Preparations commence!
I’ve started my preparations for the bike tour of Vietnam in February………I’ve purchased a gel bike seat 
Seriously though, I’ve started walking about 3 Kms every second day to help build up my fitness – and to lose a little weight.
I’ve raised $850 in donations so far which is very good but more is needed. It’s a great cause, so pleas contribute.
Vietnam to Cambodia Cycling Challenge for Epworth Medical Foundation
In February 2011, I’m going to join an extraordinary group of people to cycle almost 500km’s in the trip of a lifetime from Saigon to Phnom Penh. I’ll cycle through Vietnam’s verdant Mekong Delta and the cross the border to ride through the heart of rural Cambodia and see it’s vibrant village life close up and be able to enjoy the thrill of travelling by bike.
This exciting cycle tour of Vietnam and Cambodia will raise a substantial amount of money for Epworth’s hospital’s Heart Smart programme. As you may be aware, I suffered a mild heart attack in April this year so have benefited from the Epworth’s Heart Smart programme. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to give something back and have some fun in the meantime!
As someone who has taken part in the Heart Smart programme as a patient on 2 occasions, I want to do what I can to help raise funds for this worthy cause. Cycling around Vietnam and Cambodia is also a great personal bonus for me! If I can fundraise $5200, approximately $3,500 will go towards paying for my trip and a donation of $2,200 to Heart Smart which is tax deductible. To donate, simply click on the “Sponsor Me” button on the right side of the page or go to http://www.everydayhero.com.au/peter_toby.
I’ll post updates about the fundraising and my trip here.
Health update
After visiting 3 doctors in 3 days (Monday – GP, Tuesday – Cardiologist, Wednesday – Respiratory specialist), I’ve managed two days without going near a doctor!
My recovery from my heart attack seems to be progressing nicely. Lots of new medications to get used to! I’m also trying to stay awake long enough to do some walking. I’m progressing nicely and hope to work up to 30 minutes a day sometime next week. For me, the goal is to walk to Gloria Jean’s in Williamstown, have a coffee and then walk home again.
I was referred to the Respiratory specialist due to my nagging cough. She diagnosed me with having a bit of Bronchitis and so prescribed some antibiotics to accompany the rest of the medication I’m taking.
The good news is that with my time off, it’ll allow me to not only recover from my heart attack but should be sufficient time to let me get over the bronchitis as well.
I’m looking forward to experiencing some good health soon. So far 2010 has sucked for me health-wise!
Canberra attack
I’ve just returned from a business trip to Canberra. This isn’t new, but the manner and circumstances sure were! For starters, I was driven home by Suellen, my arms look like they’ve been used as pincushions – covered in needle marks and bruises, and I’ve had 2 more chunks of metal inserted into my body! I’m sure you’ll agree that is is not a usual trip to Canberra by any stretch of the imagination!
It all started last Monday evening (April 12). I returned to my hotel, unpacked and decided to order room service so I could catch The Winners, and On the Couch on Foxtel. A little after 6pm, I felt excruciating pain in my chest and was sweating profusely. I rang for the Hotel Doctor but was told that I’d have to visit a local GP Surgery. Having worked out what was happening – I was having a heart attack – I then requested an ambulance be called immediately. Thankfully, the Ambulance arrived in under 10 minutes. After the ambos checked me out, off I went to the Emergency Department at Canberra Hospital.
After spending Monday night in the Emergency Department, I was admitted to the Cardiac Care Unit on Tuesday Afternoon. 24 hours later, I had 1 stent inserted into my Coronary Arteries, and had an existing stent “re-stented” as it had become blocked. I was discharged from hospital on Thursday morning and then Suellen and I commenced our “road trip” home to Melbourne.
I’m happy to say that I feel pretty good. The only area that is a little tender is my groin where the catheter was inserted into my pulmonary artery. Apart from that, I get tired pretty easily and have to stop for plenty of “nanna naps”.
I visited my GP today and he was pleased with my progress and thought that I looked well. My blood pressure was spot on and all appears to be going as it should. I have an appointment with my Cardiologist tomorrow (Tuesday, April 20) and hope that I get a clean bill of health from him as well.
More Health Stuff….
It probably appears as though my blog is only for my health updates. Unfortunately, this will be the case every 6 Months for (hopefully) a long while to come!
My latest medical visit was to my cardiologist for my 6 monthly checkup. Everything went well but because I reported some minor chest pain to him, he decided it would be a good idea for me to do an Echo Stress Test.
If you don’t know what’s involved in and Echo Stress Test, they took an ultrasound of my heart while I lay on my side. The head of the ultrasound had to be pressed hard up against the side of my ribcage – and let me tell you it hurt! While this was happening, I had electrodes stuck to me so that they could record an ECG of my heart’s rhythm during the test.
After the ultrasound, it was onto the treadmill for some work. The treadmill is run by a program called, ‘Bruce’ which speeds up the rate and incline every 3 minutes until you’ve had enough. I lasted 13 minutes (my best previously was around 11 minutes) at which time I was jogging at 8.5 Km/h at a 17% incline. Although only doing this part of the test for a minute, I had spent the previous 12 minutes building up to a 3 minute stint walking at 6.6 Km/h at a 14% incline. It’s pretty hard work let me tell you!
Immediately following the treadmill workout, I had to lay on my side again so that they could take ultrasound images of my heart after being stressed. Try to picture yourself after reaching your optimum heart rate, lying on your side with ECG electrodes stuck to you, breathing heavily and the doctor says to you, ‘Hold your breath’. Easily said than done, but I had to do this on 3 occasions – pretty hard to do!
The end result of all that was that everything was great. My heart reacted the same at rest as it did under stress, my blood pressure reacted as it should, and the ECG showed all the proper patterns. All in all, a great relief to know that everything is as it should be. All I have to do is make sure that I look after myself as I have been and my good health should continue.
