627 - Widder Maker
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You don't wake up dreaming of McDonald's fries. You wake up dreaming of McDonald's hash browns. McDonald's breakfast comes first. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.

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I almost threw up that time. Can you like shut up? You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir. I love to masturbate.

Get your hand off my penis! If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve, host of Weird Medicine on Sirius XM 103 and made popular by two really comedy shows, Opie and Anthony and Ron and Fez, you would have thought that this guy was a bit of a, you know, a clown. Why, you give me the respect that I'm entitled to! I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got to bowl if I'm stripping from my nose.

The leprosy of the heartburn, exacerbating my incredible wounds. I want to take my brain out and blast it with the wave, an ultrasonic, echographic and a pulsitating shave. I want a magic pill for all my ailments, the health equivalent of Citizen Kane. Get it now in the tablet, think I'm doomed and I'll have to go insane. It's a requiem for my disease, so I'm paging.

From the world-famous Cardiff Electric Network Studios in beautiful downtown OJ City, it's Weird Medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio. Now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve.

with my little pal, N.P. Mel B. Hello, N.P. Mel B. Hello, Dr. Steve. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the Internet. If you've got a question you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider, if you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call at 347-766-4323. That's 347...

Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine and at drscottwm. Visit our website at drsteve.com for podcasts, medical news, and stuff you can buy. Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking over with your health care provider. Don't forget stuff.drsteve.com. Let me know if that's working for you all. If you scroll down, though, you can see Rhodey Robotic Tuner.

Did you get one of those? I did. Have you been playing at all? I guess not right now. Not right now. It's a stupid question. We'll find out why in just a second. But the Rody Robotic Tuner is amazing. R-O-A-D-I-E dot Dr. Steve dot com. Or just go to stuff dot Dr. Steve and scroll down. Check out Dr. Scott's website, even though he's not here. It's simply herbals dot net. And check me out on Patreon dot com slash weirdmedicine.

And also Normal World at normalworld.com. No, that's not right. YouTube.com slash at normal world. And if you want me to say fluid to your mama, check out cameo.com slash weird medicine. Did several of those yesterday. It was fun. And when I go to Hackamania, I'm going to drop the price to a dollar and just do a million of them in Vegas. I think it'll be fun. That'll be very fun. Right now, it's...

$5, and I make two. So it's not like a big deal. But if I drop it to a dollar, I think I'll probably make like 40 cents. I need to give you like 10 bucks and have you call and harass my mom. Okay. I'm not doing it for the money, obviously. I do it because it's really fun. I'll say fluid to your mama. Is she hot? She looks just like me. Only about 20 years older. Really? Hmm.

She got short hair, though. No, thank you. I look just like her. Exactly. I've never met your mom. You might not have. I don't think so. She's dying to meet you.

Oh, is she? Oh, yeah. All right. She got the boobs? Yes. That's where I get them from. Just kidding. God. Again. Runs in the family. Yeah. I'm a pig. All right. Well, let's get started. Dr. Scott is not here. We don't know if he's coming. I never heard from him. We're recording at a weird time, but I have this funny feeling that he told me he wasn't going to be here all week, and I just forgot. So I'm too...

As I told you before the show, I'm too narcissistic to keep track of what anybody else is doing. It just doesn't matter to me. So check him out at simplyherbals.net. Tis the season. It's allergy season. And Dr. Scott, this isn't an ad, but, you know, I don't pay him. So I got to at least mention his website, simplyherbals.net, where he sells herbals.

CBD nasal spray for allergies and stuff. And it really is outstanding. So I give him a lot of shit about stuff like pronouncing islet cells islet and then telling me that's how they pronounce it in China. But I can't crap on him for his actual clinical acumen. He's outstanding. So check me out on Normal World, youtube.com slash at Normal World or...

at Blaze TV. And I just did a new one for them on... What the hell was it on? I did one on Ass Play, which will also... I re-edited it and added different assets for Hackamania. So we're doing the very last...

It won't be the last airing, but the last recording of Weird Medicine, the SiriusXM show at Hackamania in May. It'll be the Saturday at 3 p.m. Oh, I've got the primetime slot.

And they gave me an hour. So, you know, Lucy Titebox and I were going to do sort of a retrospective and talk about the history of the show and all this stuff. And we're just barely going to have time because I'm handing out cards. I'm going to take questions from the audience. We're just going to do questions. Nobody cares about the history. You go back and listen to the archives. I can. Kleenex tier. Yeah. No, I'm not. I'm excited for you, though.

Yeah, it's enough. 20 years is long enough. But we're still going to be doing stuff. So people say, well, you know, don't go away. Everybody will still get free medical facts and stuff. We're going to do probably Friday night –

Live streams because it's not a thousand degrees in the studio in the evening and doing it Saturday afternoon ruins. I don't want to say ruins, but it clogs up your weekend because it's never just an hour. We start at two and then we end at like six.

By the time edit stuff and upload and play music and all that stupid shit. So, yeah, that's the deal. And I have not actually formally told SiriusXM, but I guess I just did. So I need to send them a message. All right. Well, OK, enough about me. We do need to talk about NPMLB. Now, a lot of people remember our...

friend, G-Vac, who used to be on the show. And he turned 50 and we were going to do a calcium score on him.

And the calcium score is a heart test. You know, we were going to put him through the ringer. We're going to do a colonoscopy, all the things that he has to do. We're going to record all of it. Well, unfortunately, his left main coronary artery clogged off before we ever got a chance to do all that stuff. And sadly, he didn't make it. And that's called the widowmaker. So there are

Coming out of the aorta, there are two main arteries that come out of there, the left main and the right coronary, right? No, the circumflex.

Shit, why am I having trouble with my coronary artery anatomy? There's a left anterior descending. Yeah, left anterior descending, but that comes from the left main... Oh, the circumflex comes from that and then the right coronary artery, right? Okay. So anyway, it doesn't... Should have... But there are two coronary arteries that feed the heart are...

are fed from that one single left main artery. And when that left main artery gets clogged, it's called a widowmaker because if you have a heart attack because of that, very often people don't survive because it's two-thirds of the heart is affected rather than just, you know, one branch in a normal heart attack.

So anyway, he did not make it. And that may be the curse of the weird medicine because N.P. Melby, who everyone loves and we've still got people trying to hook up with you, you know, and I'm you know, I'm not your pimp. So you just have to deal with that yourself. But N.P. Melby had exactly the same thing, except.

