I just got a call from Clayton Cramer from the hospital. It seems he had a mild heart attack, and then a mild stroke due to the angioplasty procedure to deal with the blockage in his heart. This quite surprised me given that he’s been doing so well since his aortic valve replacement.
He asked me to post this, since his blog won’t be updated for a few days and he wanted everyone to know what happened. Clayton has been a great contributor to the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, so any thoughts and/or prayers you can send his way are appreciated. For a guy that just had a stroke that affected speech, he was pretty intelligible on the phone, so I’m hopeful he will make a speedy recovery.
Thanks for putting up news.
I remember Clayton from the old talk.politics.guns Usenet group, hope he recovers fully.
There’s such a thing as mild heart attacks and strokes?
Guess I won’t be getting Right to Keep and Bear Arms Emails for a while then either?
Tell him to take care of himself and get well, we need men like him to hang around.
Really no. But I don’t want to make it seem like he’s at death’s door. But nonetheless, any pathology that involves the cardiovascular or cerebrovascular system is serious.
There’s such a thing as mild heart attacks…?
Yes, indeed, though I would prefer the adjective ‘minor’ over ‘mild’.
I had one my self at the age of 39. The concern here is that Clayton is a lot older than that, so it’s going to be a longer road to recovery.
VERY encouraging that his speech sounded good.
Hey, hey, hey, it’s not like Clayton is superannuated. I went to high school with him, He’s not old, and he’s still pretty vigorous compared to me.
But anyway, my best wishes, prayers and hopes for a speedy recovery.
Wow, double whammy. I hope he makes a full recovery
Get well soon Clayton.
I have been enjoying his blog for a few years now.
Any idea how we can help, btw?
I went over to his blog, which has not been updated, understandably. An earlier post mentioned referral income from Amazon. If nothing else, we could make our Amazon posts through his site so he could get the referral fees.
That’s a very thoughtful observation.
There is also a paypal button on the right side a little ways down. Let’s not mention my powers of observation.
Prayers were said! Hoping he fully recovers and comes back stronger!
Rats! I wish word of Excimer laser angioplasty would spread around much faster. Then this stroke from chunks breaking off would stop happening since the obstruction is ablated instead of squished or chopped up.
When a googl search is done, most of the top returns are dated in the early 90’s. The latest: http://www.uptodate.com/contents/coronary-complications-of-atheroablative-devices dated 2013/14, doesn’t seem very good.
I worked for a surgical laser manufacturer ’87-’91, and was told that people were dying in experimental/test heart surgeries in Europe. That was using our lighter duty Nd:YAG systems with 200micron fibres. I designed an adapter for our water-cooled laser so it could use the SMA fibres, and also focus the beam into the 200 fibres, as it typically used the 400-600 fibres, with a mount that was not very precise. That laser had a better beam mode, IIRC, but I didn’t hear anything more on the heart surgery subject, so they may have given up using Yag for that type.
One of the things I learned during that time was that just because a laser could be used for a surgical procedure, didn’t automatically make it better than other ways. In some it could be revolutionary, in others it was no better, and occasionally, it was not as good. But, there would be a push to use it as often as possible, by the facility, or the doctor, to help pay for the system and it’s associated costs. Sometimes they could/would charge a lot more, because -LASER!-.
Old technology. I worked for a company called Spectranetics that manufactures an excimer laser and catheters for angioplasty and implanted lead removal works like a champ. No dissections, none of the problems of early lasers as there is just enough power to dissolve the plaque. Such fine control one of the demonstration used to be to remove the ink from a business card without disturbing the card stock below.