pumping blood through his body

pumping blood through his body
Welcome to a Medical Battery specialist of the Nihon Kohden Battery
CORONADO – In the patio of a borrowed home on this cloistered island, baseball’s greatest hitter sat alone beside the swimming pool, appreciating the warmth and quiet of another morning.
A Black Gold Golf Club ballcap shaded his drowsy eyes after another rough night of restless sleep. A red T-shirt – Angels red, like his former team – and tan cargo pants hung loosely around his body thinned by 20 pounds.
Thick black socks with red toes covered his feet crossed at the ankles . His hands rested on the two bulky, life-sustaining-battery with like Nihon Kohden BSM-2353C Battery, Nihon Kohden BSM-2301K Battery, Nihon Kohden BSM-2351C Battery, Nihon Kohden BSM-2303C Battery, Alaris Medicalsystems SIGNATURE 2 Battery, Alaris Medicalsystems 7000 Battery, Alaris Medicalsystems 7100 Battery, Alaris Medicalsystems 7130 Battery, Alaris Medicalsystems 7200 Battery, JMS 7N-1200SCK Battery-packed pockets of the black vest that has become part of his daily wardrobe since October.
“Good morning,” said Rod Carew, the Hall of Famer and former Angel and Minnesota Twin who has been recovering from a massive heart attack on Sept. 20, just 11 days shy of his 70th birthday.
He was smiling, happy to have a visitor, happy to have another good morning. He took a sip of a smoothie that his stepson-turned-personal chef, Devon, 26, blended for him. He licked his lips, relishing the papaya, mango, strawberry and pineapple flavors.
Such simple pleasures mean more on these new normal days.
“You like my vest?” Carew asked, showing off the patches of “SWAT” and the flag of his native Panama on it and frisking himself for the batteries the size of VHS tapes before pulling a small digital monitor from one of the pockets. “This is what keeps me alive.”
Carew, who went into heart failure three weeks after having the attack and three stents and temporary balloon pump installed, lives with – and thanks to – a machine called a Left Ventricular Assist Device (LVAD), which doctors needed a six-hour surgery to put in at the Scripps Prebys Cardiovascular Institute on Oct. 7.
It pumps blood continuously through his body because his own heart muscle can’t. It serves as a bridge until his own heart heals, which is rare but possible, or he can get a heart transplant. “In six months,” his wife, Rhonda, said, “maybe he will be strong enough to be on the list.”
Cardiologists and VAD recipient have told Carew that he can live a decade, maybe longer, with his LVAD. They say he can enjoy life, golf, travel, go to spring training in March and do just about everything but swim, take a bath or become an arc welder.
He was encouraged when he met VAD recipients who showed energy, vigor and little indication that they’re wearing a vest just like his.
“For now, I’m just trying to get used to having it and feeling like ‘The Bionic Man’ with all these cords and batteries all the time,” he said, standing to unzip his vest.
He lifted up his shirt, exposing the scars, the long one down the center of his chest and the other on his lower right abdomen from which the LVAD cord extends and connects to its power source.
“It’s crazy to think that I have to be plugged into a battery or a socket something all the time,” he said, feeling a bit like a Toyota Prius. “It keeps me running. Have a listen.”
Rhonda, who cleans the dressing around the cord three times a week and records his vitals each morning, handed me a stethoscope.
With binaurals in my ears, I slid the diaphragm disc atop his heart and heard a soft electronic hum. It’s a constant whirring, no thu-thump heartbeat, which Carew misses hearing and feeling.
Few things seem the same to him now. He knows he nearly died.