Thank God. Here you are. You're still here. Amazingly enough. And you're not even 50 yet. We haven't had a chance to do all this stuff to you. So why don't you just tell the story? What happened? And this is a cautionary tale for people. Number one, don't ignore symptoms. And number two, get your lifestyle changes under control and do your screening. Although it wouldn't have helped you completely.

because you weren't quite ready to do some of the screening yet. But go ahead. What happened? So I guess it started around six months ago. Okay. Started having a little bit of chest discomfort here and there. Oh, no. Okay. Yeah. By the way, this sounds familiar. G-Vac was having chest pain. He thought it was indigestion. And when he died, they found like three packs of Tums in his pocket.

So, but he never told me any of this. Never said a thing. He had gallbladder. We got his gallbladder taken care of and his post-cholecystectomy syndrome. I'm assuming he just thought it was more of that. Right. Anyway, so go ahead. I can totally understand why. Yep. But this was probably about six months ago back in.

November, so five, six months ago. Okay. Started occasionally just having some chest discomfort. And like you said, I kind of told myself, oh, it's heartburn, it's indigestion, it's anxiety. Yes. I just need to de-stress. I was having some fatigue, which was not new to me. Yeah. Because the thyroid issues that we've had and that I've had and trying to get my medication balanced.

Finally, some of the chest pain got a little more severe to the point that it scared me a little bit. And so the end of January, I went to my doctor

and sat in their office, saw the nurse practitioner, and got a little tearful just because I told her it was scaring me a little bit. But I felt like it was anxiety and fatigue from my thyroid not being, my TSH levels not being real good. So she did some blood work to check my thyroid and check some other things.

And just kind of said, well, we'll get you a stress test and maybe get you on to see cardiology coming up. So that was the end of January. My stress test was not scheduled until I believe it was March the 3rd. Okay. So, right. So you go in with...

This chest discomfort. Yes. Oh, and they did an EKG in the office as well. It was perfectly normal. Perfectly normal. Normal sinus rhythm. And how long was it that you were going to have to wait to do the stress test? That was on January the 30th. The stress test, I believe, was on, was it Monday, March the 3rd? Okay. So like almost two months? About a month. A little over a month. January. It was January. Right. In the beginning. Yeah. Okay. All right.

So fast forward to the weekend before March the 3rd, and I started feeling really bad, just having a lot of chest tightness, shortness of breath, just real panicky feeling. Some chest pain, but I would describe it more as tightness all weekend.

I ended up feeling so bad I went to urgent care on Sunday. Okay. They did a chest X-ray and told me I had pneumonia. Okay. So the pneumonia is a funny part of the story. It is. Yeah, hilarious. Funny, peculiar. But let's talk a little bit about how you presented because it was not textbook fashion. So people don't present in textbook fashion. No. And you had a textbook presentation.

which we're going to get to, but didn't present in a textbook fashion. The textbook fashion is left-sided chest pain feels like an elephant on your chest radiating to the left arm or left neck associated with nausea, palpitations, shortness of breath, and sweating. Right. So of that, I was having some left-sided chest pain. It was just...

Around the area of the xiphoid process and off to the left just a little bit. The little knob at the end of your breastbone. And so I felt like I had a band all the way around my chest there, around my rib cage. I really wasn't having any nausea.

The shortness of breath I was definitely having. Which would be reproducible with activity, by the way. Right. A little bit of like some sweats here and there, but I felt like it was more like chills and sweats and maybe fever related, although I checked my temperature and it was normal, but I felt feverish. Okay.

So went to the urgent care. They gave me antibiotics, told me to go home and rest. Now, I'm a bit of a workaholic. I don't take time off. But I felt so exhausted with this that I called my boss and I said, you know, I really feel like with this, I just need to take a couple of days off.

and really rest my body and hopefully get over this and can work towards the end of the week. So we agreed I would take Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off. You called our administrative? Our administrative, yeah. Not you, boss. Thank you.

I was going to say, did I forget that too? I told him, you know, I had this stress test scheduled for Monday morning anyway. I was going to be taking half that day off. So it shouldn't be too hard to get patients rescheduled, which I hate to do, but I just was exhausted by this point and just had nothing left. So I went and had my stress test. During my stress, it was a

Talk about the stress test. What is that? The cardiac treadmill. Right. So they get you on the treadmill. What do they do? They hook you up to all kinds of things, give you some nuclear medicine, give you

They take some images of your heart before you exercise. They look at the function and how it's doing, doing EKG. Actually, the images are gated, too. They synchronize the images with your heartbeat. Right. And this little machine, it takes about 10 to 15 minutes, I guess, and it goes around your body. It takes all kinds of pictures. Yeah.

Got up from there, had to wait a few minutes for the nuclear medicine, you know. So I go in so they could see the vessels around my heart, I suppose. Yep.

Then I went into the treadmill. They start you out kind of slow at a slight elevation, and every couple minutes they increase the elevation and they increase the speed. Right. Until you can't take anymore. Yeah. The whole process, I'm trying to remember, I think the—

The goal was to get my heart rate up to at least 146 beats a minute. Okay. Yeah, they calculate some target. Right. So I think mine was 146. Once you're there, then you can stop at any time, but they want you to go until the point that you just can't do anymore. I remember when I did mine. I was doing great, and then all of a sudden I hit the wall, and I was –

huffing and puffing, you know, and they're like, okay, slow down your breathing. It's like, fuck off. There's no way I can, you know, this is just what my body's doing. But anyway. Yeah. So they were like, they kept saying, push, push, push until you either have pain or you just can't anymore. Right. And then she said, you know, if you were at the gym doing this, at what point would you stop? And I would, I was like, well, I wouldn't stop. I would just slow down. Yeah. And she's like, well, that's not an option. You either keep going or you stop. Right.

So I went until my heart rate got up to close to 160. And then it was like all of a sudden I had extreme chest pain. And it like crushing chest pain. And it was radiating up in the front.

of my neck to the point I thought I was going to throw up. Okay, yeah. And I was like, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, and I almost fell off the back of the treadmill. But she got it stopped, and I held on, and we stopped, and I told her I was having pain and felt like, I was like, it's coming up in my throat. I think I'm going to throw up. So she got me a little bag. We got me sat down,

And that's when she said, you're having some changes in your, some ST changes on the EKG. I was like, oh, that's lovely. I don't know, wrong one. I know. Yeah.

So I sat down and it probably took about five or ten minutes. And then I just kind of, it went away and I felt better. And she was like, okay, well, your EKG is fine now. And she said, do you think you need to go to the emergency room? And I was like, no, I've had pneumonia. I'm just, that took my breath away.

I think I just need to go home and go to bed. And so she says, okay. What? So I left. Now, was there not a cardiologist there? When I did mine, the cardiologist was right there. There was no cardiologist in the room that I'm aware of. Okay. I just saw this one girl. But they did imaging afterward, right? Yeah, they did imaging afterward. So what they're doing is...

