About four weeks ago, we were in Turkey showing Michelle and Mike the ruins at Priene. It's a bit of a climb, but we had been there before. I had to stop about 5 times before we got to the top of the hill where the city had been. My chest hurt from the exertion, but it quickly settled down when I rested. This happened a few more times over the following weeks, mostly when going up and down our 40 set of stairs.
When we left Greece, we flew directly to Munich, Germany. Denita was understandably opposed to exiting through Germany because of the heart issue. We drove the entire length of the country, south to north, as seen in the previous posts. Once we reached Hamburg in the north, we stayed with my buddy Roland and his family for two nights. It was a delightful experience to stay outside the resorts and to see how real Germans lived.
Roland drove us to the airport early Sunday morning, and we flew to Dusseldorf, where we had a seven hour layover. Then it was a 12 hour flight to LA. We stayed with David and Jeanelle and had some precious moments with our two grandkids. We intended to stay four days, and then drive back on Friday with our youngest son Brian. However, on Monday my chest started to "burn" after just walking a block or two. I felt my body was trying to tell me something, so we left on Wednesday.
On Friday, I saw a cardiac specialist in Eugene. He felt the only way to definitively determine what was happening was to have an angiogram. They can see where the blockage is, if any, and they can install, if that's the word, the stent right then and there. So tomorrow morning, at 6:30, we head for Sacred Heart Hospital in Springfield.
It has been an extraordinary experience for two quite ordinary people. We lived amongst the Greek people for 11 months. We got very close to our brethren on Samos, with whom we could not even communicate directly. We got to see the Gospel of Jesus Christ being sown in human hearts in foreign lands. And it was an opportunity for God to work within our own hearts, hopefully making us more like His Beloved Son in some small measure.
Karl & Denita
PS. They found major blockages in both of the smaller cardiac arteries that feed the heart. Both were 95% occluded, I think is the term. They ended up putting in three stents, two of them side-by-side in one artery. The main artery was also mildly blocked, but not more than normal for an old geezer. It appears I was a dead man walking this last month, and should have listened to my body and my wife. Smile.
We had a 7 hour layover in Dusseldorf. Denita went to the zoo and fed peanuts to the animals. She said this one was particularly mean.
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