The book gives you a look at heart disease, and gives a look at different kinds of alternative treatments for heart disease and ways to change your diet without loseing taste, you get lots of delicious receipts that meet the criteria set forth by the AHA.

"How To Survive After Open Heart Surgery For a Meat and Potatoes Guy."

By Ralph G. Nigh

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Ralph G. Nigh
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4634-2790-0

Chapter One

THE DIAGNOSIS

The date was December 5th 1996 and I was working the night shift on a war fighter exercise at Fort Hood, Texas, it was about midnight and I felt these really strong chest pains. The First Sergeant saw me rubbing my chest, he asked, "What's wrong?" I answered," I am having chest pains and I don't know why, but probably just heartburn." The Top said to SSG Alonzo "Take SSG Nigh to the Hospital."

SSG Alonzo rushed me to the Hospital that was only a few blocks away. When we walked in and told why we were there, they sprang into action. First they put me on an emergency room bed (if you can call that a bed, more like a table with sheets on it and wheels under it) and stuck Nitro Glycerin under my tongue (sub-lingual).The next step was to stick connectors to me with little snaps on them so they can hook up an EKG Machine (Electro Cardio Gram) to them. The Nitro did no good and the EKG showed nothing, so they admitted me to the Hospital for more tests.

Those of you who have been in the hospital on a cardiac diet know how tasteless the diets are, so here is your 1st tip. If you know that you are going into the hospital for cardiac testing take with you a blue 3 & 1/8th oz shaker of Morton Salt Substitute for salt free diets. It has an aftertaste if you put it in you hand and taste it that way. You can taste the salty taste, and when you put it on food the aftertaste goes away. You get a good salty taste that will make the cardiac diet a little more tolerable.

Next they did a stress test to see how my EKG reacted to stress. It took me over 30 minutes to get to the target heart rate they wanted and it showed nothing. Then, I was sent for CT (Computerized Tomography), which also showed nothing unusual.

After 3 days in the hospital at Fort Hood Texas I returned to my duty on the night shift in the War Fighter scenario with a bottle of Prilosec and was told that my chest pain was gastric. Since then I never had a problem physically doing anything that I wanted to do including running fast enough to beat many of the young people in my unit. On our semiannual Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) and in January 1996 I turned 47 years old.

The Drs. have always asked has your Father, Mother, Sisters, Brothers, Aunts or Uncles ever had heart related problems. My answer always was (and had to be) no. It wasn't until I was in the Hospital after being cut open to have the triple bypass on June 1st 2002, that I realized that many things had different names medically in the 1920s and 1950s than they do today. I remembered that my Grandfather Nigh died of hardening of the arteries at the age of 70 and that my Grandfather Tritten had hardening of the arteries and died of a stroke at age 53, which is how old I was at the time of the surgery. Remember to think about your grand parents and the changes in terminology.

After completing my reserve training at FT. Hood I returned home to my house in Savannah, MO, and returned to work at the Maryville Treatment Center, MO Department of Corrections and on 15 February 1997 I had chest pains at work, while in the patrol car on perimeter patrol. I felt like I could drive to the hospital and notified the shift commander. The shift commander called the hospital and asked them to send out an ambulance. The ambulance came and when they decided to transport me to the hospital I said I couldn't pay for an ambulance. The shift commander LT. Burton said, "Don't worry about anything, the Department of Corrections will pay for it because you are at work and you don't have a choice in the matter." When the Superintendent (Prison Warden) received the bill he said they aren't paying for an ambulance ride for a personal illness. I then explained what had transpired and what LT Burton said. The Superintendent then said that if LT Burton would confirm that he said that, the Department would pay the bill. To date the bill still isn't paid, almost 7 years later. My point in bringing this up is don't trust anybody with you health or payment of your medical bills, cause when push comes to shove most people only wanted to give lip service and aren't going to get involved.

The Cardiologist at the hospital checked me out in the emergency room and after about 3 hours sent me back to work with an appointment with a Dr. at Northwest Missouri Cardiology for more extensive testing. When I arrived at his office he said that he was going to send me to the hospital for a cardiac stress test and an echo cardio gram. I went to the hospital and had the tests and was later told that they couldn't find anything wrong.

Soon my Dr. then said he was going to send me to a cardiologist in St. Joseph, Missouri to look a little deeper into the chest pains. The Cardiologist he sent me to was a young Cuban Dr. who seemed to have a lot on the ball he looked at the information from the test the other Drs. had done and said that he was going to order a stress echo. The other tests didn't show anything wrong and the gastric tests that I had taken didn't show that my stomach was that bad either. The Dr. kept canceling the test because he had to go home to Cuba and to Florida a lot to visit relatives. After about 4 months of cancellations I received military orders to go to Ft. Dix, New Jersey for the summer for Active Duty Special Work. When I came back I got very busy and my chest pains didn't seem so bad, maybe I just learned to live with them and kept taking my Prilosec.

After returning from Fort Dix in September of 1997 I changed duties with the Missouri Department of Corrections and became transportation Officer, which was quite a change of pace from standing on the hard concrete all day watching the Inmates activities. Now transporting them to and from Dr. appointments and doing prisoner exchanges with other institutions and transporting them to and from funerals, county jails and court appearances. In April 1998 I was promoted to SGT and applied for the E-Squad, this was the department's version of the SWAT team or as some states call them the CERT team. I made it after taking a Physical fitness test and scoring the second highest score of anyone in this testing group.

In the ensuing months we had some very vigorous training, and as a SGT it was up to me to set the example for the junior officers, so I worked physical harder than many of the others. When fall came I was sent to Instructor training for Chemical Agents for the Department of Corrections. The third night after training my pager went off just after I got to bed. I got up and called in, we have an emergency situation at the Institution the control room SGT said you are to report to the E-Squad building as quickly as possible in camouflaged utilities. On the way in I listened to my scanner and had my flashers on moving as fast as legally possible. On the scanner I heard that there were hostages being held in medical.

Upon arrival at the Institution I grabbed my bulletproof vest and all of my equipment and we marched to the gate some officers drew weapons and surround the perimeter while my CERT team entered the institution and smartly moved in formation to the medical area. On arrival at the medical area we poised in the stairwell waiting for Intel reports. Finally we moved in and took down the hostage taker.

We then proceeded to the control center and drew weapons and took up positions with the rest of the E-Squad to search for the other...