There's been a glitch. They couldn't operate today because the lab found some anitbodies in his blood that have to be matched to blood available for a transfusion, which is needed n some 50% of such surgeries. So, they've sent out for suitable blood and will hopefully do the surgery tomorrow.
You'd think they'd do the blood test and have all in readiness before the surgery was scheduled...
This increases stresss on the family, but I'd rather they caught it than give him unsuitable blood.
BTW, although he is overweight, he is not really corpulent, nor does he drink or smoke or eat a lot of fatty foods. Odd that he'd have the problem. The third brother and I are trimmer and I am four years older and have not had heart problems. Hope I never do.
One reason why I'm worried is that author Peter H. Capstick, whom I knew, died during open heart surgery in Pretoria. (He was American, but had lived in South Africa for many years.) I always thought that a snake or a lion or an elephant would get Peter or just old age. But he died in a big city, not out in the bush.
Does anyone recall when Dr. Christaan Barnard did the first heart transplant, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town? Poor Barnard eventually developed arthritis so severe that he had to quit doing surgeries. But what he pioneered seems still almost like a miracle. The liberal media trashed South Africa at every opportunity until apartheid ended, but even they acknowledged the greatness of his transplants.
Mind you, my brother is having bypass surgery; not a transplant. I hope that's the safer of the two.
