Five days after double bypass surgery, NBC10 Meteorologist Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz was ready for a visit and ready to start reading the stack of get well wishes from all of you. It was like a dose of good medicine, and at times brought Glenn to tears.
"Well, I'm emotional because I came so close to the end," Glenn told co-anchor and friend Renee Chenault-Fattah. "Not only do I appreciate all these wonderful notes, but the prayers too."
When Renee walked into Glenn's hospital room, he was sitting up and at times during their visit, he even stood. She wasn't sure what to expect so soon after Glenn's chest had been opened up for heart surgery.
"Oh my God, Glenn, I'm going to start crying! You look better than you did the day before surgery," she said when they hugged.
Glenn credits Dr. George Martin with saving his life. He went to Dr. Martin's office last Monday for his routine allergy shot and mentioned to one of the nurses that he just wasn't feeling right over the weekend when he was on vacation.
"He didn't have any of the symptoms we think of when we think of heart disease," Dr. Martin told Renee. But because of Glenn's family history of heart problems on his mother's side, Dr. Martin decided right away to examine Glenn. He heard an abnormal heart rhythm and didn't like the looks of Glenn's EKG.
"I was very concerned that there was something major going on here," Dr. Martin said. He had Glenn wheeled straight to the ER and after more tests, doctors determined Glenn's major artery was blocked 99-percent and a second artery had 80-percent blockage.
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"And the important thing is that you catch it before any major event." Dr. Martin said.
Glenn is now dealing with the side-effects of his surgery, like pain and a rapid heart beat.
"For the first three nights I had a really, really rough time," he told Renee.
Now he's determined to help others understand heart disease.
"Is there a reason that I've been spared? Maybe to pass a word on to somebody else. Somebody more important whose life can be saved," Glenn says.
And he'll have a lot of time ahead of him to do that, according to Dr. Martin.
"Right now he has coronary artery blood flow that is probably as good as a 20-year-old's."
