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Gardening Can Help Heal Your Heart
His Lifesaving Open-Heart Surgery
Wayne had his first heart attack in 2000, at age 55, while mowing his lawn. At first he thought he had hurt his knee. Then his leg started to ache so badly that he literally had to drag it. As he started to bag the grass, he fell against his car, hitting his head.
His head pain took his mind off his leg. After a while he started to feel better, so he finished mowing. “About four hours later, sitting in my recliner, the pain hit. It never went away until surgery,” he says.
Surgeons inserted two stents to open blocked coronary arteries. A third stent was added later, followed by angioplasty to try to reopen stents that had narrowed. In August 2002, Wayne required triple-bypass surgery. He was in the operating room, prepped and ready, when the surgeon checked his carotid artery, found it was 90 percent blocked, and cancelled the surgery.
The next day, a surgeon removed the plaque in the artery, and bypass surgery came four days later. “The doctor said if I hadn’t had the carotid artery surgery, I would have had a stroke on the table,” Wayne says.
These days, Wayne is feeling good. Recovery from the open-heart surgery was slow but steady. He went from walking in circles in the living room after the surgery to being back at work, logging 80,000 car miles a year. His wife, Marla, packs him a cooler full of heart-healthy foods and snacks so he can eat healthfully while on the road. When he is home, he’s in the garden or at a nursery learning about a new plant.
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