
← The One Percent Heart16 sept. · 1 h 10 min
Mechanical Heart Valve vs. the Grand Canyon | Bob Smith Returns!
<p>Three weeks after a helicopter lifted him out of the Grand Canyon, Bob Smith went climbing.</p><p>Bob is back on The One Percent Heart. Last time he told us about El Capitan. This time he is halfway down a fourteen day run on the Colorado when a rapid called Horn throws him out of the boat and drives him into a rock wall. He is on warfarin for a mechanical aortic valve, which makes bleeding much harder to stop. The "just a bruise" joke in this episode is doing a lot of work. It was a hematoma that nearly doubled the size of his glute, and it ended his trip on a National Park Service helicopter.</p><p>There is an ER doctor who cannot work out why a man on blood thinners would be on that river at all. There is a week alone in a Flagstaff hotel while his friends finish without him. And there is Joe, in California, who found Bob's Instagram before his own heart surgery and wanted to hear it from someone who had already been through it. That last part is a lot of what adult CHD looks like now. Patients calling patients, because nobody wrote the manual.</p><p>The accident is part of the story. The life he intends to keep living is the rest of it.</p><p>📺 CHAPTERS<br>00:00 Cold open and introduction<br>00:54 Who Bob is, and what's in his chest<br>03:02 What sport climbing actually is<br>05:26 What a fall feels like on blood thinners<br>08:22 Nosferatus: the cave route in Mexico that made his legs bleed<br>14:30 The candy store mentality<br>17:00 Drezden ruptures a tricep<br>18:52 Fourteen days on the Colorado River<br>21:02 Horn Rapid<br>22:52 Thrown from the boat<br>26:42 "I'm not really sure if I can move"<br>30:16 One light beer at 115 degrees<br>32:08 A glute that doubled in size<br>35:14 Calling for a helicopter<br>37:23 Warfarin, INR, and bleeding into the muscle<br>39:14 Twenty five minutes to evac<br>41:59 The helmet debate<br>44:58 What an impact would mean for the valve<br>47:00 Turning down the painkiller<br>50:59 CT scan and two bags of plasma<br>55:44 A week alone in Flagstaff<br>56:46 Back on the wall three weeks later<br>58:22 The ER doctor who didn't get it<br>1:01:09 Joe, and the calls before surgery<br>1:05:34 Why he hates bucket lists<br>1:07:42 Where to find Bob</p><p>▶️ WATCH BOB'S FIRST EPISODE<br>Rock climbing El Capitan with a mechanical valve: <a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=zBLi5I8fq0c">https://youtube.com/watch?v=zBLi5I8fq0c</a></p><p>🔗 FIND BOB<br>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagr