Senator returns to work in D.C.

Boozman looks to full recovery

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. John Boozman is back in Washington seven weeks after emergency heart surgery repaired a tear in his aorta.

In an interview in his Capitol Hill office Monday, the 63-year-old Republican from Rogers said he still plans to run for re-election in 2016.

"I'm back; my medical professionals tell me that I'm doing great and that I should look forward to a full recovery and be better than ever," he said. "I'm certainly going to take my time and ease back into it, but I really feel very, very good, and I've been careful not to come back too early."

Boozman underwent a nine-hour emergency heart surgery April 22 after being rushed to the emergency room by his wife, Cathy Boozman, in the early morning hours and being diagnosed with an acute aortic dissection.

A dissection involves a tear in the inner wall of the aorta, the large blood vessel branching off the heart, according to the Mayo Clinic. The tear allows blood to flow into the middle layer of the aorta, causing the inner and middle layers to separate, or dissect. If the blood-filled channel ruptures through the outside aortic wall, it can be fatal.

The surgery commonly involves removing as much of the dissected aorta as possible, blocking blood from entering the aortic wall and rebuilding the aorta with a synthetic tube called a graft, according to the clinic.

Boozman said that on the night before going to the hospital, he went to bed after attending a Northwest Arkansas Naturals baseball game in Springdale.

A few minutes later, he started feeling cramps in his side and couldn't get comfortable.

"It really felt like there was something wrong, so I took my blood pressure, and my blood pressure dropped pretty significantly," Boozman said.

He had his wife check her blood pressure to make sure the machine was working.

"She took hers, and it was fine, so I said, 'I need to go to the doctor,'" he said. Rather than tough out the pain -- which he said he would do normally -- he went to the emergency room immediately.

"That's really the thing that saved me. If I hadn't gone that evening, I probably wouldn't have lived through it," he said.

Boozman said he chatted with nurses and doctors in the hospital as he was checked in and got an electrocardiogram. But once doctors performed an MRI scan and found the tear, "the tone completely changed," Boozman said.

"You're fine, and then the next second, you're being told by your surgeon that there's a good chance you're not going to make it," he said.

Boozman said that apart from the tear, his heart was healthy.

His blood pressure wasn't considered unusually high; he didn't have diabetes; and there wasn't fat around his heart.

The condition is uncommon and occurs most frequently in men between ages 60 and 70. Symptoms are similar to a heart attack and the chances of survival increase greatly if it is caught and treated quickly, according to the Mayo Clinic.

"Many people never make it to the hospital; many people never make it off the operating room table, but if you get through it ... things ought to be better than ever," Boozman said. "My doctor tells me I could be hit by a Mack truck and my aorta would be fine."

He praised the staff at Mercy Hospital in Rogers and called it "remarkable" that the town of about 59,000 people is home to specialists who diagnosed the problem and operated quickly.

"I was a guy that was in small-town America and got as good of care as I could have gotten any place in the world, and I think we can be very, very proud of that. I think that is something we really have to fight for as we go forward in the future with whatever health-care system that we have," he said. "If I had had to travel a long distance, I probably wouldn't have made it."

Boozman spent time in intensive care and was released from the hospital within a week.

"I was so weak that I literally could not walk from here to the door," he said, pointing about 10 feet away. "And once I did that and came back, it might take me two hours to recover. I'd be very short of breath and just kind of pant until I was able to breathe."

He said he and his wife were grateful for prayers for a quick recovery.

"The good news is, they were answered," he said.

After two to three weeks, he regained enough strength to start cardiac rehabilitation, which involved walking on a treadmill, he said.

"[I] did exactly what the doctors told me, stayed home and just kind of rested," he said. "While you're recovering, you have a lot of time to reflect. It makes you appreciate on a day-to-day basis little things a little bit more."

Last week he was cleared to come back to Washington. Boozman came to his office Friday, but Monday evening was the first time he cast a vote, on judicial nominations.

Still, his doctors told him to take it easy for a few more weeks. Boozman said pacing himself in Washington, where work is often marked by long hours, means identifying what he has to do versus what he wants to do.

He said he was told "basically to use your gut instinct if you're pushing too hard and need to back off."

Metro on 06/10/2014

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