What an adventure I had recently in Canada! I took my daughter Christy Lynn to Tinker Helseth’s place for a week of fishing in Lake of the Woods in mid-October. We drove all day, pulling my boat full of fishing gear, and got there about 11 p.m. I awakened the following day to a beautiful sunny morning, looking forward to a day of fishing. As I looked from our cabin out across a wind-chopped bay, it came to me that something was going to be different from the way I had planned things.
A hard pain hit me to the left of the center of my chest and I knew in a second what it was…a heart attack.
With the pain hammering me with each heartbeat, Christy took over and drove me back to the border to International Falls, Minnesota. There was no doubt what was happening…the pain was tremendous.
They waved us through the border gate and in minutes we were at the small International Falls hospital—small but tremendously efficient. A doctor walking with a cane came in and two nurses gave me tests and some medicine, which instantly took away the pain. In minutes I felt back to normal and even thought maybe there would be a chance to go back and go fishing. No such luck. Wired up for what they called an EKG, the test showed something was wrong, and a blood test had enzymes that proved I was indeed having a heart attack.
The doctor was great. He kept treating me and told me that he would have a helicopter there soon to fly me to Duluth, where a brand new hospital had several heart doctors to take over my treatment. I think I went to sleep for a while, or they had me so relaxed I didn’t know how the time flew past. It was about four in the afternoon when I saw the helicopter land just outside.
I told Christy to find out where the hospital was in Duluth and drive my pickup there, a three-hour drive to the shores of Lake Superior. Surely, we could get back to fishing in a day or so.
The helicopter trip, which I always dreaded the thought of, was something I will never forget.
They bundled me up and slid me in through a large back window and propped me up so I could see out. A very pretty nurse sat next to me all the way and talked to me via earphones that even let me hear the pilot. When that helicopter got started, it felt as if it was vibrating to pieces but, in short order, I watched the hospital fade away and my daughter Christy climbing into my pickup far below.
I was worried about her. Duluth was three hours away, and Christy does not drive in large cities. Fortunately for her, the city overlooking that huge great lake is not very large. Fortunately for me, it has a great hospital only three years old with several top-notch cardiologists.
But first, let me tell you about the helicopter ride.
My uneasiness due to fear of heights, known as heightrophobia, quickly went away. For the first 30 minutes, I looked out from 2000 feet in the air at a landscape bathed in the light of the setting sun, then in the coming darkness, which showed hundreds of lights everywhere.
I hadn’t been told that the new hospital was 17 stories high. When it landed, that helicopter was on the very top of the building. They put me on a gurney that was on wheels, and it appeared that the edge of that roof was only about 30 feet away. I prayed that they would hold onto that cot-on-wheels as my heightrophobia came back strong. It wasn’t that I dreaded so much what a 17-story fall would do, it was more the apprehension concerning what a long time I would have to think about it.
They took me to a room, and I met with the head cardiologist, a Dr. Shultz, who got me prepared for surgery early the following morning. Christy got there just afterward, a big relief to me. They told her that she could sleep in the hospital room on a folding couch, which was another big relief. That operating room the next morning was impressive, but I didn’t get to see much of it.
As I talked with a couple of nurses, I fell asleep and woke up just an hour later. Christy was there, smiling, which told me I hadn’t had to have any kind of bypass. A nurse explained I had received three stents, something they do when small arteries are blocked up. I had some blockages amounting to 90 percent, but thank the Good Lord in Heaven: no heart damage.
The nurses and doctors and people there were good folks, it seemed to me. On October 11, my birthday, a heart doctor spent about an hour in my room with a drawing board showing me everything about my heart, what had went wrong, and what they had done to fix it. I learned a great deal from him about what I need to do to keep it working right. He talked a little about diet, then he brought Christy and I a couple of pieces of birthday cake an hour later.
A week and a half after we returned home, I went back to Lake of the Woods to retrieve my boat and gear and to see my old friend Tinker Helseth and his family. Two years ago, I was up there on my birthday fishing some little-known lake by myself and caught a 6-pound smallmouth, my biggest ever. Thank goodness I didn’t have my heart attack me then. If I hadn’t had Christy with me, I don’t know what I would have done. But the poor girl never got to fish. Her younger sister, Leah Noel, and her mother, Gloria Jean, got to go back a week later with me, and the weather was great. We just caught walleye one right after another. We brought back fish and gear and the boat!
Christy says she brought back something of greater importance… ol’ Dad. Might be that no one else would value this old timer above three days of good fishing.