It's been a while since I did cardiology, but they give you this dye and it goes where the heart is actively metabolizing. So if you have an area that is not covered by blood flow, it'll show up as a dark place or a hole in the image. That's what they're looking for. So go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.

So they took the imaging afterwards. They walked me out. I went home. I was tired. I actually went to bed. Oh, my God. Slept for most of the day. Monday. Tuesday morning, I got up, was feeling a little bit better, still having the same tightness in my chest. I'd taken antibiotics twice.

Sunday, Monday, and then Tuesday morning, still was not feeling any better from the symptoms I was having that I presented with at the urgent care. And I felt like either I don't have pneumonia or I need a different antibiotic because this one's not working at that point just because I wasn't feeling any better.

It was around noon. My primary care physician called me and said, hey, your stress test is pretty bad. It showed, and you may remember all the specifics and can help me out with some of this. I know it showed some ST depression. So this is an EKG interval between, doesn't really matter, the S wave and the T wave when you have lack of

blood flow to certain parts of the heart that that line that's normally just on the baseline is depressed. It can be elevated. Which we'll get to that. Okay, right. In an actual heart attack. But that's in the pre-

You know, sort of the prodrome, it'll be depressed. Yeah, so go ahead. It also showed some moderate to severe ischemia in the LAD that we were talking about earlier, the left anterior descending artery. So you can tell from, if they do a 12-lead EKG, you can tell where in the heart, where those abnormalities are, where in the heart the problem is. Yes.

Was that pretty much all on the stress test? Yeah, yeah. The high points, I think? Yeah, yeah. Okay.

So at that point, you know, he asked me how I was feeling. I told him how I felt over the weekend that I went to the urgent care and they're treating me with pneumonia. I've been taking antibiotics, not feeling any better. And he said, Melissa, I think you're having a heart attack. Is there somebody that can take you to the hospital right now? And I said, well, my daughter will be home in a few minutes. And he said either get her there and get to the hospital or better yet, call an ambulance. Wow. And I was like, I don't know.

think I need an ambulance. And at this point, I'm still trying to convince myself that this is all anxiety because I'm a little anxious. I worry a lot. Stressful job, stressful life, blah, blah, blah. So I called my daughter, asked her if she could leave. She's in school. Asked her if she could leave a little early and come get me and take me to the ER and why.

So she told her instructor and they let her come home immediately. Okay, good. So about, I think she got home probably about 345, 4 o'clock. Okay. Too much detail. And at some point during all this, I told you, I got ahold of you, went to the ER. At that point, EKG was normal. And they were getting ready to let me go home. Come on. And I told them, hey, I've had this stress test. Have you seen it? And yes.

The facility where I had it done is the facility where I was at. They could not find it in the computer system. Shut the hell up. However...

My primary care is private practice. He or she had it. He had a copy. So I pulled it up on my patient portal with his office and shared it with the emergency room physician who was, you know, had just said, I think you're going to go. We're going to let you go home. And he starts scrolling through there. He's like, you're not going anywhere. You're going to have a heart cath tomorrow. Yeah. Good. So I was admitted. Good.

Had a heart cath now. Interesting part of the story is prior to the heart cath. I'm having chest pain right now listening to this, to be honest with you. They told me that if there was a significant blockage in the heart cath, that I could have a stent. Wow.

Well, I have a very severe kind of deathly allergy to nickel. Yeah. I told them, I asked them, what are stents made of? We've talked about metal allergies on the show multiple times before. You can have a titanium allergy. Right. Go ahead. Yep. So stents are almost exclusively made of nickel. Yeah.

All the ones in that particular facility that they had access to and they called around to several of the different hospitals and cardiology offices within that system.

And all the ones that we had were made of nickel. However, they're coated. So it says here they're made from stainless steel, which is steel with added nickel and chromium. So you would have been allergic to that. Right. So the cardiologist is telling me, you know, they're all coated. We can put that in place. You should be fine. I don't think you'll have any problems. There's actually no contraindications with nickel allergies and stents.

And I still just wasn't feeling real comfortable. So I asked. I said, okay, so I should be fine if you put a stent in. But what if I'm not? Right. What if I have a reaction to this? What are the options? And he proceeds to tell me that they would not be able to remove the stent, that we would have to treat this stent.

And if that didn't work, then I would likely have to have a heart transplant at that point. Holy shit. Really? Yes. And I about fell on the floor. If I wasn't on a stretcher, I would have been on the floor. Now, they were going to do a drug-eluting stent, right? As far as we know. Okay. So there are drug-coated stents. That I'm not positive.

And if I remember right, when you told me about this, that they said, oh, yeah, you know, the coating, you know, will protect you. But the coating only lasts 30 to 45 days. So if you had a problem, it could have been a month later. And all of a sudden you're having these problems. So I had one cardiologist telling me, hey, this should probably be fine. And the other cardiologist standing behind him kind of shaking his head. Oh, God. Yeah. So I was like, I'm not comfortable with a stent.

I don't want to go that route. I'm scared. And so he said, okay, let's go in, do a heart cath, see what we're facing first. Okay. Get information. Fair enough. So, and he said, I would rather go in and do another heart cath and do a stent if that's what you decide to do, or we may not even need one. So we went in and did the heart cath. Heart caths are not fun.

Yeah. It wasn't painful. They started out in my right radial artery. That's in your arm. Yes. And my artery spasmed and clamped down on the sheath, and they couldn't go any further. Okay. So they aborted that and went through my femoral artery. In your groins. Yep. So they prepped up her groin and then found the artery and—

Put this tube in. And what's crazy is these cardiologists. And it's a bigger artery. Oh, yeah. It can withstand a little bit more. The cardiologists are amazing because they can, it's all remote. They're sitting there looking at your crotch and, you know, throwing this, you know, little, you know, tube up there. Right. And they can get it to curve around and go into the coronary arteries and do all kinds of cool stuff. So it really is neat. So I was excited because I wanted to watch on TV. Yeah.

Well, I think apparently I was talking too much because and asking too many questions about what I was seeing on the big screen. Oh, yeah. And I heard the cardiologist say, can we give her another dose? So I got a little more fentanyl, a little more Versed. That's hilarious. Third dose, I was pretty much out of it. Don't remember much else. Did they say this? Let me see. Oh, shoot. Oh, yeah. Can you like...

Shut up. Just about. He went in, found some stuff. He ended up, they finished the procedure, and he came around and woke me up. Okay. And in that room, in that moment, he said that I had at the very least a 90% blockage of my LAD. And he told me, he said, Melissa, this is really serious. Okay.

