Becoming Bionic
The Little Book of Hope for Heart Patients
by Jon Kyle Ezell
Published by The Look Up Project
Smashwords Edition
This book is also available at most online retailers.
First published in 2011 by The Look Up Project
Copyright © 2011 Jon Kyle Ezell
All rights reserved
Smashwords Edition License notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Important safety note: The information in this book is intended to be educational and not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health disorder. Information contained in this book shall not replace consultation and close supervision with a physician or healthcare professional. The author and publisher are in no way liable for any misuse of the information contained in this book. Readers are responsible for their own healthcare and for making informed decisions that can impact their lives.
Visit becomingbionic.com and join the community of thriving heart attack survivors.
Bionic: Having superhuman strength or capacity.
This is the book I yearned for during my painful recovery from a heart attack when I was desperate to find hope. A lot of what’s in here flies in the face of reason, but hope has nothing to do with reason. I’m not a medical professional, nor do I claim to be. Please visit your doctor and weigh the risks before taking any of my advice.
For My Two Angels
This book is dedicated to two women who helped save my life.
The first is Laura Yamokoski, Heart Failure Team Manager, Clinical & Translational Research Organization at The Ohio State University Medical Center’s Division of Cardiology. Thanks a million for those stem cells (or placebo) that you and your team pumped into my ailing, weak body. It was so nice of you to keep me laughing and happy for two years during the clinical trial.
This is also dedicated to Laurie Yahl, badass exercise physiologist at The Ohio State University Center for Health and Wellness Cardiac Rehab Center. Laurie, thank you for understanding me and for letting me push boundaries that I was determined to push.
You both are my angels.
You’re two big reasons why I’m bionic today.
I’m paying your goodness forward with this project; you’ve inspired me to want to be an angel to as many people as I can possibly reach.
Why This Book?
I decided to write about my miraculous heart attack recovery story out of concern for all the people who are heart patients. If you are one of them, you might not know what to do other than give up. I almost gave up on hope for my health and for my life, but I decided to find the strength inside of me to fight. You have to decide to do the same thing.
My heart condition changed me forever. I learned that there is a tremendous need to help people “get their minds right,” so they can regain their health. I did this. I tapped the healing power of my mind and used it to fix my body. You have to tap yours and put it to work for you. It became clear to me that nobody would be coming to my hospital room or to my home to tell me how to bend my mind so I could thrive again. We’re individually responsible for fighting negative thoughts, and it’s up to each of us to direct our bodies to respond in the proper way, or we’re surely doomed.
This information is also for everyone around you who is not sick. They have no idea how to help you. They love you, but they can’t possibly understand the needs of someone who suddenly became very ill unless they’ve experienced it themselves. They can’t comprehend the agony, shock, and mourning that results from losing your good health and the mental and physical impacts that go along with that kind of sorrow. This includes your family, your friends, your healthcare providers, and everyone in your life who has never trembled over The Grim Reaper standing in wait. My story will help them better understand your needs. Pass this along to them after you’re finished.
When I needed a voice of hope in my time of crisis I found sympathetic voices, but none could tell me what I am about to share with you in the upcoming pages. It boils down to three things: 1. ultimately, you control your own health and your own future even in the face of adversity (and potentially death); 2. without hope there is no future; and 3. with hope you have a shot.
As your voice of hope, I insist that you devour this material so you can begin the most important work of your life—getting back to good health. Please take a bit of time and read every word right now. By design, it won’t take long.
If you are ready, and if you follow through and take command of your future, the words in this book will give you the kind of hope that could bring you a better life than you enjoyed before your heart tragedy.
I will be visiting hospitals with several of these books under my arm. I’ll also be running around the world to inspire heart patients to take control of their futures. As cliché as this might seem, if I help one person decide to get better, then this emotionally-draining project will have been worth it. And if you purchased this book, I hope you find it to be the best money you have ever spent.
