired of all this snow. We received another big storm in Utah last week and it caused a lot of problems all over. And, even though I didn't know it, it helped me to find out something about myself that was a necessary thing for me. It was Wednesday evening, and I was shoveling a bunch of snow out of my driveway. There had been some drifts once again, and it was pretty darn heavy. While I was shoveling it, I felt a pain in my chest that was uncomfortable, but I wouldn't really call it extremely painful. I stopped shoveling for a minute and then thought I imagined my left arm going numb. Standing there getting rid of what I thought was gas, I tried to feel how my right arm felt in comparison to my left arm, and decided that it was my imagination. I continued to shovel, stopping periodically with what I thought to be gas. Well, that was the start of it.

The next day was Valentines Day. I went to work as is usual (the weather made driving a bit difficult) and spent a regular day at work. I actually told one of my co-workers that I had wondered about a heart attack the previous night, and if that is what it was, it wasn't near as painful as kidney stones. I went through the work day and then on the way home stopped at a couple of places to get the regular Valentines Day type of stuff. This included some chocolate covered strawberries and raspberries at V-Chocolate, a grater, a card and a heart shaped mylar balloon. The grater was because I had heard my wife complaining about our current grater when she had been cooking during the week. Of course I said something sappy about it in the card about her being a grater Valentine than any other (she didn't catch the pun without me pointing it out to her). Well, I arrived home and handed over the goods, and got some goods in return. My card was a lion singing "Wild Thing". It was quite cute, and then of course I got some candy as well. It's all good.

Off and on, I was getting those same "gas" pains. I also kept on wondering about my left arm, but it wasn't very strong when it was going a bit numb. Having a "Y" chromosome, I did all I could do, and ignored it.

I had Friday off and we didn't do too much, but enjoyed spending the day together. Still that nagging heart burn. Saturday was much of the same. Finally, around 9:00 in the evening, I decided that heart burn wasn't going away. I went into the office and googled "Heart Burn or Heart Attack". Opening the first site, I read my symptoms which basically said I had an Angina attack and that I should call 911 to get into the hospital. I wanted a second opinion that would go more with my way of thinking which was, don't worry, stay home and take some Tums. I looked at about 8 more websites and none of them said to do that. I finally came out of the office and told my wife we should go to the hospital. She took me there.

We didn't want to go to the Jordan Valley Hospital (the closest one to us and on my insurance plan) because we didn't trust them from horror stories that we had heard. We decided to head for St. Marks (which is a good cardio hospital as well as it's on our plan) instead. On the way, we stopped at a 7-11 so we could get some aspirin for me to chew on. This was frustrating as well. They only had one bottle of aspirin and my wife couldn't read the expiration date on it. She left her keys in the store so she could hurry out to her husband (me) and get him chewing that aspirin. In the meantime people were upset at her for being in the way of them buying slurpees. When she went back in to pay for it, they were butting in front of her in line (they knew of the problem) and she had to tell a guy its my turn!

On the way to the hospital, we dropped our kids off at grandmas house. We finally got to the hospital, and I really wasn't in pain. I walked into Emergency and told them that I had had some chest pains and some numbness to the left arm. They hurried me into the ER as all the people who have been there for hours glared at the person who was being taken right in right now. I was told that sometimes people actually lie about a heart attack to be looked at for a sore throat. This wasn't the case with me. I really didn't want to be there, but I was.

I got an EKG. They said that it was all over the place. They don't just take that one indicator. They sprayed some nitroglycerin under my tongue and asked how I felt. I told them that it felt better. He said, the good news is that we are pretty certain you were right, but that is also the bad news. I had another EKG after putting on a patch with nitroglycerin. It was normal which was another indicator that I was having a problem. Lined up outside of the room was an X-ray machine which was brought in to take some pictures. Blood pressure tests and other tests were also being performed. It was pretty certain I was about to be admitted. I told my wife that we hadn't brought my C-pap machine. She would have to run home for it.

