It's a Buck and a Quarter Quarterstaff but I'm Not Telling Him That.

  Hello friends, family, loved ones, and readers!  Welcome back to my life. So you may have guessed it. As of this blog post, I am down 125 pounds!! I never thought I would get here, and I never thought it would change my life so much.  Well before we get too deep into that, I wanted to give you a little glimpse into my appearance now.  So without further ado, here  I am at a much thinner, 237 pounds. 

A lot better right?   
  Alas these things do not come without a price.  Two weeks back I awoke at 4:10 AM with ( gasp) chest pains, in the area that you would think, is associated with your heart.  I was scared to say the least. I sat up and was hoping it was some muscle twinge and would go away, but it did not. 
 So with my wife in tow we made our way to the emergency room. The protocol for chest pain is in multiple parts. The first thing they do is of course check your blood pressure and slap on an EKG. You also get the glory of having blood drawn for your cardiac enzymes and an IV put in. Now, people who know me well, know I HATE IV's. I just dont do well with them. Now the first person who tried wound up sticking me a couple of times and failing , which of course HURT!  So she ut in a call for the IV nurse. The IV nurse was not going to be available for over an hour, so they called upon a head nurse who was simply excellent at her task. She was also a friend of my sister Pamela, and that helped me be a little more comfortable as well. 
  So after this they draw blood every three hours as well as a new elg every three hours. After several round like this I was transferred into an observation room within the ER where i would stay through the day and until the next. The next day brought a new test. In order to rule out cardiac issues, I was scheduled for a Nuclear stress test.
  Well like a normal stress test I would walk then run on a treadmill to get my heart rate up to a target rate and then cool it down,  but I would first be given some radioactive material intravenously, and a set of scans made of my heart and the vessels within to check the flow. Then i was brought in to the stress test room.  Now in december , prior to my surgery, I had a regular stress test, which i made it to about 5 minutes running before they had to stop me because my heart rate was over 180 BPM. 
 Well in a good sign i made it past the 9 minute mark and rather than me stopping the test because i was so out of breath and my heart rate over 180 bpm my heart rate maxed out at 144 bpm and i made it all the way through the test. With my target heart rate achieved, they inject more radioactive material into your veins and then rush you back to the scanner where they take more scnas of your hearts vessels to compare with the first set. 
  The good news is they were able to rule out heart problems. The funny part is of course the first nurse I had in the ER had gastric bypass surgery 4 months before i had my sleeve done. The nurse practitioner who discharged me had her gastric sleeve done a year before mine, and in the same hospital by the same team as I did. It seemed like everywhere i went i was surrounded by people who had weight loss surgery. Now  I was released to follow up with my own physician. 
  Here is the bad news. Over  a week went by with no chest pain symptoms and we made the whole thing out to being a chest muscle infection or tear. Then a few days ago, on tuesday to be exact, the chest pain came back, and it has pretty much stuck with me on and off since then. I am scheduled to met with my primary care doctor on tuesday. There was a little breakthrough. I realized the pain comes only after i eat. Usually within 10 minutes of eating. When I wake up in the morning I am pain free, but after breakfast, on my way to work, it comes back. While its not ultra high levels of pain, it is enough to really make you pay attention.  So tomorrow morning I will be calling my surgeon to ask about this to see what they want to do, I may be seeing him on tuesday instead of my primary care doctor. The sort of good news is at least by knowing it has to do with my eating, I can rule out major lung issues, ( I wont say the C word didn't pop into my head a few times) which is nice. 
  So I will update my status after that happens, and we will kick the caboose and see what shakes loose. Oh and by the way the title of today's post is from.......Yes, it is from the Looney Tunes Robin Hood Daffy.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw9vaNS3b0s

So without further ado here is this posts cartoon.