Now, let’s get on with my story so you can get on with your fight.
You are about to save your life.
Chapter 1
My Story
At age 41, I suffered a terrible heart attack in my Columbus, Ohio home. I could have died, and even though I didn’t, my heart took a serious blow. This made me extremely depressed and mad at everyone and everything.
I was lucky enough to be selected to participate in a rare stem cell clinical trial and to receive an intravenous infusion of either stem cells or placebo.
I couldn’t walk very far, was always dizzy, and had a hell of a time breathing, but the possibility of having stem cells working to build my heart back gave me hope during this desperate time.
Even after a few weeks I still felt miserable. I thought to myself, “I must have the placebo.” Hope was sinking like a rock, causing me to fall into a period of severe depression filled with self-pity and thoughts of suicide.
But then I thought, “What if I hadn’t been chosen to be in the stem cell trial? What would I have done then?”
I realized that only a few out of millions of heart patients could rely on such a crutch. That’s when I decided to kick my heart attack’s ass, and proclaimed out loud:
“I am an athlete!”
“I am going to run marathons.”
I eliminated fragile hope attributed to stem cells, an as-yet unproven science. My 50/50 shot of having the stem cell infusion over placebo was too low. I needed a 100 percent chance of wellness and happiness instead.
Then my heart healed.
I’m better than new.
I feel as if I never had a heart attack in the first place!
Now I have a “bionic heart.” I run marathons. And the big question remains: am I a wonder boy of medical science? Did God cure me? Or is my amazing recovery the product of pure determination?
I’m bionic!
This experience has given me the power and knowledge to spread hope to heart patients who need hope.
If you have had a heart attack or suffer from “heart failure,” I am going to teach you how to become bionic too.
My Sour Heart Attack
Nothing hurt.
I didn’t complain other than saying to a few people, “Man, my belly feels weird,” which evoked an interesting response from a student of mine:
“Well then, woo want me to wub your belly-welly?” I laughed.
She was right. I had a faint stomach issue. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.
Whooptiedoo!
I may have had a runny nose, too. Come to think of it, I also had a paper cut on my pinky finger. It was clear that my little stomach problem was no big deal. But my bout with sour stomach lasted for days.
It didn’t get better. It didn’t get worse. I chalked it up to finally experiencing my first acute case of heartburn. “Welcome to middle age!”
To soak up the acid I was careful only to eat bland food for days (mostly dry toast), but my stomach condition hadn’t changed a bit. No guy can eat dry toast for long. So I decided, “Screw this! I’m having Mexican tonight!”
Wow, did I love Mexican food. I especially loved to use the hot pepper sauce—the hotter the better. Every time I ate Mexican I would pour the hottest habanero sauce I could possibly find over my favorite enchiladas and soft taco platter. My test for good sauce was simple: if the top of my head wasn’t soaking wet, then it wasn’t worth eating.
I found a particularly sizzling brand of sauce that was clearly meant for a drop-by-drop application, but I poured half of the little bottle on to my huge plate holding a yummy, spicy-hot Mexican platter of (what else?) soft tacos and enchiladas. It felt like heaven when my head bubbled with sweat down onto my face. It also was nice on my stomach because the hotness coated over the sour.
After dinner I went straight home and hit my bed early—full, stuffed, about to explode like a piñata. I was happy.
I remember how I could feel hotness still on my lips even after brushing my teeth.
The next thing I knew I had woken up from a deep sleep—on fire. My clock said 2:05 a.m. My tummy was in agony.
I wished so hard that I could have that annoying sour stomach back because now my stomach was burning out of my body. It was also churning, but I never felt like I needed to vomit. All the while, I didn’t see any reason to go to the emergency room for having Mexican food revenge. I would never eat Mexican again! Spending the rest of the wee hours holding my stomach and spitting out drool until 5:00 a.m., I realized that I would probably not get any sleep that night.
