In 2015, during the budget sequestration when so many contractors found themselves out of work, Kurt suffered an AFIB incident. He noticed that his heart was beating kind of fast, but in the middle of contacting recruiters and setting up interviews while worrying over not being employed, he just toughed it out after remarking on it. A few days later, he set up an appointment with a Dr. who did an in office test and promptly told him he needed to get over to the hospital immediately without delay.
Kurt called me en route: “Next time YOU pick the Dr.! This one wants me to go right to the hospital!”
When I came to see him, he was interviewing on the phone from the hospital bed—just there for some tests! He had no idea of the seriousness of the situation.
They kept him at the hospital to take as many tests as were needed and to come up with a working plan that would keep his heart stable. His heart wasn’t responding to “muscle memory”. The Drs. were worried about blood clots with AFIB and said that there was no telling how long he had AFIB, because this was a stubborn case that refused to cooperate. The Drs. were amazed that he reported not feeling any different after the treatments–nor “heart jumping out of chest” sensations or weight on it, no previous dizziness or overwhelming fatigue. Apparently he may have been someone whohad AFIB for a long time and lived with it undiagnosed so he now had a new normal that would require taking regular monitoring.
Unfortunately, the typical meds simply were not working on him . Eventually, they turned to electro cardioversion, where a high-energy shock is sent to the heart to reset a normal rhythm and it seemed to do the trick.
Now the second part of the mystery…Kurt seemed to me to be a very healthy person overall except for disc issues from a diving accident, tree nut allergies and a definite enjoyment of food so his weight would fluctuate quite a bit. He did have kidney stone issues crop up in 2015-16 until they were obliterated and again in 2021 with a hidden one, as he may have mentioned to friends when he was suffering through them at the office.Also, he apparently had “unspecified asthma”–not that there was any sign of that at home. Otherwise, the tests his Drs. put him through always came out good—no major issues. But, there had been lung issues that began to crop up only after we moved to Westminster AND our “front yard” of about 9 acres became terraformed for a new housing development. It was then that he pinpointed the start of horrible chest colds that would last for weeks and he would get them every year afterwards. When he went into the hospital, he had one of the chest colds which the Drs said was “community pneumonia”, his oxygen stats while having this atrial fibrillation problem were in the 80’s so they would not let him go home until they went back up to normal.
He hated being in the hospital after so many days and hyper-ventilated to get his O2 readings up and knocked himself right back into dangerous AFIB again. The only recourse was a drug called Amiodarone. This is a “last resort” black box drug that works by building up in the tissues and is used for AFIB though not officially approved. Unfortunately, it has a very high toxicity and patients on amiodarone therapy have to see a number of various Drs. to screen for possible side effects. Kurt was fine until December 2020 when the telltale markings of amiodarone poisoning showed up in scans and rapidly progressed in January. He had oxygen therapy at home that he had on hand should he need it. Meanwhile, he also got his winter chest cold on top of the amiodarone poisoning. So his lungs were wrecked.
The man went to work on a steroids prescription, having been taken off amiodarone, up until February 26th when he would come home late from being on the second shift, have late dinner and watch shows and use the oxygen converter. Finally, he couldn’t go in any more because nothing was working to keep his oxygen levels high enough and he had to go into the hospital on March 2. They thought he had pneumonia and tried treating him for that, but nothing they did was working. So he was medivacced out, intubated, to University of Maryland Medical Center and pronounced as end stage lung disease with his only hope being a double transplant. He did not make the necessary criteria for success.
Kurt Kjeld Christensen passed away in the UMMC hospital on March 13th with as much family as covid restrictions would allow. We loved him.