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Four Months Post Surgery

Well believe it or not, it’s been FOUR months since Doug underwent his open heart surgery.  He’s doing very well.  He’s back to long walks (running is still a bit painful in his chest muscles at times) and everything else is now back to normal.  Apparently the chest pain can take 6-12 months to completely go away as muscles and nerves need to heal.

Dodge City ER

We had a little scare in early June inDodge City, Kansas.  Doug had been having a stabbing pain in his back behind his heart that hurt more with deep breathing and yawning.  It was very weird.  We tried some heat and some advil with no results.  Since it was affecting his lungs we decided it was not worth ignoring the issue so we stopped into an ER.  After doing an EKG and some blood work, they were a little concerned it may be a blood clot as his lungs were good.  So a CT scan was performed with nothing found so they advised it had to be muscular despite Doug not recalling doing anything that may have strained his back muscles.

He was given a shot in the butt for a relaxant and a script for  taking before bed with the recommendation of 3 advil three times a day.  After 24 hours, he noticed no difference but after 24 more hours, the pain was gone!

We were so thankful it was nothing serious and again, grateful for the health insurance we kept up when he went to part time status at work.

The bills so far for this entire escape have reached $170K and this little ER visit increased that by more than seven thousand!

Thanks again to all our family and friends for your support and kind words/thoughts.