Cheating the Widowmaker, and my Next Propeller Project
localroger
Posts: 3,451
Well folks I'm just back from the hospital, and adding to my modern cyborg-ness with a spiffy bit of polymer coated chrome-platinum alloy in my Left Anterior Descending coronary artery. That's right, I got a stent in my Widowmaker, which was 85% blocked. I could pretty much have dropped dead at any time in the last four months, when I noticed that my blood pressure was always 190/120 no matter when I took it.
When I finally realized I had a problem that wouldn't fix itself my doctor put me on modern hypertension drugs, which worked wonders, but it wasn't the end of my problem. I had to go in for a battery of tests to find out what the underlying problem was. The smoking gun dropped on the treadmill stress test, where I was feeling OK but my blood pressure was up to 240/140 and my heart starting to skip beats.
Now I've been monitoring my blood glucose (which I fix with diet) and my blood pressure (because hey, I bought the meter so why not) since 2006. If I had not been doing that there's no telling how long I'd have gone walking around with this guillotine blade over my heart that would have killed me if it didn't do me the favor of dropping within a short distance of an ER with a cath lab. Needless to say I'll be checking my blood pressure periodically for the rest of my life.
But I'm really not happy with that. The real telltale that I had a SRS PRBLM was the EKG, and who reads their own EKG? Well even before I went to the followup where I found out I was scheduled for the cath lab, I ordered the Ramsey ECG kit...
http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/Ramsey-Electrocardiogram-Heart-Monitor-Kit/dp/B00B1GFFH0
...which, yeah, I know, isn't a real medical device yadda yadda yadda. But they've done all that messy analog stuff that I'm not so good at and, contrary to their admonition to PLEASE DON'T MODIFY THIS KIT of course I'm going to Propellerize it with an interface to record an exercise session to SD card. ON BATTERIES, of course. I want to be able to get on the elliptical machine or take a power walk with it in place once a month or so, just to make sure nothing is creeping up on me.
I was thinking of building it today (day off work!) but I really am recovering from the operation (where they put a BIG HOLE in your femoral artery and then seal it with something that sounds suspiciously like two-part polyurethane foam) and so I'm not quite up to making sure it's right. No urgent hurry anyway, as I've just had an angiogram. But there is no substitute for being able to see, even with cheap and non-professional tools, what your body is up to. The glucose tests aren't lab grade but they got my pre-diabetes in check, the blood pressure meter may be a cheap job from Wal-Mart but it got my attention when necessary, and a hacked up ECG might not be grounds for hospital admission but it can clue me in that I need a REAL test.
Incidentally... on the day of my stress test and ultrasounds, all the operators were friendly and bantered by asking what had brought me to them. Chest pain? Fainting spell? Nope, I told them I check my BP regularly and it was off. And they all acted like this was really extraordinary. I came in because I checked my BP myself without being ordered to by a doctor and I didn't like my numbers without being told? Like I am the only person in the whole history of medical science who has done that.
I know doctors don't like it when you do homemade medicine, but what profession likes it when you hack their techniques? A couple of meters have made more of a difference in my life -- in one case now probably saving it -- than a decade of Hackaday columns. To have a chance to hack the world, sometimes you have to hack yourself.
When I finally realized I had a problem that wouldn't fix itself my doctor put me on modern hypertension drugs, which worked wonders, but it wasn't the end of my problem. I had to go in for a battery of tests to find out what the underlying problem was. The smoking gun dropped on the treadmill stress test, where I was feeling OK but my blood pressure was up to 240/140 and my heart starting to skip beats.
Now I've been monitoring my blood glucose (which I fix with diet) and my blood pressure (because hey, I bought the meter so why not) since 2006. If I had not been doing that there's no telling how long I'd have gone walking around with this guillotine blade over my heart that would have killed me if it didn't do me the favor of dropping within a short distance of an ER with a cath lab. Needless to say I'll be checking my blood pressure periodically for the rest of my life.
But I'm really not happy with that. The real telltale that I had a SRS PRBLM was the EKG, and who reads their own EKG? Well even before I went to the followup where I found out I was scheduled for the cath lab, I ordered the Ramsey ECG kit...
http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/Ramsey-Electrocardiogram-Heart-Monitor-Kit/dp/B00B1GFFH0
...which, yeah, I know, isn't a real medical device yadda yadda yadda. But they've done all that messy analog stuff that I'm not so good at and, contrary to their admonition to PLEASE DON'T MODIFY THIS KIT of course I'm going to Propellerize it with an interface to record an exercise session to SD card. ON BATTERIES, of course. I want to be able to get on the elliptical machine or take a power walk with it in place once a month or so, just to make sure nothing is creeping up on me.