While my wife was gone, the admittance to the hospital happened. I was whisked up to the third floor in room 3S10 (3rd floor South - room 10). By the time my wife got there, they were finishing up some questions. There was some question about me sleeping that night with the C-pap machine since they did not want me to be without oxygen. My wife stayed for a little while, but it was going to be 2:00 AM before she got home, so she left me there. I finally got them to agree that I should use the C-pap rather than the oxygen because then for sure I would be breathing. They had to talk to the doctor first, but finally made that same decision. Of course sleeping in the hospital is a misnomer. There is very little if any sleep to be had in a hospital room unless you are drugged up.

It was like I was in a psych ward. There was a lady with dimensia down the hall that kept on yelling out. There was also another guy up the other hall that I heard from all night (I was in a corner room). Then there was the guy that snored quite loud. Not to mention they left my light on all night. Of course they kept waking my up to take blood or blood pressure or some other thing. It was an awful night.

Around 7:00 in the morning I called my parents to let them know where I was, and my mom decided she wasn't going to go to church because of wondering about me. She also would call my whole family to let them know what is going on. My oldest brother she wasn't able to contact.

My parents came in at around 8:00 with Jay Richardson (the next door neighbor throughout my childhood and to this day) to give me a priesthood blessing. Of course, I was blessed and included in that was that the Doctors would also know the best things to do.

They left, and my wife came in. At around 11:00 I was taken down to the "Cath" room. I was all prepped for the operation to begin. I was told about all the drugs that I would be given and that one of them is a drug that makes it so you can be awake, but you will forget everything. I had had a drug like that before so I expected to remember nothing. As it is, I remember a lot, and there is only a little bit that I don't remember. I don't remember the start of the procedure and the doctor coming in, but I certainly remember the die being sent into my body for pictures. I also felt them at my groin pinching. They were talking about blowing up the balloons, and they talked about the stent that was being put in. While the balloons were going in I felt the worst. I actually felt that "gas" again, although it was more severe now and the numbing of the left arm. I was told that this was normal because in putting it in they were completely blocking the artery. All of this was done in about an hours time. My wife was in a waiting room and my mom came to be with her during that time.

Next, I had to lay straight on the bed for five hours. They didn't want my right leg to move at all. No moving of my neck either. I was able to eat a turkey sandwich lunch right after the surgery which my wife broke into bits for me to eat. There really would be no other way to eat it. I was hungry because this was the first food I would have this day. They did allow me to turn on my side (they actually turned me on my side) and then soon the five hours would be up.

I had a nice dinner of Roast Beef and potatoes. About the time that visitors started to come I had some real gas. It was hurting. I told them I was just going to release and hope they understood. Nobody really left the room. Scott and Anita came to visit, and then later, Pam, Anne, Zach, Meghan and Rod. My parents also came to visit for a bit. My little brother, Glen had called and talked to my wife. My mom couldn't get hold of my oldest brother, Larry and didn't know how to contact him. He called me tonight and told me that unbeknown to him, his phone was broken. I was able to walk with a nurse that night, but it was kind of painful.

I was able to talk to my daughter (Aubree) twice that night. Once because she needed to call me while she was at work and then she called when she was done with work. I had her a bit concerned.

Well, everybody left and then a little later, my wife left. I was in for another boring night with a lot of waking up for all kinds of crap to be done. I got a little more sleep than the previous night, but my groin was very tender. That woke my up quite a bit, as well as all the regular nurses coming in at all hours of the evening.

Early Monday morning, I got up and showered. The doctor came in while I was in the shower and said he would be back. He did come back and told me that I would be discharged shortly. It took a little while, but I finally got discharged around 10:00 in the morning. We went over to my in-laws where our son was staying and stayed there for a bit. We finally arrived home around 1:00 PM. I just rested for most of the day.

Pam and Anne showed up with our daughter Monday evening and gave me a get well gift of a cook book for better eating habits. We actually used it tonight for our meal, and it may not be too bad. It looks like my lifestyle will be changing.

