It is high time for an update

Hey, Dr. Corey, I'm still alive and kicking. In fact, two years after refusing to have my chest cracked open by a cardio-thoracic surgeon at Indiana Heart Hospital, I am feeling better than ever! This despite the scare tactics you and he used to try to get me on the operating room table. It turns out I was not the walking time bomb you said I was.

In fact, I am alive and well, working on an offshore drilling rig in Nigeria, West Africa. I am sitting on that rig this very moment, typing this post to the blog that I have not posted on in nearly a year. I just got off the phone with my lovely wife, Rebecca (YES! I've gotten married since my last post! -- and she's 16 years younger than I) and she gave me the sad news that a friend of ours is trying to be talked into a triple cardiac artery bypass graft.

It seems our friend has symptoms that are similar to mine and a story that practically mirrors mine. He has angina. His doctors tell him that his coronary arteries are badly blocked -- but his heart is in good shape. Well people!! If the heart is in great shape, it must be getting oxygen, that's what keeps the heart in great shape! If the oxygen isn't getting through the clogged coronary arteries, it must be bypassing them in some way, right?

The body is a miraculous entity. It has the capability to heal itself. When arteries get blocked, the ingenious body builds natural bypasses to replace the clogged ones. There is a doctor in San Diego named Howard Wayne. He taught me this fact and has been treating me for two years with medication. MEDICATION!!! Not surgery. I didn't get cut open. I didn't have my heart stopped, I didn't have a long post-op recovery period and an even longer period of physical therapy AND, I didn't put a lot of money in my surgeon's pocket!

Dr. Wayne is a board certified cardiologist, among other certifications he can boast. He is not a quack. He costs about 10 percent what bypass surgery charges insurance companies. He is not trying to pay for his Mercedes Benz 500 or the new olympic swimming pool in his backyard. He is trying to show the 80,000 Americans doctors scare into bypass surgery every year that for most of them, not only is the surgery unnecessary, it reduces your life expectancy! You could do nothing at allfor your angina and still live longer than many bypass victims.

Yes, I wrote "VICTIMS." Most patients who undergo bypass surgery are victims of scare tactics made by cardiologists who either do not know what they are talking about, or worse, are purposely misleading their patients to get them to have unnecessary but very expensive surgery.

I am going to call my friend this afternoon at 3 pm Nigeria time (10 am Indianapolis time) and ask him to please read my blog. I'll ask him to go to the archives and start at the beginning. I also want to encourage him to call Dr. Wayne in San Diego. I have an appointment on June 6 to see him for my second annual check up.

Wake up America! Your cardiologist is more interested in his financial well being than your health.