Very dangerous. We need to do something. So only 90%. Yeah. We are going to wake you up. Of your left anterior descending, which is the widow maker. Which is the widow maker. Yeah. And he said, we're going to wake you up and come up with a plan. Okay. So he went out and spoke with my family. They came in. They pulled the femoral sheath. You got to hold pressure on that area. Yeah.

They did all that. They researched. He had like everybody in the cath lab looking up all the research that they could find him and the other cardiologists. Because they really wanted to fix it right there. Yeah, they really did. And they just couldn't come up with a definitive. You will be fine if we put this stent in. Right.

The other cardiologist, the one that was shaking his head no about the stent, he said that, you know, honestly, it's like a 10 to 15-year fix. Yeah. I guess I can say my age. And you're young. Yeah, of course. I'm 48. Yeah. Never had really any significant, like, no heart issues. Been on some blood pressure medicine. I'm overweight. No, you're not. I am.

I am overweight. A little bit. But I'm not obese. I eat okay, but not great. I walk some, probably not enough. But I'm not a 400-pound couch potato. Right. I don't, you know, pump grease into my mouth all day long. Okay. So...

They came up with a plan, and the one cardiologist said, I need a CABG, which is a coronary. Go ahead, Steve. Coronary artery bypass graft. Yeah. That's where they actually, in the old days, they crack open your chest, and then they go in and they take veins from your leg, and they can bypass these blockages. But the best thing,

is to use an artery from inside your chest wall called the internal mammary artery. And because it's an artery, you know, the veins will scar down after a while, but that artery will last and last and last. So anyway, so go ahead. So my cardiologist said, hey, I know some people. You've got some choices. And he recommended that I have something called a minimally-

Invasive. Robotic-assisted cabbage. Which is crazier than hell. Google, you guys need to get on YouTube and look at this robotic surgery because the surgeon isn't even in the room.

And they could be in Timbuktu if it weren't for the speed of light because that induces latency. Right. But most of the time, they don't even scrub in. They're just in the other room with what looks like a VR helmet. Yeah. Like an Oculus or MetaQuest. And then they've got these little manipulators that they manipulate with their hands. It's crazy. I don't know how much of that because it's a robotic-assisted surgery. So I don't know how much of it...

You know, he does how much the robot does. Well, no, the robot, he does it all. Right. And the robot just allows him to take macro movements of your fingers and turn them into micro movements because you're trying to tease out this artery from inside your chest wall, bloop it down without it just bleeding everywhere, and then opening up the coronary artery and then sewing it.

And all this time you have to be on bypass. Right. So the cool thing with, I think, the traditional cabbage where they cut you open, like you're on full bypass. Correct. I read some of this and I had to stop because it was freaking me out because it's me. It's freaking me out. Yeah. So my heart was never stopped. I was never on full bypass. Is that right? It's like a partial. Is that right? My heart continued to beat. Okay.

Wow. So, and it's a partial bypass. Okay, okay. From what I understand, I think. And I would probably say... How in the hell did they do that? That's amazing. Yeah, it is very cool. It's like magic. And so there's certain...

things about your disease process and where you're at to qualify for this surgery. They would put you on complete bypass. They would bypass your heart so that they could get in there without it bleeding all over everywhere. And then they would take a solution and

and cool the heart down so that it didn't die while it wasn't getting blood flow. So I don't know how in the shit they do this. Yeah, it's crazy. It's really amazing. And the huge benefit, aside from what we're talking about right now, but the recovery time. Yes. Open heart surgery is like a three to six month recovery. This procedure is more like six to 12 weeks.

Yeah. And look, I mean, when did you have it? I'm three weeks out today. She's driving already. Yeah. I'm driving. I'm moving. I'm driving.

For all intents and purposes, I think I'm doing pretty incredible. I'm alive, so that's a big deal. Yes. So they do the surgery. The cool thing, instead of this big incision down the center of my chest and my sternum being ripped open, there's a small incision that is like on the lateral side of my chest, almost in my armpit. Right. That's where a lot of the equipment goes in, a lot of the tools for the robot and stuff. And then I have about a...

five, six inch incision underneath my breast across my chest there. And that is where they... You want to show the viewers? My breast? Sure. Why not? Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Evglyss.

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The incision under my breast is where they access my heart. Yeah. And they spread the ribs about four to six inches. So they still spread the ribs. They still spread the ribs because they still got to get to the heart. So I can still do Botox for post-thoracotomy pain syndrome. Yes, yes. Because there still will be some of that. Yes. All right. So they spread the ribs. Okay.

I believe from what I read, like in traditional open heart, they deal with the heart right where it is. Yeah. But with this particular procedure, they actually have to shift and move the heart to get to it in the exact right place. So, you know, the benefits is the recovery period. However, the surgery itself is a much more traumatic surgery because of some of that and is painful.

I've been told is much more painful initially, which I believe that minimally invasive I think is a little misleading. It's all about the recovery time. It's not about anything else. So the scary thing that really happened is that during the course of the procedure, he finished up. The internal mammary artery is in place. The graft is finished.

And he goes out to talk to my family while I guess some resident or somebody was closing me up. Yeah, probably a fellow. Yeah, I'm sure. And at that point, the grafted artery spasmed. And when it spasmed, it kinked off. Oh, boy. Yeah.

and stopped blood flow to a portion of my heart. At this point, they were waking me up, which the anesthesiologist told me that they would wake me up in the OR to make sure that I was going to be able to breathe on my own because there's a portion of people who end up having to be on a vent for about 12 hours after this procedure. So he had told me that I would wake up on the vent, and then they would extubate me if all was well. So they were waking me up. I could still feel the vent in my mouth.

In my head, I'm starting to scream because I was having excruciating pain. It felt like a semi-truck on my chest. Wow. I could feel the pain radiating back into my shoulder blade and into my shoulder. Not so much in my neck or jaw, and it wasn't so much down my arm, but my arm was in a really weird position so they could get to my chest wall.

So I don't know if I was just not feeling it or if it really wasn't any pain there. Plus, I was highly drugged and not fully awake. I heard things around the room and I didn't know.

One of the things I heard is her EKG is showing ST elevation. Okay, so we mentioned that earlier. Yeah. And you are a licensed provider, so you knew ST elevation is a real heart attack. Right. That's the true. You know, a lot of people are called, you know, heart attack and myocardial infarction, but most of the ones we see are what we call non-ST elevation. Right.

myocardial infarctions, you had the real deal. I did have the real deal. When that ST element starts to rise, that's the classic EKG presentation of a heart attack. Yeah. So they just did a bypass on you, and now you're having a heart attack. You didn't have a heart attack. I didn't have a heart attack before. They treated me as if I was having the non-STEMI. 90%.

you know, blockage and you're running around, they're sending you home and all this stuff. You didn't have a heart attack then, but... Thank God. Right, right, right. The whole sending you home that time when, you know, you were actually having angina. Right. That gives me spilkas, but you survived that. I did. And then now you have the bypass and now all of a sudden you have a heart attack. Yeah. So there you go. Good timing. At least you were in the right place. Yes. I...

Honestly, the best place in the world to have a heart attack is right where you are. Is on the operating table. Correct, yeah. So a different doctor, they took me straight to the cath lab. They did an angioplasty and got that artery unkinked and blood flow again. Took me back to the OR because they thought that they were going to have to go in and like fully open me up and re-secure that graft.

When they got me in the OR, they did a TEE, I believe, at that time from what I can remember them telling me afterwards. Transesophageal... Echocardiogram. Echocardiogram, yes. Very good. To get a really good close image. Basically what they're doing is using sonar to image the heart as close as you can get to the heart.

By doing by shoving a tube down your throat and doing it through the esophagus. Yes. If you do it from the outside, you've got to go through rib cage and stuff. Yeah. And I don't know if we mentioned this, but they can't do this where we live. And the hospital that I was at. The robotic thing. Right. The robotic thing. I was transferred to an outside facility. Four hours away. Yes. Four or five hours away in the back of an ambulance. Right.

Puking most of the time. McRibs wants to ask you about sneezing. Oh, my God. I've sneezed three times since the surgery. The first time I was terrified because I felt it coming.

And it was excruciating. And that was just four or five days ago. I've sneezed twice since then. When I feel it coming, I get my handy-dandy heart pillow. Let me make sure I show the right side. Oh, you brought it. Did they give you that? They did. Who signed it? All my nurses and some of the providers. Yeah, you got to sign it. That's why I brought it here. You get to sign it. You get to sign it.

And so I brace with my heart pillow. Yep. And when I feel it coming, sneezing is worse than coughing. Yes. And coughing really fucking hurts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. When I sneezed, I saw stars and, yeah, it was awful. The last time I sneezed was last night in bed and I cried. Oh. It was bad. I don't want you to cry. Yeah.

But if you're hurting, you're alive. Yes, that's what I keep telling myself. So the doctor that did the heart cath, he said that upon presentation of symptoms, they had me in the cath lab in less than 10 minutes. And the angioplasty was done in less than 15 minutes.

I mean, how quick is that? That is amazing. Those guys, they earn their money for sure. Yeah, I went to a specialty heart hospital and I would recommend that place hands down. Yeah. And they took excellent care of me and I survived. Yeah, and here you are. I did not have to go back. The TEE was good. The graft looked good. Good. The kink was gone.

They left the sheath in place in case they needed to, because the thought was, is go back in and check everything with a heart cath the following day. Well, these arteries do not like to be fiddled with. No. And they just took an artery from between your ribs and yanked it out of there, cut it, and then—

attached it to another artery that's not supposed to be attached to in your heart and then wonder why. Well, why did it spasm? You know, that's why. It just doesn't like it. It happens. And my team acted and responded insanely quick. I will say that when I heard all this going on in the room and the pain that I felt, I

They started putting me back to sleep. Yeah. And everything started getting dark and far away. And you thought. And I thought it was done. Oh, God. Oh, my God. Yeah. I'll start crying if we talk about that part too much. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's not talk about it. Yeah. So when I woke up in the ICU, I was incredibly grateful to be alive. Yeah. And I was laying there, could hear the nurses. My family wasn't in the room yet. Yeah.

And I was trying to talk, and I couldn't take a deep enough breath to speak with much volume. And I finally got my nurse's attention, and she said, are you okay? And I said, I'm having a lot of pain. And she said, okay, we're trying to help you. You were better when you had medical questions. I did tell her, I asked her, I said, you can hear me? And she said, yes. And I said, I'm not dead. Yeah. And she said, no, you're not. You thought you were on coast. Yeah, I did. Yeah.

I wasn't sure what was happening. This is what happens to ghosts. They can't, you know, they try to communicate. Nurse practitioner ghosts end up in hell in the ICU. Right, right. Exactly. I was very scared. But anyway, so I spent a couple of days in ICU. I had cords and things going in every part of my body. Arterial lines, fem lines, swan gans. Can you stop bullshitting and get to the questions? Yep.

Well, here you are. I am. And you had a little wound infection, but who cares? Yeah, got a wound infection, ended up with a pleural effusion. Oh, okay. Well, okay. We can tell that part, too. Yeah, and a collapsed lung. So afterward— Recovery's going great. Yeah. I was up to walking one mile three times a day, so three miles a day.

Wow. And was doing great. And then she had. Wound infection. The wound infection and then fluid, shortness of breath. And shortness of breath. So I went back to, and a fever. Yes. So I went back to the local ER. Right. Because I was back home at this point. And they said, oh, you have pneumonia. Times two. That's the second time Melissa Melby has had pneumonia. This is what I'm going to say. Is that you talking to them when they said you have pneumonia? Yeah.

And they told me I needed to do my incentive spirometer more, which I was doing faithfully. Incentive spirometer is a device where you inhale and try to— Yeah, you suck. And you try to get this little marker that floats in there up to a certain level. Oh, you got it with you. I did. Okay, there you go. Show them how that works. Okay. That's that camera right there. Okay, this one? Yeah. So you want to inhale. Okay.

or suck. My kids are really proud. They said I'm ready to go on the road and hire me out. You inhale and you try to get this blue thing up as high as you can. So I will demonstrate. Okay, so she's putting this thing in her mouth. Go ahead. I'll talk for the people who are listening on

Oh, my goodness. Wow. Oh, you've got some lung capacity, my friend. I do now. Yeah. So I got up to about 2,700 just then. Most people that are in the hospital, they're struggling to get to 750. Yeah. So at the point that I went having the shortness of the breath and the fever, I was barely getting above 500. Okay. Between 500 and 1,000.

And just couldn't do anymore. And that was overnight. Yeah. That happened. So I'm going to – we only got a few minutes left. So I'm going to –

Tell the rest of the story real quick. So she gets admitted back to the hospital again, and they finally do a CT scan, and she's got fluid in there. There's fluid collecting around the left side of the left lung. And there was so much in there, it was compressing the lung so she couldn't take a deep breath. Mm-hmm.

And I remember at some point we said, that sounds restrictive. I bet it's a plural of fusion. That's what that's called. And anyway, and that was proved to be correct. So you went back down there because they wanted to see you in case it was blood. Right. They would have to open you back up again. Right. And they don't do what they did there. So you had to go all the way back down there again.

And they drained, they found that it was fluid. Right. You sat there for a couple of days and then they drained it and then all of a sudden it was like a miracle, right? Oh my goodness, yes. 850 milliliters of fluid off my chest. So that's, you know, eight-tenths of a liter. Think of a two-liter bottle and then think of half. Less than half.