As a professor I had to teach a class at 9:30 a.m., and I had already decided that I was going to make it to campus on time. So I jumped in the tub for an early shower to kill a few minutes and find a bit of relief for my stomach by directing my focus onto the comfort of hot water on my skin.
As I moved my head under the faucet to wash the soap off of my face, I noticed something very strange—now my chest felt weird.
It didn’t hurt, though; it seemed like it was vibrating manically.
Purposefully, I moved my head under the faucet in exactly the same way, and again I could feel a rumbling inside my chest and a corresponding weird noise inside my head. It was buzzing. I remember thinking it was a sound exactly like the hum of the lightsaber in the Star Wars movies.
Even then, it didn’t really hurt, but it was at that moment that I knew what I’d been experiencing had never been just a stomach issue.
Oh my gosh…
This could be a heart attack!
The hospital was just down the street. I was given a bed immediately in the crowded emergency room.
Now I was in excruciating back pain. It was so intense that I followed a strong impulse that called me to kick my legs up and down to keep the pain at bay. I found myself yelling at the top of my lungs, reminiscent of one of those stereotypical baby delivery scenes on television shows.
Nurses would periodically come in. I don’t know why, but in their presence I held back my reaction to pain, even while they asked me to look at a “pain level chart.” The nurses would ask, “On a scale of 1-10 how much pain are you in right now?”
That is a very strange question for someone who has never been in any significant pain in his life.
Even though I felt like I was a man giving labor to the Devil’s baby, for unknown reasons my answer was usually “4” or “6” or some other mid-to-low number. I didn’t want to appear dramatic. But soon I was yelling “10!” I didn’t care if I appeared dramatic anymore. I was in agony.
I was quickly hooked up to an EKG, and then I was given a shot of something that returned my heart rate to normal, followed by a big shot of morphine.
Suddenly I went from excruciating pain to very little pain at all. I thought to myself how I completely understood why people become addicted to pain meds.
The scurrying ER doctors didn’t believe what I was experiencing was a heart attack because my enzymes were not showing that my heart was in distress. At the same time I was the subject of a “Law and Order”-style interrogation by a team of professionals hovering over me:
Them: “Do you do cocaine?”
Me: “No. I’ve never done drugs of any kind.”
Them: “I’ll ask you again, DO YOU DO COCAINE?”
Me: “No, I don’t do drugs.”
Them: “HEROIN? SPEED?”
Me: “I TOLD YOU NO, I DON’T DO DRUGS!”
Them: “It could be your gallbladder.” Me: “But I don’t have pain there.”
Them: “It could be your aorta rupturing. You fit the profile. Maybe it is your appendix? Maybe it’s a phantom pain.”
Them: “We’re going to wheel you to the CT scan!”
The CT scan results showed that everything was normal, but my attending physician knew something was wrong. I didn’t care at this point; I was floating in a pool of morphine and feeling good!
A second blood test taken hours after arriving at the E.R. now showed particular “heart attack enzymes” indicating a heart attack. Yes, YES—I was having a heart attack! I was rushed into an emergency heart catheterization session. Now I was on a table surrounded by interns. I could see the doctor in a “DJ booth” in front of me. On my left was a video monitor that would soon display the journey through my body to my heart, so I could watch it happen in real time. Fun! And of course, now I had to pee for the first time all day.
Drugged out of my mind, I put my hand in the air as if that was the signal for “I’ve got to pee.” I grabbed the bedpan off the tray beside my table. Then I was handed a clipboard with a legal form attached. One of the interns said something like, “This says you have a 1 in 2000 chance of dying.” That made me confused. How would I legally hold them responsible for my death if I ended up as the 2000th patient?
I signed my life away. I didn’t care. I would die otherwise anyway.
The morphine was seriously doing its job by then so I didn’t notice the needle inserting the catheter into a big artery in my groin as it readied for the rescue mission to save my heart and my life.
