Cath Lab Hilton

I am home from the hospital. Spent 24 hours in the new home of the CRH Cath lab. They now have there own unit with 8 or 10 rooms. This was dedicated in September and the crew are loving it. So did I because everything was nice, got to walk to the bathroom, order coffee and have a great team of nurses tending to my care.

In a providential moment my nurse was the pastor's wife at the church where my daughter attended and works for. We had good fellowship. The procedure was my fifth in eleven years, and I continue to be amazed at the way they can deal with heart blockages so effectively.

Three of my visits were related to chest pain and a quick trip through the emergency room to the table. The last two were preemptive diagnosis, and it is a much prefered way to deal with heart disease.

There are only four arteries that feed the heart, I think. This one was the place where my first heart attack in 2000 occurred. The stent had slowly begun to plaque and they fixed that, then stented another more serious blockage. You may be tempted to ask me what I can do to stop these expensive visits....I did, and the answer is to keep doing what I have been doing and keep having yearly stress tests, because some people have a proclivity to plaque up, usually with a rare form of cholesterol than is smaller and denser and sticks to the walls for more damage.

I consider my life a gift, and an extension of the miracles of modern medicine. I cannot tell you how good it feels to "keep on keeping on" with my daily wonderful life. I have to be very vigilant about diet and exercise, but that is a small price to pay for the gift of resuming my ministry, my presence at the side of my dear long suffering Laura, who gave up two days of vacation sleep for me, and for my cat, who loves to sit on my chest and purr while I stroke his fur.