Send Fmr. President Bill Clinton your well wishes

[Ivan]

http://www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org/contact.php


Clinton undergoing heart bypass surgery
By Associated Press
Monday, September 6, 2004
http://news.bostonherald.com/national/view.bg?articleid=43002

NEW YORK - Former President Bill Clinton was in the operating room Monday for heart bypass surgery, a hospital source told The Associated Press.
 
      Preparations for the surgery began at about 6:45 a.m. at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia in upper Manhattan, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The operation was expected to last until noon or 12:30 p.m. EDT.
 
      The surgical team was being led by Dr. Craig R. Smith, chief of cardiothoracic surgery, the source said.
 
      The hospital source said it was unclear exactly what time the extensive preparations for surgery were ending and the actual operation beginning. Aides to both the former president and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, did not return calls for comment. Jonathan Weil, spokesman for the hospital, said he had no comment.
 
      A separate source close to the former president, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Clinton told him the surgery was scheduled for Monday morning.
 
      Clinton, 58, was hospitalized Friday after suffering chest pains and shortness of breath.
 
      Clinton and his family issued a statement on the Clinton Foundation's Web site on Sunday, saying they felt ``blessed and grateful for the thousands of prayers and messages of good will we have received these past few days.'' They also expressed thanks that the medical problem was detected in time.
 
      In bypass surgery, doctors remove a blood vessel from elsewhere in the body and attach it to the heart, detouring blood around blockages. The vessel typically comes from the leg, although doctors sometimes take it from an arm or the stomach.
 
      Doctors say the surgery is a routine procedure and Clinton should recover within a month or two.
 
      In a telephone call Friday evening to CNN's ``Larry King Live,'' Clinton said he was ``a little scared, but not much.''
 
      ``I'm looking forward to it,'' Clinton said of the surgery. ``I want to get back. I want to see what it's like to run five miles again.''
 
      Clinton's tests showed no heart attack, but a source close to the family said there were three or four clogged arteries. Several surgeons uninvolved in Clinton's care said they didn't think his doctors would risk treating him with newer, experimental approaches like robotic surgery or laparoscopy, sometimes called keyhole surgery.
 
      ``With three-vessel disease in a president, I don't think I'd be doing it,'' said Dr. W. Randolph Chitwood, chief of cardiovascular surgery at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., and a spokesman for the American College of Cardiology.
 
      Because Clinton is only 58 and in good health, ``he'll do fine'' with traditional open-heart surgery, Chitwood said.
 
      Although deaths from bypass procedures are rare, Columbia-Presbyterian has the highest death rate for coronary bypass surgeries in New York state - 3.93 percent in 2001, according to a report by the state Health Department. The statewide average is 2.18 percent.
 
      The Clinton family had no comment on that report, The New York Times reported in Monday editions.
 
      Clinton has blamed the blockage in part on genetics but also said he ``may have done some damage in those years when I was too careless about what I ate.''
 
      As president, Clinton was an avid jogger but also known for his love of fast food. He has appeared much slimmer since early in the year, when he said he had cut out junk food, gone on the South Beach diet - which limits carbohydrates and fats - and started a workout regimen.
 
      Clinton had a cancerous growth removed from his back shortly after leaving office, and earlier had a precancerous lesion removed from his nose. He has also battled allergies.
 
      But otherwise, Clinton suffered only the problems that often accompany normal aging and a taste for junk food - periods of slightly elevated cholesterol and hearing loss.
 
      Clinton should spend less than a week in the hospital, and may have some mood swings, loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping or other problems afterward, but should fully recover in a month or two.
 
      On Saturday night, Clinton had a long telephone conversation with Sen. John Kerry [related, bio] on presidential campaign strategy, said a Democratic official familiar with the talk who spoke on condition of anonymity. Before he fell ill, Clinton had expected to campaign for Kerry.

[white Boy]

go get em bill!