Birthday Weekend
It was my birthday on November 26th so we decided to have dinner at Silks in the Crown Towers complex. We also decided to spend the night in Crown Towers and together with my Mother-In-Law and 3 friends, Suellen and I booked 2 double rooms for the stay.
On Saturday morning, Crown Towers rang and told us they’d upgraded us to a 2 bedroom suite which usually goes for $2,500 a night for the same price as the 2 rooms. Sounded like a good deal so we accepted.
When we got to the suite, we couldn’t believe our luck – what a great place! 2 huge bedrooms each with kingsize beds and their own ensuites, lounge room, dining room, and about 5 TV’s (including 1 in each bathroom).
Dinner at Silks was amazing! Their food is the best Asian food I think I’ve ever had and their Peking Duck is to die for!
All in all a great day, a fantastic meal, and wonderful accomodation.
Blood Test Time!
Time has rolled around for another blood test. Had Dr Sweeney take my blood this morning and looking forward (with some trepidation) to the results which he says he’ll give me over the phone tomorrow.
I’m hopeful that this Year’s results will be better than my 4.9 reading this time last year. I missed having my blood test in June this year – partially because I’m slack and partially because I was worried about the result. I was forced to have the blood test this time as I’m due to see my cardiologist, Dr Hiscock on December 6 and he needs to see my test results.
The gym at VU just isn’t as convenient as what I’d hoped, so I’ll have to push myself to join a gym in the City. Fitness First are seemingly everywhere in the City now – Melbourne Central, QV, and where the Melbourne Fitness Club used to be in Collins Street. I’m undecided between 3 gyms – Corporate Fitness Club in Flinders Lane, Fitness First at Melbourne Central, and Fitness First at QV. The FF at QV is a “Platinum Club” which I need to find more information about. They say that they give members more individual service and I need to find out what that is before committing to it. I like Corporate Fitness Club because their prices are similar and CFC supply all your gear and have regular fitness assessments so you can keep track of your progress. They are relatively handy provided I get used to catching my trains at Flinders Street.
I’ll check out if FF have a similar assessment process and if not, it looks like CFC could be the place.
Busy Week!
Had a busy week this week. It started early on Monday morning with a drive to Mansfield where I spent 2 days getting the Shire Council up and running with TRIM Context version 6. Since returning to the Office on Wednesday I’ve been busy catching up with e-mail and phone call enquiries from Clients.
Over the weekend I finished painting our new study and moved the PC’s into the room. Still no desk there but I’m hoping that the travelling allowence I receive for the Mansfield trip will pay for one of them. I updated the Windows PC with all the O/S patches and NIS to the 2006 version. I finally finished configuring NIS last night so that Jarvis’ parental control will operate correctly. I also installed Fedora Core 4 on the other PC so I can start playing around with that. The next stage will be to get the wireless antenna working on my old laptop so I can work on it in the lounge room!
It’s great to be busy but I’m looking forward to having a relatively quiet weekend!
My health scare
Originally posted on ‘toby.net.au’ on June 9, 2004 and reposted here to keep all my blogs in one place.
I thought that I’d share with you how I spent last week.
Last week I thought that I’d been experiencing some indigestion pain – something that I’ve never had. When this indigestion pain woke me up on Sunday, I thought I’d see my doctor to see if there was anything that could be done. He checked me out and thought that I had indigestion as well, but thought that he should refer me to a cardiologist to do an Exercise Stress Test. This involves having a bunch of wires attached to your chest while you walk at varying speeds on a treadmill.
The results of this test were inconclusive so the Cardiologist told me that he’d like to perform a Coronary Angiogram on me the next day (Wednesday) and that I’d need to stay overnight in Hospital. I’ve never been a patient in a Hospital before, only ever been there as a visitor so I was pretty scared to say the least!
Wednesday morning comes around and I’m admitted and taken into the ‘Cath Lab’ for my procedure. If you haven’t followed the above link, the procedure involves making an incision in your groin and placing a catheter into your femerol artery. The catheter then travels to your heart and releases a dye into your coronary arteries which is then seen via x-ray on a TV like monitor by the Cardiologist. They found 2 blockages (known as Stenosis) – one 80% and one which was 90% blocked. They then inserted a Stent which is a small, expandable wire mesh tube that keeps the artery open and allows the blood to flow through at a better rate.
They placed one stent in me on Wednesday, and another on Thursday morning using the groin on the opposite side giving me a matching pair. This meant another night in hospital. I was released from hospital on Friday morning and have been resting ever since. Walking is painful due to the tenderness of my groin on either side.
The chest feels fine though which is the main thing. I’m now on a low-fat, low-salt, high fibre diet which sounds pretty boring but is better than the alternative! The Doctor tells me that I’ll fine again in another 2-3 weeks so I should be able to hit the gym again then. I’ve been going to the gym now since December and lost about 10 Kgs. It appears that my years of smoking and eating fatty foods and that sort of thing finally caught up with me – either that or following Richmond Footy Club for as long as I have is a health hazard!
The good news of course is that the problem was caught before it caused a serious malfunction – i.e. a heart attack. I guess the moral of the story is that if your body tells you something is wrong, going to the doctor is probably a good idea!
My thanks go to my GP Dr. Sweeney, my Cardiologist Dr. Hiscock, all the nurses and Staff of Epworth Hostpital who made my first hospital stay as pleasant as possible, and the most thanks go to my wife Suellen for looking after me and just caring.
Here are some scanned images that my Cardiologist gave me. These images show the state of two of my arteries both before and after the stents were inserted. I’m sure you’ll agree that they look much better afterward!
Artery One – Pre
Artery One – Post
Artery Two – Pre
Artery Two – Post
