Tag: Heart

Posted on

Birthdays mean you’re still here

Birthdays don’t mean much after you turn 21, do they? Oh, wait. They do when you turn 50 years old. September 2 is the day I mark a half-century of existence. Do you want to know the interesting part? I didn’t expect to live this long.

I was born with what’s called Wolf-Parkinson-White Syndrome. When your heart beats, the nerve impulse from your brain travels in a circuit around your heart, which constitutes one beat. Yes, I’m oversimplifying, but that’s how it was explained to me.

So, those born with WPW have a defect that allows the nerve pathway to short-circuit itself, which plays hell with your heartbeat. The spells of irregular heartbeats could have done some serious damage, especially as I got into my teenage years. At one point, the top half of my heart was motoring along between 250-300 beats a minute, while the bottom half hit hyper speed at more than 500 beats a minute.

Birthdays
My wife describing me after 50 years worth of birthdays.

When that happens, blood clots form easily inside the heart. If that clot should get out of the heart, make a circuit around the body and hit the brain, you’re done. You drop dead on the spot. So, long story short, surgery was scheduled on June 3, 1986.

I remember the gap between making the decision to have surgery and the operation being longer than I wanted. That was hard to live with as an awkward teenager. At one point, my stress level was so high I jumped into the middle of a pickup basketball game over the lunch hour at Castlewood High School. Best basketball I’d ever played in my life.

Remember the movie “White Men Can’t Jump?” I’ve always considered that autobiographical. I am as gravity-bound as the movie described white guys. I was a whirling dervish, running up and down the court as fast as my slow-dude legs could carry me. At one point, I came up behind someone going up for a short jump shot and swatted it to the other side of the room. The only blocked shot of my life. I played that whole game wondering if it was going to kill me and I’m not making that up. Fear of death really adds zip to your game, no matter what you’re playing.

So, the surgery came and went, and lo and behold, it was successful. June 3, 1986, was a monumental day in this guy’s life. The one thing I remember the most vividly came after I was in recovery. They were making final plans to get me ready for release only three days after the operation and there was one important thing left to do.

After the surgeon sowed me up, he made two small horizontal slits right underneath the big scar. The doctor then inserted a suction tube in each slit to clear the body cavity of excess blood, preventing peritonitis, which you do NOT want. The doc says, “It’s going to be uncomfortable.” Right. Let me tell you how it felt.

It was totally worth all the birthdays, too!

Try to imagine that someone was able to pull your shoulders and collarbones down through your chest cavity and then yank them through your skin and out of your body a few inches above your belly button. The pain was unlike anything I’ve ever felt. Every nerve was on fire, my vision went white, and my mom said I was screaming bloody murder. She was being kind. I was screaming my little white butt off and thought I might be dying. I hope I never have to hurt that bad again.

So, there I was, suddenly assured of a much better chance of seeing more birthdays go by. I’m not making it up when I say at one point during those early years of heart trouble, I literally prayed to God to let me live a full life. That’s all I asked for. He answered.

So, what does the second half of my life look like? I don’t know for sure. I’d like to make an impact for the Kingdom before I leave this world. I don’t know when that will be. You see, several years ago, I had to undergo ANOTHER heart operation as I developed an irregular heartbeat problem apart from the WPW I was born with.

Make every day count. You just don’t know which of your birthdays will be your last. If you haven’t had any kind of problems that threaten your ability to keep breathing, it might be hard to truly understand.

Look at Chadwick Boseman. The world-famous actor passed away recently. What we thought was a picture of health in the Black Panther costume wasn’t the case. He had cancer for the last four years of his life and no one knew he was on borrowed time. It. Can. Happen. To. You.

I can tell you one thing for sure. The two biggest commands in the Bible are a good place to start. Jesus Himself said, “Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” I think that’s a good place to start for the second half of my life, however long that may be.

Posted on

Rushford Man Undergoes Heart Transplant

Gary Woxland of Rushford recently went on a journey that very few people will ever have to make. Two years after having a pump put into his heart, which was weakening, he had a heart transplant operation at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison. He went into the hospital on April 19, and after more than 12 hours on the operating table, Woxland is feeling good about the results of the procedure. The road to the transplant began just a couple years ago.

Heart Transplant
Glen Woxland of Rushford, Minnesota, recently underwent a successful heart transplant operation at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison., and says “I’d recommend that hospital to anyone!” (Photo by Kayla Thompson, Bluff Country News Group)

“My heart had gotten too weak,” he recalled, “so I had a heart pump put in to help it out two years ago. That did help, but I then decided it would actually be better for me if I could get a heart transplant. Heart pumps are only good for 15-18 years before they wear out. At that point, I’d be too old to put in a new one.”

He did his original “doctoring” at Mayo Clinic, but Mayo had an age-cutoff of 70 years old, at which they would no longer perform the operation. Woxland was just shy of 69 when he first broached the topic with doctors. He said the doctors in Rochester discouraged him from pursuing the option there but did encourage him to try the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona. The Rochester doctors told him there was a bigger donor list in Arizona and he might have quicker results down there.

“We went through the hospital there and they felt the same as the Rochester clinic,” he said. “They said I was getting too old and didn’t want to risk it. Someone told me I should check with the hospital at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. It turned out they were interested and put me through their tests. They had a similar age cutoff to Mayo Clinic, but it was more dependent on the overall health of each candidate.”

Woxland was actually still working up to that point and not “sitting in a chair somewhere every day.” The fact that he could do everything on his own before the surgery really helped out. In spite of that, it still took him a while to get on the transplant list. Four or five months later, he still hadn’t heard from anyone and was about to give up on the idea when the call finally came. Woxland felt it was a dream come true.

“I was down at the shop where I work and talking with my brother,” he recalled, “and I set my cell phone down in the shop and went into another room when they began trying to call me. They called two or three times there and then called my wife, but she didn’t have her cell phone with her. I left work at noon for lunch and when I got home, the phone was ringing. At the same time, they’d called Rushford Police Chief Adam Eide and asked him to come find me as well.”

After getting word that they’d found him a good heart, it was literally a mad dash to get to Madison, Wisconsin, as hospital staff wants the transplant patients there within four hours. Woxland had a smile you could hear in his voice when he said, “we thought we were ready to go, but we weren’t.” It was a bit of a challenging drive to Wisconsin through what was heavy snowfall, at times, but they did make it safely.

“We got there and found out the donor was actually still alive,” Woxland recalled, “and they weren’t going to harvest the heart until the next morning. It was a good opportunity for them to get me prepped. About 12 hours later, I was ready to go. My wife said I was in the operating room for 12 hours. I went in around 8:30 in the morning and got out around 9:00 that night.”

The doctor told the Woxlands that the surgery went great and there were no complications. He did ask who the donor was, and staff couldn’t tell him at that moment. All the doctor could say was the donor was male. There is a form that Woxland can send to the hospital to find out the name of the donor. Hospital staff told the Woxlands that they shouldn’t be in a hurry to find that out as the donor’s family is still grieving the loss.

He still has to go back to the doctor every two weeks for biopsies, but so far, so good. Woxland said the hardest challenge was being laid up on the operating table for 12 hours, and then not being able to get up and move for another three days. He’s lost a little bit of muscle in his legs and feels a little more tired but is otherwise in good shape. Woxland says hospitals perform transplants more often than most people realize.

“When I first was looking at a heart pump or a transplant,” he recalled, “I didn’t honestly think there was any way transplants would be worth it,” he remembered. “Then, I came to find out that hospitals do transplants every day, everywhere. The University of Wisconsin does a lot of transplants, including organs like hearts and lungs. They’ll even do double transplants, such as heart and lungs in one patient.”

His last thought on his amazing journey?

“I would recommend the University of Wisconsin to anyone who asks,” he said.