Blasting with Boyles
OPINION
Dr. Nelson Prager
Dr. Jason Shofnos
Dr. Jeffrey Park
Millions of years ago I took auto and diesel mechanics at Forbes Trail Technical School, because I couldn’t fit into normal high school, allegedly to study auto diesel repair. One of the things that stood out was that flathead Ford vehicles needed valve jobs at 81,000 miles. I’m now 81. And was told I needed a valve job.
On a serious note, for the last three years, I have really had a difficult time existing. If you’re keeping score at home I had a mini stroke on air, degenerative heart failure in Sturgis needing to be brought home, and received my pacemaker.
Dropping fully back in time, 25 years ago, I still think I’m being haunted by the Bush administration as we took our morning radio show to Washington, D.C., to cover the George W. Bush first inauguration.
When I returned, I was having a hard time breathing and walking and I was immediately taken to Dr. Richard Flanagan who turned me over to the capable hands of heart surgeon Dr. Kevin Miller. I had a quintuple bypass and went back to work at KHOW just in time to go on to great ratings and great health. I ran the Bolder Boulder. I skied and always will, and did mixed martial arts. I always saw it as a bump in the road.
Then about three years ago when I was 79, I started having issues again. That’s when I, along with publisher Chuck Bonniwell, discovered Dr. Nelson Prager, cardiologist to the stars.
And then I had an incident on Christmas Eve with my grandson in Winter Park, where I literally could not catch my breath. I came back, called Dr. Prager, and went through a battery of tests. That’s where, through Dr. Prager, I met Dr. Jeffrey Park, the new age heart surgeon, along with Dr. Jason Shofnos.
When I met them, it was like going to a meeting of outlaw bikers. Shofnos, like myself, has inked up his left arm, and Dr. Park, like Dr. Nelson, just seems to be like one of the guys. Except they’re brilliant.
They ran me through a battery of tests at Swedish Hospital (what a great place) and decided I had a calcified aortic valve in my heart, and that I was going to need a valve job.
I hit the panic button. I thought as difficult as it had been going through bypass surgery would my 81-year-old carcass be able to take another open-heart job. Shazam.
Enter the dragon. These guys are trained in robotic surgery. As Dr. Prager said, “this is our bread and butter.”
My son tells me that I was in the OR for the bypass surgery for almost seven hours. So now, for what’s behind the curtain, what’s in the box that Julie’s pointing to, and the new car, how long did it take for all this modern equipment and wonderful physicians to get me a new heart valve? Forty-seven minutes. They go up the insides of your legs and a balloon goes into your valve, the balloon opens, the new valve tips come out, the calcification of the valve crunches into the new valve, the balloon pulls out, and your heart is brand new.
I know when I was in the hospital the first time with bypass I was there for eight days. This time I was in Swedish overnight. One of the things that Dr. Park did before and after was hand me his stethoscope and said, “Want to hear your murmur?” It sounded like a river rushing. He gave me the stethoscope again when I was ready to go home, and I could hear a heartbeat.
I’m back in the gym for an hour; I want to get an easy one-day ski in as the end of the season beckons, and it’s a whole new lease on life, and I owe it to those three men and the remarkable staff at Swedish Hospital.
If this is what medicine can do now, imagine what it will be for my grandson. Assuming the world is still here. But I publicly want to thank Swedish, Aurora Denver Cardiology, and the three horsemen who saved an old man’s rear end. Thanks guys.
— Peter Boyles
