Rehab

I believe it was 1983 when I suffered a heart attack, and had open heart surgery. This is not about me, it is more about heart surgery and the great improvements for survival.

A week after I came home from the hospital in Wisconsin, I had a doctor appointment with my local doctor. Dr. Klimitis was one of two cardiologists doctors at Condell Hospital at that time. Condell was a very small hospital then. Since he originally treated me, and advised me to have my heart surgery in Milwaukee, I decided to have him as my personal heart doctor. Heart surgery was relatively new forty and fifty years ago. The treatment after any surgery was bed rest and no excitement, but procedures were changing quickly.

After I visited with the doctor, and he left the room, his nurse was finishing the paper work with me. She explained what I should be doing at home, and then told me Dr. Klimitis started a new program. He believed that patients after surgery should not have bed rest, instead they should be active and even exercise their bodies. He started a rehab program with a few heart patients. It was considered radical, and not accepted by most doctors. She recommend the program to me, and I decided to join the group, or I should say Rose decided. She hoped this would help me recover faster.

I met with the group of about five other patients at St. Josephs Church gym at 5:30 Monday morning. They were a weak, old and scared bunch. Dr Klimitis had us walk around the gym a few times. Then he had us walk in a circle, doing various exercises that were very tiring. All the while he and a nurse would be checking heart rate and blood pressure. Before we finished he told us he expected us to walk another half hour during the day at home. After two weeks I saw a man about my age jogging slowly around the gym, and I asked the doctor if I could try it. He told me I could, but very slowly for a few weeks. During that time he kept a close watch over me and The other man,constantly telling us to slow down.

We did not have any equipment to use. There were no stationary bikes, weights or treadmills to use. This was the absolute beginning of rehab after heart surgery, and actually rehab after any surgery. Today rehab is normal after almost any surgery, but the rehab today is a little different. The room where rehab is held has stationary bikes, tredmills, weights, stretch ropes and a few other machines. A few jog around a circle for a half hour. And the nurses work the patiants fairly hard. This doctor, and a few other doctors, were pioneers in this field. Thanks to them, surgery patients today survive much longer and healthier than before.