Here's Nick, looking skinnier but good, about a week after his semi-emergency triple bypass surgery. When I arrived at his house, he was walking along McKinley Boulevard more briskly than the typical 50-year-old American, decked out in his signiture down vest. This garment, like most of Nick's wardrobe, hasn't been in style for years. He looks a lot of Marty McFly in Back to the Future.
Nick immediately agreed to violate all aspects of doctor-patient confidentiality, on tape, for total exposure in the Geezer Rock blog. "I'm public property now," Nick said, taking a seat on his couch.
If you plan on persuing Geezer Rock stardom, this is an important lesson: admit everything publicly, like Nick. This way, the scandal sheets can't blackmail you later. From my perspective, a cooperative subject like Nick saved me the time and trouble involved with bribing his caregivers for juicy tidbits and hiding in his bushes, waiting to leap out paparazzi style for exclusive photos as Nick returns from his therapeutic walks.
Here is the first half of our interview.
Q: So I want to get your reaction on tape to this news: I get an e-mail from Player X last night that says “in view of al the delays, I think it’s best that I leave the band KDOG at this time.
Nick: You know what? Here’s my reaction. I kind of knew that he was shaky. I kind of felt like that. As far as the gig that we were supposed to have at the Hilltop – that had to happen. Or we’d lose Player X. As it turns out, that’s what happened. You know, Dave (Mering) came to me and said the band should not play out of respect for my situation, but you guys have a lot of time and money invested in the band and it had to go on. (Director’s commentary: Dave Mering is Nick’s childhood pal – and a long time friend of mine, too.)
Q: I talked to Dave. He told me the same thing. I said, “Dave, we’ve got to keep going or there won’t be a band for Nick to come back to.” He just reacted that way because Kenton drives him crazy sometimes. He said, “Dean, if you were hit by a bus tomorrow, Kenton would go on as a solo act.”
Nick: He’s roll us in there as cadavers. I think when you go out on Craig’s List to find these guys (like Player X), there’s mercenary guys who want to get plugged into a band and start working.
Q: I’m through with Craig’s List. I’m going to try networking. Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who wants to be in a band.
Nick: Who wants to Geezer Rock?
Q: Right. You look great. You lost some weight.
Nick: I probably lost about 10 pounds. But I feel good. I really do feel good. I went to a strange health farm where they reconfigured my pipes and I lost 10 pounds.
Q: Any good-looking nurses?
Nick: You know what? They were all good looking. The weird thing about it is I was going through all kinds of almost like psychotic episodes. The nurses would come in and they’d be in color. Then after awhile they’d be gray. This applied to everybody. But the nurses were great. They were absolutely fantastic. The care that I got was just extraordinary.
Q: Let’s go back to Monday night – the Monday you came in and said “No, I don’t want a 99-cent Double Cheeseburger.”
Nick: I was pretty much going to keep this all to myself. I had just done the stress test. The doctor said, “You have a problem.” With some gravity in his voice. He said “We’re going to have you do a heart cath on Friday. You may need a medication. Or you may need a stent. It’s something we can treat.
Q: Whey did they suddenly change their minds about acid reflux?
Nick: Well, I scheduled a colonoscopy with the primary care guy since I’m 50. When you’re fifty you need to have these tests. I did through him an upper gastro. You know, when you drink the barium. That showed mild reflux. So there was some reason to believe that this pressure feeling could be caused by that. Some months went on. Finally, I got tired of it. So I called him and I said “Schedule me for a colonoscopy.” Then when I went in for my workup on that, I asked the gastro guy “Look, when I’m walking I get these gas pains. They go away, sometimes with burping, sometimes without burping.” I had been trying to figure this out for myself. I had been surfing Web MD almost every day. I probably have 100,000 hits on there. I got to the point where I thought I had some sort of peanut allergy. That’s how crazy I was getting. So this proctologist said, “you know, I don’t think this sounds like acid reflux. I want you to go back to your internist and I want him to do an EKG on you. I want to rule out the possibility that this is a heart situation. So he ran an EKG on me. And there was just a little abnormality. A little blip where it should’ve stayed straight. He said “Well, I’m going to send you to a cardiologist.” So I went in a talked to him. The first thing he did was a family history. He didn’t talk symptoms. (Nick’s dad died from a massive heart attack at 55.) He wanted the whole heart profile. Fortunately, I knew it pretty well. He said “okay, let’s schedule you for an echo stress.” I had an echo stress five years ago. It turned out absolutely normal. So fast forward. Monday, I go in and that gal’s prepping. She says, “Don’t be worried. He really pushes his patients so you may be on this thing (the treadmill) 15 minutes. So she got me all hooked up. The got me on the treadmill. The EKG is printing out as I’m going. He said, “If you feel any symptoms, let me know immediately.” So we went through stage one. No problems at all. So we go to stage two. It’s a little faster, with a slight incline. Then I started feeling the pressure. Just a little. It’s really vague. After I told him that, he said, “Okay, I’m going to have you stop. So we stopped. I sat down. He’s shuffling papers and moving his eyeglass around. I could see there was something of interest there. Finally he said, “You have a problem.” At that point, I was kind of mildly shocked. Then he went over to check the screen with his assistant. And I said, “Wow, there’s something compelling enough there.” He said, “I think you have a problem. I don’t think it’s too much. We’d like for you to have a heart cath.” He looked at my schedule and said “Let’s do it on Friday.” This was Monday. I came to practice. It was a couple of hours after all of this. I noticed the bag of 99-cent burgers. That was really conflicting for me. I wanted to dive right in. But I didn’t think that was advisable. I didn’t want to tell anybody. But I thought I should at least tell you guys.