Half of that. Or a fifth of vodka. There you go. Oh, right. Because it's 750. A little more than a fifth. Yeah, a little more than a fifth of vodka. Yeah, because 750 mLs. Or tequila, which is my preferred beverage of choice. Correct.

And imagine that in between the lining of your lung and the lung. There's not supposed to be anything there. And that's a lot of fluid to cram into a little lung cavity. They drained it off, and I coughed for about 20 minutes. What did I tell you? You told me I would cough like crazy, and I did. As soon as that lung expands, you're going to cough. I told your daughter that, too. So I said, if she starts coughing like crazy, that's why. Yeah. It's a good thing.

It's actually a good thing. Yeah. So my cheese daughter, what is her name? What do you call her? Camembert. Camembert. Yeah, her name's Bree, I call her. You know, whatever. So I did. I coughed. And as soon as I quit coughing, I was like, I can breathe. I want to get up and walk. I couldn't even walk across a room. Wow. I would get short of breath and just felt like I was suffocating. And then you were fine. And I was perfectly fine. And then they let me come home, and here I am. Yay.

So what would you tell the audience out there? What's the cautionary tale here? You're only 48. I'm 48. Don't ignore. No. Okay, so what would you tell them?

A lot of places, I guess, I don't know, insurance maybe doesn't cover it. No, it doesn't. But it's like $50. Yeah. I was going to say it's like $40, $50 that you pay out of pocket. One person told me they paid $150. That was the most I've ever heard. Yeah. So...

Contact a local cardiologist's office. Ask them about doing a calcium score. You don't even have to do that. I scheduled mine by going to the hospital and saying, I want a calcium score. And they just scheduled it. Yeah, you don't have to have a referral. Most of the time, you don't have to have like another, like your primary care to do an order or referral. You can just go and schedule this and do this yourself. And if you have any...

Right. Any risk factors. Family history, diabetes, high cholesterol, smoking history or high blood pressure. You can get one of these. Right. And they're saying now age 40. Yeah.

would be a time to get your first one. Yeah. If I could go back, it was mentioned to me when I turned 45 because I was getting a colonoscopy and some other things. It was mentioned to me that maybe I should get one because I did used to smoke a long time ago. Yeah. Who didn't? Yeah. A little bit like my parent. My dad had high blood pressure. Mom has elevated cholesterol, but

You know, so a little family history. So it was suggested to me then that I get one. And I've just been putting it off, hadn't really thought about it. So that would be one thing. If you have risk factors, get a calcium score. It's not perfect, but it is. It's decent. Yeah, it might have shown something. I would have in your case. Yeah. Listen to your body. And if you're having chest pain, don't ignore it. Right. Don't tell yourself it's anxiety. Right.

Don't pretend it's pneumonia. Until they do the cath, until your heart is clean. Yeah. Because there are people who have non-cardiogenic chest pain. But people who listen to this show long enough know that the rule is the first time something happens like that, you've got to get it checked out. Yeah. You have the worst headache of your life. You have a sex headache. It's the, you know, thunderclap. You get it checked out. If they tell you it's just a sex headache...

And then you could ignore it. If you have blood coming out of your ass, get it checked. And if it's just a hemorrhoid and you know that's what it is, then you can ignore it. If you have chest pain, get it checked out. I wish that I had gone to my doctor sooner. I was scared. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Yeah. Scared the dickens out of me.

My family. Yeah. And my kids are young. Your daughters really handled it well. They did. They were really, they took charge and I was very impressed by that. They did a good job. I was very proud of them. Yep. Well, Camembert's been on this show. She has. Oh, yeah. She has. You should have brought her today.

Well, she had a couple of things that she was like, I would have liked to have heard her side of it. And maybe one day that would maybe be therapeutic for her. Yeah. But just listen to your body. Talk to your doctor. Don't ignore things.

When I got down to the specialty hospital, the plan was for me to have the surgery on Friday. I got there in the wee hours of the morning on Thursday. And the surgeon said, I want you in the OR now. And I said, I thought we were doing this on Friday. My family's not even left home yet. And he said, I'm afraid to wait till Friday. I'm afraid you'll be dead before that.

Oh, that's... That was a little scary. And he did not even want to wait for my family to arrive at the hospital before he did the surgery. He wanted to get started. He can't wait for them just to start the surgery. He said, I want them to see you when you wake up. There you go. And that's exactly what he told me. So I said, proceed. Let's go. Yay. Good. All right. Phew.

Get your hand off my penis! Oh, and the other thing, the flutter valve, I wanted to tell you, it has now been nicknamed the motorboat. My son-in-law has sent for me when I'm doing it. He's like, hey, your mom's sitting over there motorboating again. So the flutter valve, talk about that. It's like in the old days, they would put

put you on your side and they would clap, you know, they would pound on your back. It's called pulmonary toilet. Yeah. So the incentive spirometer, you work at inflating your lungs to expand them. This works with negative pressure, right? Well, yeah. It puts negative pressure as you exhale. Kind of, yeah. But really, go ahead and do it because we're running out of time and people can hear it.

And my cheeks go, bleh. And one of the things it does is it's kind of like pulmonary toilet. It also acts as a mucolytic so that it will thin out the mucus and dislodge it so you can cough it up. Yep. Yeah. So I'm doing these things faithfully. Yeah, awesome. I'm walking. I'm starting cardiac therapy.

Rehabilitation, yeah, which has... And we need to start walking. We started that. We did start, and then we just kind of quit. Now we got to walk. Yeah, I'll walk with you. He said, I have to walk every single day of my life from now on. Wow, okay. Me too. I'll walk with you. So the cardiac rehab, they focus on exercise, healthy eating.

Healthy diet and lifestyle. And then also a healthy mindset, which is a lot. The mental part of all of this is not something I really considered. I was really focused on the physical part in recovering. But the mental part has been tough. Inflammation is a big part of this, too. Yeah.

And you have autoimmune disorders. We've talked about that on the show before. It probably contributed to this. Family history. We should get you on an anti-inflammatory diet. There's all kinds of stuff. I got some ideas for you on that one. Yeah. So...

Well, all right. Well, thank God you're here. I wanted to get you here just as soon as we could. Happy to be here. Well, it was while everything was still fresh in your mind, like you're going to forget about it. But, you know. I would like to. Yeah. Yeah. No shit. Do we have time for questions? No. No. Yeah, we got time for a few. We'll do something. We can always do part two. Yeah.

