Stroke survivor Diesel Tech

Good post , I bet there's a lot of people that will be surprised to find out that bad oral hygiene can lead to this.

 

I've read and heard many times that docs won't perform heart procedures on patients until they bring their dental care up to date. Heart meds are keeping me alive but I don't tolerate the heat well at all now and I've piled on the weight unfortunately - probably eat better now than ever. And, I've always maintained my dental care since my earliest days.

Guys and gals - live life well as we only have one shot at it.

 

There is even a bigger problem.

When you have cleanings or procedures done like I do, I have for example a standing order for some serious antibiotics. I think mine are ampicillin or some form of penicillin (Spelling)

What this does after 4 very large pills are administered a hour prior to arrival at the dentist for me for many years is to kill or knock down the active bacteria that is considered a threat. What happens is during a cleaning or a procedure quite a bit gets into the blood stream and in my particular case head straight for the heart valves where they pile up in areas where the blood does not flow near them in the small corners and crevices of the valves. There they pile up.

If allowed to get big enough and organized it can break off at any time and straight out the artery they go, Usually the biggest one (Arota) and up the cartoid or any number of very important high pressure artery with large volumes of blood flow. At some point the vessal gets too small to let the clot go through and boom stroke time. Depending on location and type of clot formed it will be lethal and kill really fast with a great deal of pain until LOC in between 20 to 180 seconds.

My teeth are really bad and it's a direct result of trucking and the life style associated with it, smoking in particular among other things like really bad foods and so on. The one saving grace I have been told is coffee. A form of acid that has helped me in the past but does not prevent the gum illness from progressing.

I do visit a heart doctor who is a board certified and sits on the State board from time to time in my area. Between him and his brother who is a very old school surgeon with a very tough outlook on life and very fit for what he does what with the slicing, gore and meat and fats and so on that he has dealt with inside of me in the past as a outpatient they do a good job.

I do have standing orders to stay out of the heat. The heart does not have the ability anymore to withstand above a certain temperature. Unlike what I have seen many times in trucking both hot and cold. Ive been cooked at 150 a couple of times in my life when the A/C failed in the night during summer in the south. I should be dead but Im still here. There is a possibility of minor brain damage among other problems from that but you cannot live life worrying about something bad.

The heart itself is a battleship. that is not where the problems for me is. I have three valves that are bad. The Mitral which controls the inflow of blood from the lungs that has had it's carbon gases taken out (There is a particular term but don't want to mix them up) if that valve is working in most people all of the "Fresh" blood with good new oxygen in the cells are coming into the heart this way and begin to fill the 4 chambers to be processed as a liquid and sent out through the body through the arteries.

Another valve called the Triscupid which (Spelling) is part of the heart's internal control of blood movement leaks quite a bit as does the mitrial. So the chambers do not quite sometimes get a chance to fill properly. The heart will at times if necessary take a extra moment and really fill at least one of the 4 chambers affected and that is what we call a huge heartbeat or palpation (Spelling again) once or twice during battle is normal when under large loading of the body but if it does not stop it can cause a pile up of volume and nothing gets anywhere worth a ####. I hate to use profanity on this one but I don't know of any other word that is a good substitute. It just wont flow well.

Finally on the pump stroke that is the 4th and last part of the specific heart beat for a human it goes out through the arotic valve and into the biggest pipe so to speak for the entire body where it gets divided really quickly. Some of it is taken by the heart muscles themselves for the work that needs to be done by it.

The large pair of words is called ejection factor. For a good proper functioning of that valve with no leaking the EF is very very high and what you want in a healthy human that is literally pink and looking really good with plenty of life all around. For those like me there is too much leakage at that valve resulting in a EF that is very low in percentage of volume. Usually 60% or lower. I cannot go too low because at that point generally because the mind does not get the lions share of what it needs to maintain the lights on on anything higher functioning above basic brain stem the lights do not stay on and on the floor I go. And if not treated (When someone goes onto the floor, the blood flow is seriously increased to the brain believe it or not which is by design when people pass out it is wired in a person, any human to go to the floor so that the brain will take in what there is first before anything else being usually below the level of the heart that empties into it via the neck) It buys time. Not a whole lot but a little bit.

Anyway.

In my family those that have been to war, one was part of Red Ball after the Normandy Invasion in a three axle truck running everything, particularly gasoline forward to the front as WW2 ground towards Germany. He had been particularly commended for hauling twice the authorized load in jerry cans (5 gallon gas cans of the old type, currently banned in the USA believe it or not unless you are able to source them from overseas online which I do from time to time; they want people to buy the crappy self venting California plastic &^%$ these days which do not last) I believe another uncle was a destroyer man in the same war for a while. A stroke hit him proper a couple of years ago and killed him. So Im a pretty high risk for one anyway.

At some point in my future the teeth will be removed in either a denture of the old school or bolts will be implanted to the bone and a set of "Bolt on" teeth that are considered pernament will be on instead for a little more money. Alot depends on where I am with insurance. I am double insured for dental and am preparing a third policy to be brought in so that when the time comes to do this major work at major expense If done correctly will improve my overall health pretty quickly.

It wont be the ultimate problem solver. There is a procedure called planing. Literally apply gas until you are out and then use tools to get under your gums and clean the crap out of there. They do this in quarters over a period of months. 4 in total. Upper left, then upper right and then the lower right and left. This is strictly reserved for those who intend to keep the teeth rather than a simple mold made and pull all of them.

The use of opoids as regular medicine has damaged the teeth further. So that time of future work has been moved up much closer in terms of expected time to do it. In my case it's a legal form of teeth damage which I don't particularly like or want. But it is what it is. It can be fixed by pulling all of them and installing either a bolt on pernament or using old school dentures.

In my area. Many many people before they hit 30 have had their teeth pulled and tossed due to meth use. Meth is extremely bad in my area ever since it came east from California via the biker gangs and now from the cartels that consider Arkansas a strategic hub for everything north and east. As bad as it is here, I understand it's truly horrible in the smokies, around the Bristol area in the mountains. You can spot a meth user a mile away via the teeth.

I am actually tested for that and a number of other drugs each month that are both legal, illegal such as meth and also for smoking. I quit in 2001. Which is probably the number one thing I could do for my future as the body has had ten plus years to make repairs to the damage incurred. However MRI and other scans has definitively confirmed damage that is present in parts of my lungs and other systems from that filthy habit. combined with lime powder damage from my bulk days without using a respiration protection that actually poisoned me a little bit. I keep a pair in the closet that are very very good from Galls dot com so that if I need or require filtered air for whatever reason they are there ready to go.

That's all I have related to the teeth. It's a ongoing work. Very expensive. That is where the three seperate insurance policies come in. For me it will be almost free or a small cost overall when the final work is done. But I have other commitments that has to be done first for two other people in life before I tend to myself for good.

Trucking is not particularly healthy for most. That is why they say a expected life time of a trucker is around 52 years old give or take a few years provided that person has not been killed, maimed or disabled prior to that age. Im already there. I estimate I got about 4 more years or so roughly depending on the results of a series of Xrays I took yesterday to determine where I am on some of my bones. If it's really bad and reveals a certain set of problems way past simple arthritis or something else I might have a year or less. But we will find out pretty soon where I am at.