Q: If it had been me or Kenton, it would have been the first thing discussed: “I’m dying! I’m dying! Can you make it to my funeral if we schedule it for Saturday?”
Nick: But the number of people I was going to tell was pretty small. Obviously, I didn’t know what was going to happen.
Q: Of course, I immediately put it up on the Geezer Rock Blog, which sort of killed your plan to keep it quiet. I think that’s how Dave found out.
Nick: I saw the gleam in your eye as you thought, “Oh, this would be perfect for the Geezer Rock Blog. This could be a gem.” I public property now. I thought that was funny. By Tuesday, I thought “You know, man, I don’t want to be sweating this thing until Friday.” So I called and they could fit me on Wednesday. Anyway, Dave called me on Tuesday night after reading the blog and said, “What the hell is going on?” I said, “Oh, nothing. I’m just sitting around here watching TV.” And he says, “No, I’m talking about the blog. You’re having a test on Friday?” I said, “No, I moved it to tomorrow.” We joked quite a bit about it. As a hypochondriac, I’ve been through lots of exams and you can tell that these exams now that I’m getting, there’s a lot more interest and there’s a lot more energy that’s going on in the rooms. You know, as a hypochondriac, you go in and say, “Well, my foot kinda hurts and my finger kinda hurts and I’m kinda limping and I’m burping occasionally. And they go, “Oh, really.” “So doctor – what is that? “Uh, I don’t know but here’s a prescription for whatever.” It wasn’t like that here. People were actually interested. Anyway, so I moved my cath procedure up to Wednesday. The time line’s getting kind of fuzzy here. So it’s Wednesday, 5:30 in the morning and I’m standing in line with three 80 year old men, filling out my paperwork. The real geezers.
Q: Did you ask them if any of them played bass or wanted to be in a band?
Nick: I’m going to talk about this guy Mr. Peabody later. (This is not the man’s real name.) He may make a great lead singer. Anyway, I’m standing in line with these three 80 year old men and everybody’s looking at me like “Well, this guy’s pretty young.” So they take me in and they get me all shaved down. The gal who shaved me had a bit of a sense of humor because she left a patch like this. (Editor’s Note: Nick has what now might be called a “Brazilian Wax” with a little moustache like patch of hair floating over his “love delivery system.”)
Q: I think she’s going to be calling you up later.
Nick: Yeah. So, they roll me in and my doctor comes in and they do the heart cath. And there’s probably about five technicians in there now. And they’re moving stuff around. They start shooting the dye. And now again, the same type of energy. People were moving around, things were shifting. People are interested in what they’re seeing. This is not just ‘Oh, he’s got one little vein that’s jumping around.” I’m thinking, “oh, they’re going to give me some Xanax or some medication for my heart or they might do a stent. That’s basically what they had proposed. So they roll me out of there. They roll me past the receptionist. And she goes “hey, I know you, don’t I? Where would I know you from?” I said, “Probably from walking out in front of the hospital every morning. Which I do. That was my normal route. I walk there, between 3 and 5 miles every morning. So she probably saw me walking. I said, “I shouldn’t be here.” So they roll me (into recovery). And after 15 minutes or so, my doctor came in and said, “Uh, you have to have a bypass.”
Next: Nick goes under the knife and bunks with a confused elderly patient in intensive care! Plus: shocking photos of Nick's scar!
©2007 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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