All right. Well, excellent. Dr. Scott will be here next time. I hope I have no idea what happened to him. I think I must be right that he was just out of town and not checking his text messages. Thanks to N.P. Melby. You need to get your ass back to work. I've been doing your clinic for you. It's really fun. I enjoy it.

I appreciate you. Because, well, the casino is less than three minutes away. Yep. So I went running over there. And then, oh, I got, I was playing this thing called Ultimate X Bonus Streak. And it's a video poker type game. Right. And I hit quads with a 12X multiplier. Oh, hell. And that was nice. I thought I was getting my first real hand pay over there, but I was not.

stupidly playing with quarters instead of dollars. It's still, you know, $10 a throw, but, you know, I was divided up against three different games. But that was pretty cool. You know, I got $1,200. It was $400, something like that. Sweet. It was pretty neat. So anyway, yeah. So, you know, you can take off anytime. I'll do your clinic. All right. Let's check out the Fluid family. It is at youtube.com slash fluid.

at Weird Medicine and just click join. But you don't have to pay any money if you don't want to. It's only 99 cents.

click join and then click the button that says accept gifted memberships. And then every once in a while Myrtle will go in there and give out 20 memberships and some other folks are doing that as well. And, but it's fun. People just hang out. And if you click the notification button, when we go live, which is very sporadic, it'll notify you. And I also put it on X. So if you want to set up an alert there, you can click,

Let's see. Chris Mack. Oh, yeah. Okay. Chris Mack was ready to get out of here, and he says, oh, he's not finishing yet. Let's see here. So Waver says, I have a non-displaced small fracture on my fibula. Ice helps, Advil, Elevation, and Rest still help at three days. So you want to talk a little bit about fibular fractures? You know a little bit about that, don't you? A little bit. No.

Well, the fibula is the little. The long bone. Right. It's one of the long bones of the leg, but it's the little tiny one. The little one in the back. Your shin bone is the tibia. And then to the outside of it, and it forms your outside ankle. Right. Is the fibula. And you can break that thing, and there's not a lot you can do about it.

You just basically let it heal and try not to make it worse. There isn't a whole lot you can do. And it sucks and it hurts. And then one day you'll wake up and you'll say, well, shit, my fibula didn't hurt anymore. And you didn't notice. You didn't notice that it healed all the way. So about some osteoblasts or something. Yeah. Right. Something about that. Let's see if there's anything else here. Yeah.

Yeah, Waver says, I'm glad the lady guest is okay. Thanks. Let's see. Yeah, McRibs apparently had this as well because he was the one that asked, he or she, I'm assuming it's he, asked about the sneezing. Yes. Said, make sure you ask her about sneezing. And he's saying he carries a couch pillow around or he carried one around. I love my heart pillow. He thought he invented it. Yeah.

And, okay. And then, yeah, he says, then there's the tube with the ball to prevent pneumonia. That's actually what that incentive spirometer is. Yeah. Actually, both. Both, yeah. Okay. McRibs had a message that was put in timeout. Why? Hmm.

He said, thinners are a bitch. And the bot saw the word bitch and put him in time. I'm sorry, McRibs. I went ahead and approved that comment. Yeah, bitch doesn't hurt my feelings. Goody Two Shoes says they found two more blockages. They were in an unfortunate spot. They did a measurement by applying pressure and the blood flow was within the margins. But it doesn't feel great. So I'm not sure what they're even talking about. King, member for 11 months. Thank you, my friend.

for being a member of the fluid family. Fluid. Yeah. So let's see. I saw something here. Usually Dr. Scott does this part, looking through...

Looking through the questions, let's see. Get me Dr. Scott on the phone. Where are those pictures? Right, exactly. I was doing a, you know, come out of an upbeat song to a death dedication. We're doing Casey Kasem from the old days. Okay, Dr. Steve, is it true that in general women are protected against heart attacks until menopause? Ooh, now that's a good question because, you know.

I'm of that age as well. Are you?

Premenopausal, yeah. So you're safe now? So cardiovascular disease usually develops 7 to 10 years later in women than in men. But it is the major cause of death in women over the age of 65. It's because most of the time we don't... Our symptoms are not always... I think for women, the symptoms are not traditional symptoms like the jaw pain, the left arm pain, the nausea and things. It's sometimes...

And in my case, presents very different. Well, and the risk of heart disease in women over 65 is often underestimated because of this myth that women are, quote unquote, protected against cardiovascular disease. It's just that they get it later. But it's their number one cause of taking them out of this world. But anyway, yeah, we had I've told this story before. We had a guy that came in saying he had a sore throat.

And he came into the emergency room because he had a sore throat. They put him over in the—they triaged him to the ambulatory side where they see strap and colds and stuff like that. When they walked in to see him, he was dead. And his sore throat was actually angina, and he was having a heart attack. But he just didn't, quote, unquote, use the right words. And this is what happens sometimes. Right.

Medicine ain't perfect and people don't present in textbook fashion all the time.

it's textbook because most people do, but you know, Mel B is a good example of someone that didn't present in textbook fashion. So she got treated for something else for a while. My dad was the same way. He was having shoulder pain and they didn't find out that that was his engine until they got him up on a stress, you know, doing on the treadmill. And he's like, oh, I'm having that weird shoulder pain that I have. And his ST segment was dropping like crazy. Yeah.

So he ended up having...

He had angina because he had a bad aortic valve. So he had aortic stenosis. Yeah, there's a lot of things that can cause angina. It's not always a heart attack, but it's always something you should pay attention to. And I have esophageal spasm that I cannot ignore when it happens. The first time it happened to me, I thought I was having a dissected aortic aneurysm because people call that pain lancinating, and they can't move. It's so bad. And that's kind of how bad this gets.

I drink some water and it goes away. So I figure it probably a dissecting aortic aneurysm. In other words, you know, one that's splitting is probably not going to feel better if I drink water. Probably not. I've never pursued it. Now I probably should. Yes. We're not ignoring problems. All right. Let me see. The one pun says, how do you know when someone is fibrillating?

Oh, okay. So, yeah, you can talk. Oh, waiver. Thank you for the $10. For the $10 super sticker. Unnecessary, but thank you. We really appreciate it. Yeah, so how do you know when someone is fibrillating? Is he talking about like atrial fibrillation? Yeah, or ventricular fibrillation. Yeah, either one. Yeah, your heart. Fibrillating just means the heart looks like a bag of worms. It's not... And one place is beating faster than the other. Right. And it's not... It's so fast, it's not...

It's not functional. It's not beating in a way that pushes the blood out and into the next section. Right. It's just quivering. Quivering. I think is a better word. That's a great word. Oh, thanks. So normally... Do I knock? Oh, yeah, you get a bell. Okay, thanks. Give thyself a bell. Thank you. You get all the bells. I get all the bells today. Yeah.

