Cool McCool's Garage

Well, a change-up from the project updates and musings about the Impala road trips.  tomorrow Kim and I are off to Ann Arbor for a consult with a thoracic/cardiovascular surgeon, G. Micheal Deeb.   It seems for my 56’th birthday I got not only cards and well wishes, but the news that I have a 5 cm ascending aortic aneurysm.  It seems this is a common thing for people like myself who have (had, mine was replaced 26 years ago) bicuspid aortic valves.  Think of it as an inner tube with a bulge in the side, in the great artery leading from the heart to the rest of the body.  Obviously, not nearly as exciting as getting the Diamond T actually running, or the T’Birds top chop finished. 

At first I was a little irked that nobody mentioned this is the usual, or at least common, development, but when I think about it, I guess 36 years of worrying about this happening wouldn’t have been good either.  So, off  to the big city we go for conference and the plan. 

The question isn’t if, but when surgical intervention takes place.  My cardiologist here, in an effort I think to reassure me, offered that I have asymptomatic disease, and I replied that since the main symptom of an aortic aneurysm is simply dropping dead, I found cold comfort in that. 

So, no hurtling down a mountain un Utah or Colorado this winter, and no lifting heavy car parts, and especially no tugging, lifting dragging and turning 400 lb ICU patients.  We’ll leave that for now untill we find out what, rather, when, this gets fixed with a shiny new Dacron graft and possibly a sparkly new aortic valve, and then reassess the likelihood of the aforementioned activities.  Perhaps the blue runs as opposed to Black Diamond for a while, I’m tired of the torn knee ligaments and broken ribs anyway.

Brian