John's Brother

It's a bad news/good news report. John's brother Jorge suffered a heart attack this morning. His brother-in-law administered CPR but he required two cardioversions (shocks) to get a heart beat again. For you medical people, he was in V-fib and was down for about 11 minutes...not sure how effective/when the bystander CPR was started.

He was taken in for a cardiac catheterization, they found two clots (in the LAD, proximal and mid) which they removed and placed two stents, both sites were 70% blocked. His Ejection Fraction was 45% before the stent placement...haven't had an update on it yet, they were expecting to do an echocardiogram after I spoke to the ICU nurse.

He's heavily sedated due to extreme agitation on the ventilator, he was breathing on his own a bit before sedation. They have him on a Morphine drip, he's being given Ativan and another sedative I didn't recognize. His blood pressure upon admission (not sure if she meant to the ER or the ICU post cath) was 200/110. Supposedly he hasn't been taking his hypertension meds.

John will be there Monday morning. Juan, Carmen, Cuqui (and Rich) and Mike arrived from Miami this afternoon.

Jorge is in critical but stable condition. The initial report I received from the ER nurse was critically flawed, she told me Jorge was asystolic when the EMS got there. I specifically asked her if it might have been VFib or fine VFib, she said no, it was asystole. Because of that info, for hours, I was telling John that this was really, really bad but still trying to keep his hope alive while feeling little to none myself. When I found out the correct version of events, I was almost giddy with relief. Even though he's certainly not out of the woods yet, he's in such a better situation.

Time will tell. I'll keep you updated. Please keep Jorge and the family in your prayers!