Lisa Guns Katie Prather Hillary Radovich Candace Luddy
“You look just like Julia Roberts!” is the greeting new “clients” usually lob at Lisa Guns their first day at the Saddleback Cardiac Rehabilitation Center’s EECP room. But Lisa is more attractive than Julia and stronger than Erin Brockovich.
When Lisa straps me down on the enhanced external cardiac counterpulsation treatment table I can barely wiggle a toe in my lycra leotards. The other four technicians who take turns putting me through thirty-five one-hour sessions on consecutive week days are also powerful as they cinch up the inflatable straps around my calves, thighs and buttocks. During these thirty-five hours the blood from my legs and buns is pumped forcefully into my upper body approximately 126,000 times—once for every time my heart beats. And each pump is actually three pumps—first the calves, then the thighs and buttocks in such rapid succession one is not aware of the triple contractions. That adds up to 378,000 high pressure counterpulsations.
The theory is that forcing blood from the lower body into the thorax will expand capillaries providing additional blood supply to a heart that is not getting enough blood and is sending out complaining angina pain.
None of the five cardiologists who have treated me for coronary artery disease (plugged left, anterior descending coronary artery) since 1990 and have performed five angioplasties on my LAD prescribed this radical, three-year-old procedure I read about it in Facets magazine in early 2002. A fellow Leisure World resident Shad Shaddock is featured in an article attesting to the efficacy of EECP. I know his wife Bebe and confer with her. She testifies to the restorative powers of EECP and informs me that Medicare covers the cost.
Good.
It’s March 2002. My current cardiologist is no longer treating SCAN members, and the first appointment I can get with a SCAN cardiologist associated with Saddleback Memorial Health Center in nearby Laguna Hills is August 6. I have no alternative. Drop out of SCAN, call a reputable cardiologist, make an appointment and persuade him to write a prescription for EECP. After dropping SCAN and returning to Medicare A & B. I obtain an appointment with a veteran cardiologist in one week, and he sees me as an ideal candidate for EECP, having sent fifteen of his coronary patients through the program with positive results. But first I have to have a scan to make sure I have no abdominal embolisms that would burst under EECP pressure and kill me or cause a serious stroke.
I luck out. Lisa has an opening at 1:30 p.m., but I mustn’t eat within two hours of the appointed time for obvious reasons. I begin treatments on July 15 and run straight through five days a week to the final session on August 30.
Lisa lives in Mission Viejo. Her hubby is an Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA) captain at the new Ladera station. Alternating with Lisa is Katie Prather whose husband is the commanding officer of OCFA. Taking her turn at belting me down and pumping me up is Mary Ann Martz with whom I share a role model doctor—Dr. Kevorkian. Mary Ann has put in too many years in intensive care and seen too many patients die in agony. A fourth member of this great team of EECP experts is Candace Luddy whose husband owns four mortuaries. Candice’s favorite pastime is floating about in an inflatable chaise in her Nellie Gail swimming pool with a good romance novel in one hand a bloody Mary in the other. Finally, there is Hillary Radovich who has a twenty-year-old daughter at the University of Arizona and a six-foot-five-and-one half-inch, 265-pound son at Mission Viejo High School rated the outstanding lineman in Orange County.
Soon after August 30 I write a glowing letter of praise to Saddleback about the superb performance and upbeat spirit of this beautiful bevy of five nurses who have given a total of more than 100 years of tender loving care to their fortunate patients.
EECP treatments are billed at $460 per session—$16,100. Of course Medicare doesn’t cover $16,100. How much they cover and how much, if any, my supplemental health insurance kicks in is still a deep, dark mystery three full months after the last treatment. I have no idea how big a check I shall have to write Saddleback. (It was $1100.00.)
Is EECP painless? Hell no. Is it painful? Yes, but not so painful that playing Rodgers and Hammerstein, Chopin, Beethoven and Bach on my high fidelity portable Panasonic CD player doesn’t drown out. I admit to inflicting pain on my team of technicians. When I listen to the “Rodgers & Hammerstein Song Book” I burst into song. Can’t help myself. It’s compulsive and involuntary. Fortunately, my eighty-nine-year-old roomie receiving EECP on the slab next to me is deaf and has a headset tuned to daytime TV soaps. The pumping produces excess vibrato, but I have a powerful diaphragm and muscle through the convulsions. I sense Lisa, Katie, Mary Ann, Hillary and Candie are almost as happy as I am when August 31 arrives.
Did EECP help me? I don’t know. Not substantially. I have a single-point criterion. Before EECP I could not walk around the block without experiencing angina pain. Now, three months after completing the thirty-five treatments, I still cannot walk around the block without angina pain. I have to slow down to a crawl up the half block with a six percent grade, but I am forever grateful for getting to know and admire the five most gorgeous and talented nurses at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center.
