The following are brief extracts of each of these posts. Visit the links - it’s worth it. He maintains a sense of humor throughout his ordeal.

My lost weekend
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/my_lost_weekend.php

On Friday, as I do every day, I went out for a walk for about an hour — I strolled down to the Stevens County Fair, on an unpleasantly muggy early afternoon, and then walked back home…and I was almost there when I felt a peculiar tightness in my chest. That's odd, I thought, I wasn't exerting myself that much. And then I felt a slow ache building in my left arm.

Because I was close I walked to the hospital. It turns out that if a 50ish man walks into a hospital and mentions chest pains radiating into the left arm, there is a kind of automatic freak-out response that I'm sure saves lives.

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That's not a heart! It's a flailing Engine of Destruction!
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/thats_not_a_heart_its_a_flaili.php

My doctor's assistant called. I will paraphrase her words slightly.

"We just got the results of your tests from last week. Your heart is a shriveled black lump starved of charity, decency, charm, and kindness," she said, "a gristly godless clot of marginally functional fibers. You need to go back to Abbott for more tests, and the doctors want to crack your chest and marvel at you."

"So what else is new? My students are used to that and expect me to be lashing them with fear and pain starting Wednesday…and my black heart is an asset to this job," I said. "Maybe I can pop in for these tests this weekend. Any chest-cracking can wait for the end of the term and Christmas break."

"No," she said, "now."

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I'm doomed now
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/im_doomed_now.php

I've been trapped in the hospital overnight, and this morning they promise to finally give me the really good drugs and turn me into a vegetable for a few hours while they stick knives in my heart, which will be a welcome relief from the excruciating boredom.

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A fistful of stents
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/a_fistful_of_stents.php

First of all, I'm not dead yet. Let's get that out of the way.

They wheeled me in and a nice nurse named Phil leaned over me and told me he was going to put some drugs in my IV that would make me drowsy.

[Then about 10 minutes later...] The Jawas came in. They might have been doctors, but they were all covered in robes and hoods and speaking animatedly in some language that wasn't English — it was very buzzy and abrupt. They didn't talk to me anyway, but sometimes told Phil things that he would translate for me. They descended on my right thigh and proceeded to build an airlock so they could crawl inside and party on my left ventricle. I tried to tell them that the Left Ventricle was not some trendy nightclub but I think what came out of my mouth was a kind of mumbly moan in Ewok, and everyone knows Jawas don't understand Ewok.

And giant cameras just glided by majestically on motorized trackways above my head.

Then Phil's giant head floated into view — I think it was mounted on one of the camera tracks—and he announced, "Good news! No cabbage for you!", which was very cheering, since I don't particularly care for cabbage. And then the Jawas stomped on my heart for another hour or so. While I napped. [Cabbage, CABG, is short for coronary artery bypass graft.]

The clever doctors had looked me over and decided they could patch me up with set of stents instead of that elaborate bypass surgery. Yay, doctors! It's the difference between 8 weeks of ouchy hurty messy convalescence and less than two weeks of taking it easy.

The last fun bit was when they had to strip the hoses from my thigh....

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Mike notes that he needs to walk for an hour every day. If he should ever feel a peculiar tightness in his chest and a slow ache building in his left arm he will use cell promptly and get help. He also promises to stop writing in the third person.

-Mike Kaye