And since I was running on very little sleep during the agonizing night before, this is all I can remember.
Shock and Awe
I was awake in recovery in ICU and I couldn’t have been more pissed. How the hell could I, a 41-year old man, have this kind of thing happen to me?
A heart attack? Are you kidding me?
My dad has heart disease, but his first heart attack was at a more acceptable and less embarrassing
55 years old.
A doctor came in to talk to me. “You now have a stent in your ramus artery that was 100% blocked. This was not just a little heart attack. Your heart has suffered some fairly significant damage.”
This news made me boiling mad. Perhaps it became damaged during the morning-long wait when the ER doctors were testing my aorta and gallbladder? How could they not have known that I was having a heart attack sooner?
Then I was shown the results of an important test indicating that my “ejection fraction” (the measure of how well a heart is pumping) had dipped down to near 35% (whereas a normal ejection fraction is around 60-80%). Mine was now half of normal! This test result might not mean anything to you; just understand that 35% is the standard cut-off for heart patients to receive a permanent defibrillator because under 35% means a higher risk of sudden death. (As a heart patient you might already know this.)
Sudden.
Death.
Maybe I should have been happy to be alive, but I was mad at God.
I would spit in the Universe’s face. I was mad at my body.
I was beyond furious.
There was a lot of chatter by the doctors and nurses using the term “heart failure” (what a terrible, doomsday term that one is!) and what this meant to my future would be shortness of breath, a hard time walking, no running, lots of swelling and, potentially, sudden death.
Great.
Now I was livid.
I was also becoming extremely annoyed by everyone’s comments on my age…
New nurse: “Wow, you’re too young to have had a heart attack.”
Me: “Yes, I know, just gimme the apple juice.”
Unfamiliar doctor: “Well then, you’re a young one, now aren’t you?”
Me: “Yes. Does everyone have to keep saying that?”
New hire test taker: “You’re the youngest person I’ve tested yet.”
Me: “Screw off,” I thought to myself.
Food deliverer: “Why are you in the cardiac unit?”
Me: “Why are you trying to feed me greasy meatloaf and mac and cheese the day after I’ve had a heart attack?”
Food deliverer: “Well, um.....”
Me: “You idiot!” I muttered under my breath.
Young-looking garbage collector: “You look like my son’s age.
Me: “Go to hell,” I whispered not so silently.
This is when I realized that if I emerged alive from hospital hell I couldn’t tell anyone about what had happened to me. I would be driven insane. I do not want to walk around having to explain why I am relatively young and had a heart attack. And as a professor, I surely didn’t want my students to know what had happened to me. It would crush me to know that my students would now be forced to look at me in a different way, like “you know, that youngish professor who nearly died of a heart attack?” No. Hell no.
In fact, when some students called upon hearing that I was in the hospital, regrettably, I actually lied to them. I lied to my students! “No, I didn’t have a heart attack, no… no, that’s just a rumor.”(I’m terribly embarrassed by this. They only wanted to reach out and try to help.) I just couldn’t have them look at me as “that dude with the heart attack.” I considered myself a vibrant, healthy professor. I couldn’t let them down. No way.
This was just another good reason to be mad. But now my physical weakness was competing with my anger. And I found out just how feeble I had become when the doctor gave me directions to walk while I was in the hospital.
The nurses took me out in the main hall and stepped off a route where I could walk the halls when I felt like it.
Holding a nurse’s arm, I couldn’t talk to her and walk at the same time, and I could only go one time around before needing to rest. I felt weird, skipped heartbeats as I walked.
My fingertips felt numb. My feet hurt.
And I was white hot furious.
Understand that these “laps” from my hospital room to the middle hall were no more than 50 feet. I panted and gasped, deep and loud, sucking for air as if I had been under water for five minutes.
After about three “laps” I was led back to my rollaway bed on the verge of a breakdown and continued thinking, “How the hell could this be happening to me?”