The regular First Wednesday Seattle tune session will not be held this
month,
March 5 at Vivian and Phil Williams' place, due to Phil W being in
Virginia
Mason Hospital's ICU beginning his recovery from heart bypass surgery that
afternoon. Two large and two smaller vessels will be worked on.
The scary news, of course, is that this icon of the Seattle trad music
scene
has to have chest surgery. The better news, however, as I've heard it, is
that
the clogged vessels were discovered in testing after some relatively
minor
symptoms, before cardiac or other deterioration had had a chance to occur.
An
indication of this is that the surgery was not required to be scheduled on
an
emergency basis, once the problem was discovered. Phil and Vivian did, in
fact, play a gig this afternoon; Phil had been directed to more or less do
his
regular activities until the surgery.
A point of comparison is that a goodly number of years ago, NH piano
player
Bob McQuillen, at an age a few years older than Phil W is now, _did_ have
some
substantial symptoms and _was_ taken immediately in for a 5-way bypass.
Bob
made a full recovery and was observed, some months later, going up six
flights
of stairs, without stopping, from the parking lot to the ballroom level of
the
building used for the Ralph Page Weekend in NH.
So hold Phil W in your thoughts and be thankful that the problem occurred
in
these times of modern medicine, and was discovered. Also that their HMO
covers
it virtually all.
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