I was thinking of building it today (day off work!) but I really am recovering from the operation (where they put a BIG HOLE in your femoral artery and then seal it with something that sounds suspiciously like two-part polyurethane foam) and so I'm not quite up to making sure it's right. No urgent hurry anyway, as I've just had an angiogram. But there is no substitute for being able to see, even with cheap and non-professional tools, what your body is up to. The glucose tests aren't lab grade but they got my pre-diabetes in check, the blood pressure meter may be a cheap job from Wal-Mart but it got my attention when necessary, and a hacked up ECG might not be grounds for hospital admission but it can clue me in that I need a REAL test.
Incidentally... on the day of my stress test and ultrasounds, all the operators were friendly and bantered by asking what had brought me to them. Chest pain? Fainting spell? Nope, I told them I check my BP regularly and it was off. And they all acted like this was really extraordinary. I came in because I checked my BP myself without being ordered to by a doctor and I didn't like my numbers without being told? Like I am the only person in the whole history of medical science who has done that.
I know doctors don't like it when you do homemade medicine, but what profession likes it when you hack their techniques? A couple of meters have made more of a difference in my life -- in one case now probably saving it -- than a decade of Hackaday columns. To have a chance to hack the world, sometimes you have to hack yourself.
Comments
May you have many more self diagnostic projects in your future!!
(Did you ask if they had a stent with an RF flow meter?)
No, they don't! Certainly an opportunity for innovation waiting.
I did find out that modern ultrasound machines not only take pictures, once an artery is identified the operator can pick it on the display and the machine will measure the blood flow systolic and diastolic velocity by the Doppler effect, which has apparently been a thing for ten years or so. But definitely a stent that can send a SMS when something goes wrong would be a step forward!
In 1999 (I was 52), I went in for my annual (every 3 years?) physical. Everything looked fine. Then at the end I asked the doc if he could recommend an exercise plan. I told him I had been in Sardinia for a couple of weeks on business and had walked a couple of miles up and down hills to get to and from work. I the beginning I could hardly make it, but by the end of the 2 weeks I was just cruising along, and I wanted to keep it up. He decided to do an EKG first. He compared the new chart with one he had taken 15 years earlier and noticed a small difference. He didn't think it was significant but had me make an appointment with a cardiologist.
The cardiologist also didn't think it was significant, but just in case gave me a stress test. After the test while I was resting but still hooked up to the EKG, my blood pressure kept dropping. It never dropped to the point where he felt I was in danger, but it did enough that he scheduled me for an angiogram. "Nothing urgent, in a few weeks"..
When I was on the table having the angiogram done, the doc asked when I had my heart attack. I said "what heart attack?" He then told me that in addition to the artery that was fully blocked, I had 5 others that were 90 + percent blocked, I had damage from the old heart attack and my ejection fraction (out put/ input) was less than 20%. Normal is greater than 50%. He recommended that I spend the night and have a quint bypass the next day. So I did.
I was very lucky, that (1) I had a physical that I had put off for 3 years. (2) That I had had spent a couple of weeks overseas doing a lot of walking - and didn't have a heart attack then, (3) That I had an EKG when I was young and healthy to compare to - the 1999 EKG would not have been sufficient in itself for action. (4) That I was on Zestril for slightly elevated BP, and took daily aspirin.
I would be very interested to see how your homebrew EKG monitor project goes.
Tom
There just isn't any substitute for keeping aware of what your body is up to. I will definitely write up the EKG project when I get it going.
It was a surprise at 52. The docs never figured out what caused the problem, particularly the low ejection fraction which they didn't think was fully related to the silent heart attack. My good cholesterol (HDL) was borderline low; that may have had an effect (or been a symptom).
I think it is bad genes. My mom, all her brothers (except 1 in his 80's) and sister and father all died of heart attacks at fairly young ages. Since they all smoked and I didn't, I thought it would buy me time. Maybe nonsmoking and the asprin and ACE inhibitor I was taking helped me survive. After my operation they added a statin to my daily meds, even though my bad cholesterol was on the low side of borderline. My mother's brother who is still alive had to have a stent, and like me is also on ACE inhibitors and statins (and has low HDL). I make sure my sons (in their 30s) get checked every few years and have healthy EKGs in their records. So far things look good for them, including normal HDL - must be my wife's genes, her family lives into their 90's.
Best wishes, keep monitoring things, early warning worked well for you; if straightforward to use it would probably be useful for folks that have risk factors.
Tom