Tony Polk

Friday mid-day, August 6, Tony was sitting at the dining table in Port Townsend, Washington talking to my Dad who was asking advice about writing his autobiography.  He started feeling bad, laid down for a few minutes and took two aspirin.  About five minutes later we went to the Port Townsend hospital emergency room and said "maybe it's a heart attack?"  Tony's symptoms felt mild enough to him that he kept saying - nahh, probably just a little angina.  But it just felt wrong to him - left arm and chest pain - not excruciating pain, no elephant sitting on his chest feeling, but it felt wrong.  For those of you who talked to us on Friday - we were definitely still laughing and joking (kind of through Saturday) as we were worried but not terribly so.


Friday night we were transferred to St. Michael's in Silverdale Washington.  This is a brand new lovely hospital with an incredible view and a great cardiac care group.  Lots of repeated patient history taking as well as monitoring of Tony's enzyme levels - which became horrendous.  The cardiac surgeon now is saying Friday was a major event.


Saturday more time at St Michael's lots of tests.  Tony's ekg's continued to be beautiful and normal.  His echo test didn't look too bad (slightly worse than normal).  He was scheduled for a heart cath at about 11am after at least one other more critical patient.  The doctors (and us) continued to think he was pretty ok.  The start of the heart cath got moved to noon ish, but soon after the start an emergent patient needed attention, and Tony was moved to recovery where we watched Sister Act 1 and 11 on VH1.  Tony dozed off and on to awaken and ask why aren't we done yet?  And the two nurses working (it's the weekend and this is a huge area but we were the only ones there) made me coffee and got him cpap so he could more comfortably sleep.  And then after 3pm or so (was it 4pm Saturday?) Tony finally went in for the heart cath.


We were expecting in this test for them to be able to see if there were any blockages and do a little roto rooter clean up if there was any.  Instead Dr. Banzer halted the work after taking lots of photos and videos of the heart, and called cardiac surgeon Dr. Anderson.  Dr. Banzer placed this balloon to keep Tony's heart working as a temporary measure.  Tony was moved to critical care.


Sunday morning (August 8), Dr. Anderson met with Tony and I and explained the procedure.  Surgery is scheduled for Monday morning - giving the heart some time to heal from the heart attack and be healthier for his surgery.