Yeah. So people have symptoms. Then you put them on a cardiac monitor, an electrical monitor, and you can see it basically. You can see it on EKG. Yeah, that's basically it. And you treat it with – Depends. – rate medication usually. If it's atrial fibrillation, you treat it differently than ventricular fibrillation because ventricular fibrillation will kill you. Yes. Atrial fibrillation usually will not, at least not in the short term. It'll just – yeah. So you use blood thinners and rate control medications. Yep.

Very good. Okay. Let me see. McRibs. Dr. Steve, I had a bump at the top of my rib cage right below my incision after 20 years. Could this still be a thing they use to attach the sternum? Yeah. If they split your sternum, you've got wire in there. Yes.

They use wire sutures. And when you get an X-ray on somebody that had a classic cabbage, you can tell because they've got these little circles of wire in there that go all the way down the sternum. And I think now they're also using some plates and things, too. Oh, yeah. Okay. Sure. And some different things that help with healing. But, yeah, they have to twist those wires. He's after 20 years, so I'm sure it is. Yeah. He had the old school. Yeah.

And, you know, they have to twist it, and then the body tries to kind of wall it off, and so you get a little bit of scar tissue around it. And, yeah, that could be actually what it is. I had somebody...

well, let me say this. I heard of someone, this has been my experience, that people will feel their xiphoid process, which is the thing at the bottom of their sternum. If they've never felt it before, they'll come to you and say, well, I've got a tumor. And then you feel it and you go, it's your xiphoid process, part of your anatomy. Funny thing, never felt mine before and it's more prominent now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now you can't not notice it. And what is it, McRib?

Is that what it is? Yeah. If he's concerned, probably can go to the doctor, get some imaging. Yeah. And they can make sure it's nothing worrisome. Yeah. Well, it's been there 20 years. It's probably not going to kill him. Yeah, you'll be good. Always remember...

We're not your medical providers. You know, we're just bullshit. We're just fucking around. Okay. The one pun says, Dr. Steve, a burning, numbing in the left thigh. I'm overweight. Was shot near that area, but thinking it might be a nerve. Yes. Shot with a gun? Yeah, apparently. Yeah, I think the one pun. Sorry about your life. No, if I remember, and we laughed about him before until I found out his real story. He had a rough life.

rough time, if I remember correctly. So, yeah, there is a thing called neuralgia parasthetica. Are you familiar with that? And it's a numbness that goes down the outward part of the thigh. It can be painful, too. And it's actually caused by being overweight and wearing a belt that's too tight. And it cuts off circulation to the nerve that feeds the outside of the thigh. Wow.

Ah, so loosen your belt. Yeah, you go through, and I'm not saying that's what that is. You could have a slipped disc in his back. Again, get it checked, but it could be that. And we've had a couple of cases of that on this show before. Okay. And also people who are wearing a really heavy tool belt will have it as well. That makes sense. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Waver, for becoming a sponsor. You rule. Woody Haney says, I had AFib.

Oh, that lasted an hour or two. I remember feeling so calm when it spontaneously resolved. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. We were just talking the other day on Cameo. I had somebody ask me about adenosine. And if you have someone with— Coolest drug ever. It is the coolest drug ever. If you've ever seen it being given as—

It's fucking terrifying if you're a provider. So we use it as a drug to abort supraventricular tachycardia. So that's a specific kind of fast heartbeat, and it can be up to like 150 beats a minute.

And you give these people six milligrams. I remember like it was yesterday, the first time I did it. And six milligrams of this stuff, IV. And then about 10 seconds later, their heart stops. Yeah, like flatline. Literally flatline. Nothing. And it lasts about 10 seconds. And then when it comes back, then they have a normal heart rate again. But that 10 seconds. It's like the longest 10 seconds of IV.

A provider's life. Yes. I thought I killed this person. And I knew that it was supposed to do that. But even when you see it still, it scares the shit out of me. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. I've seen it like from outside of the room and watching it happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was scary for me. At the time, I was a secretary in an ICU unit. But you knew. And watched it being given. I was like, holy crap.

Well, there's a lot of ways that you can terminate these crazy heart rhythms. And one of them is by invoking the diving reflex because, you know, whales have that. When they dive, their metabolism drops and their heart rate drops and all this stuff. But all mammals have it.

To a certain degree. And I remember the room where this was done, where a guy had, you know, a fast heart rate. And we just said, you want to try this diving reflex thing? Because we were waiting for the medicine to be brought up from the pharmacy. And the guy was like, sure, I'm game. And it's like, we're going to take your face and we're going to shove it in ice water. And he's like, OK. Yeah.

And that's what happened. His face got shoved in ice water, and he did it as long as he could stand it. When he got up about 10 seconds later, his heart went back to normal. Awesome. That was pretty cool. Yeah. So there's a lot of different ways to skin a cat. Okay, McRib says, I just ordered my films from a few years ago to try to explain this bump. Yeah, so send it to us. We'll look at it.

- I'd love to see it. - Yeah, I'd love to see it, yeah. But I'll bet you if you look at it, if you had an old school bypass, you've got these little rings of wire in your sternum, you know, the breastbone. - What I'm lucky enough not to have.

Okay, very good. Okay, I think we've exhausted this. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for the Fluid Family. Again, if you want to join the Fluid Family, go to youtube.com slash at weirdmedicine, and you can figure it out. It's YouTube. Thanks to everyone. Oh, I'm on the wrong script here.

Thanks go to everyone who's made this show happen over the years. Listen to our Sirius XM show on the Faction Talk channel, Sirius XM channel 103, Saturdays at 7, Sunday at 6, On Demand and other times at Jim McClure's Pleasure. And those are Eastern times.

Many thanks to our listeners and the people in the Fluid family whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website at drsteve.com for schedules, podcasts, and other crap. Go to hackamania.com and use offer code WEIRD and you get 10% off your ticket. It's in Las Vegas. We're going to have a blast. It's going to be fun. This is last year when we did this. It was one of the most fun events I've ever been to.

It's different than the WATP events, although it's a lot of overlap.

And you've been to a WATP event. It was a blast. Loads of fun. And this goes on for three days. Awesome. Yeah, so it's really pretty cool. Lots of fun. A little bit closer to DabbleCon, but it's more of the West Coast stuff. A lot of the West Coast listeners can come, which, you know, it's hard for them to get to the East Coast. So anyway, it's really fun. And I'm hoping Esther and a few other people who were there last year get to show up this year. It's on Mother's Day.

So that kind of sucks. Yeah. Moms are overrated. Shit. Well, go to our website at drsteve.com for schedules, podcasts, and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps. Quit smoking, get off your asses, get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. Thanks, everybody.

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