This morning I woke up and decided to check on a couple of jobs at work. The whole system had gone down on the weekend, and I had to get it back up by calling Tom and then started up the jobs for Sunday. When a co-worker got into work, I called him and let him know what he needed to do to fix everything for me. I continued to do work until around 8:00 when I had to leave home so I could get to my pulmonary doctor. He told me he would've been OK if I had canceled seeing him, but I told him it wasn't a problem. On my way home from that, I stopped into work to make sure how things were going with the fixes, and gave some more information on what needed to be done. I talked to a few people about my experience and then went home. I then realized that I had to return some library books and then came home again. My wife and I then went out shopping for some healthful foods and got home for a little bit longer. We then went to our sons school to learn what we needed to know about his registering for school the next year.

Tonight, we had chicken fajitas for dinner, and then I did a bit of relaxing. The kids went to Young Men/Young Women and my wife and I watched a movie. I will probably be going to work tomorrow.

I got a call from Larry and it was a good call, although he called me onto the carpet a bit. He let me know what I needed to do from here on out. He's a good guy.

Well, that's about it. What a time. It was a wonderful Presidents Day huh?

Time is flying by

Time is getting away from me, it seems. Of course, there really isn't anything to write about here either, so I have not been keeping this up.

Work has continued to be busy, and today was a particularly hectic day, as yesterday was. We were just barely told about fixing some problems with some data from an outside source. This is because they are really slow about fixing what they are sending to us. It seems that one of our partners thinks that when they call us we have a magic button and things will just be OK. We have been hours on the turnaround on fixing most of these items. We can only do so much to massage the data. Some of it needs to be correct for us to do anything else. Well, our partner has gone up the ladder and complained about the data to them. They are coming to us to see what is going on and they are upset at our partner for all their complaining. It doesn't make me want to do things for them, but I really don't have a choice in the matter though. It's just been quite frustrating.

There really isn't too much going on at home either. I call my daughter in Florida on a weekly basis and she seems to be doing pretty well. She has a new job being a receptionist at a massage place. The pay isn't great, but she gets full medical benefits and she is seeing the wisdom in that. She still has her job as a waitress at a local high class restaurant.

That still wasn't about home, was it? My wife and I have been helping out with the Valentines Day dance over at the church (it will actually be Friday though). We are over the processions and have decided to really only do one for those who have worn their silly hats (which it seems people don't like the idea of) and want to get up and parade around. I know I would not be doing it, so I can't blame them for this thought. We also got the DJ for the evening, and will help to decorate. Tonight we got told that we need to come up with a coat-of-arms for our ward for this dance. We have already expressed that we aren't happy with the short notice, but we came up with a design that will have a medieval looking cupid inside of it. Keep it simple. That is my motto.

Also tonight my daughter handed me her broken camera. She dropped it and the lens bent that was protruding from it. Since she dropped it, it won't be covered under the warranty. It will be a minimum of $80 to fix it and going up from there. The thing is, I can get a new camera today (the same one) for $100. So, I really hate all of this.

Other than what I have stated in here, things are going about the same in our house.

New President of the Church.

There was a little bit more snow that came last night, but it wasn't too much. There has also been a little bit of snow during the day today.

Anyway, at 11:00 today they announced the new first presidency of the Church. Thomas S. Monson is the president (that was no surprise and has followed years of tradition in the LDS church). The first councilor is Henry B. Eyring, and the second councilor is Dieter F. Uchtdorf is the second councilor. People at my work turned on the TV to hear the announcement and it was left on for about 1/2 hour while questions were answered by the new First Presidency.

It was good to hear these men speak briefly and I think it is a good First Presidency. This is what is good about the church. It continues on, even with the death of a prophet.

Speaking of the previous prophet, on Saturday, as a family, we all sat down and watched the funeral of Gordon B. Hinckley. It was a good funeral and we thoroughly enjoyed it (well our son did his fair share of complaining).

I just wanted to write about the new first presidency here.

Snow Day

This last week has been a lot of the same old stuff again. I did get that other computer and took it home. Soon after my son came home (I was allowed to leave early from work because of the snow that was accumulating), he helped me shovel the walks. I took longer than him in getting off my boots and when I went into the house, he had that computer torn apart and had torn apart the other machine that he has been putting together. He got all the best parts of both machines and put it into this newer model machine. He loaded Ubuntu on it (there were a few problems) and then found a program that would let him use his keyboard with the computer. He was putting some songs on the computer that evening that he is too lazy to play on his keyboard. In the long run he found that it was more time consuming doing it the lazy way.

As the week went on, my son continued to work on his new computer. He still can't have internet access in his room, but the computer is allowed in there. I need to buy a big long internet cable so he can drape it across our floor to get that access. In this way, we will always know when he is on the internet in his room. With my help, my son really screwed up his computer (I guess it's true, it takes a programmer to really mess up a computer). He was upset about having to put in his password to do certain things on the computer. For this computer he is not really concerned about security. That password just got in the way. I looked up on the internet how to take the password off. We did just that. The next thing we knew, he couldn't get into his computer at all, as there was no password (where one is needed). In the long run, I found a way to place a password on the computer while it was booting up. Thank goodness I came up with that, because when he loads the system, it always seems to format the hard drive. He didn't want to go through that yet again, so it was good that we got around that.

Now, onto the Snow Day. This morning we woke up (that's a good thing). Last nights news was that we might get 2-4 inches of snow. We could immediately see that there was more snow than had been advertised. Being good Mormons we got ready for church. We were all ready by 8:30 in the morning to go to church when a flurry of phone calls started to go around. We actually got told that there would be no church today (at first it was only the first two meetings (in our case that is Priesthood meeting and Sunday School). In the long run, the canceled Sacrament meeting as well.

The interesting thing about this storm is that it hit Utah County pretty hard, and the West side of the Salt Lake Valley, and missed downtown Salt Lake and hit parts of Ogden Utah. We had a foot of snow, but my son and I went out and shoveled anywhere between one to three feet of snow off the driveway (because of snow drifts). We only did the two car part of the driveway, forgetting about the third car driveway and the RV Pad. I pounded some of that snow down so it wouldn't drift back onto our driveway again. We also shoveled a little bit out into the road, but because the road hadn't been plowed it would be difficult to get out. While we were shoveling, another 1/2 inch came down.

One more interesting thing about this storm was that my front yard was completely covered, but you could see the grass in the backyard. Basically, our back yard is closed in and isn't very big. The wind blew most of that snow in a bowl like fashion against our six foot fence. So, that is where all that snow went. It was just strange to see a dry back porch and one to three feet of snow on the driveway in the front yard.

I went out at a later time and shoveled a little bit more snow off the driveway.

I spent some of the day online looking at church sites and reading on some of that stuff. I also went and answered a few posts in some of the forums I frequent. Then I played billiards on the WII that we have in our home (dang that's an addicting thing).

Another blizzard hit us around 3:45. It was a whiteout. I actually called Paul and told him I may not make it into work tomorrow. The plows still hadn't come and unless they did I wasn't go to even try. It is nice that I can work from home if I need too.

At 4:00 I sat down with my wife and daughter to watch the SuperBowl. It was the New England Patriots against the New York Giants. My daughter and my wife were cheering for the Giants so I stuck to the Patriots. The Giants got a quick 3 points and then the Patriots got a quick seven points. It stayed that score all the way till the end of the game. My daughter shouldn't be allowed to watch games. She was cheering on the Giants, and when near the end of the game came up, she jumped up and shouted when they got a touchdown. There was so much animation in her that she injured her shoulder and her knee (she had injured her knee on Thursday in gym class at school). She was asking for a hot pack. Next the Patriots worked their way down the field for a touchdown. Then the Giants got one touchdown with 39 seconds left to go. My daughter was intently watching the TV and complaining when the Patriots got some good passes off that ended up incomplete. Anyway, the Patriots lost and my daughter gets into my space and says "In yo face". They talk about wives and children getting beat with these high profile games from distraught husbands and fathers, but the way I see it, I need to be afraid of my daughter if her team doesn't win (just kidding).

While we had been watching the game, the snowplows finally went by our home. When the game was over, I went outside and finished shoveling off the last bits on our driveway, and more importantly breaking through the barrier that the the snow plows put into our driveway (actually not in the driveway, they stayed about three feet out). There was a wall of about two feet of snow that I had to shovel out from the snow plow. I also cleared out our mailbox, but the delivery person will need to get out of his vehicle in order to give us any mail. Hopefully, he'll do that.

The rest of the evening was spent in watching House. That is one of my favorite television programs.