LAKE COUNTY — County Supervisor Rob Brown said he is on the mend after complications with what should have been a routine procedure two weeks ago.
“I knew the early warning signs, and I wasn”t feeling 100 percent,” Brown said. Sluggishness and chest pains told him he needed to see his doctor. A heart attack six years ago taught him well.
Brown said doctors put a stint in one of the main arteries to his heart that was blocked after the attack. Now, Brown said, he has two stints after what he called a simple, outpatient procedure on March 20.
Brown said he was released two days later, when the procedure might sometimes require one night”s stay at a hospital. Brown said he wanted to keep the details about his health as private as possible, but revealed that an unexpected development kept him there longer than he had thought.
“There were complications to the stint procedure that caused unnecessary delays in the recovery process. It turned a few days” recovery into a few weeks, but those few days made some progress,” Brown said.
Brown left the March 25 board of supervisors meeting early after a quagga mussel discussion. He said he was feeling bad and got worse later in the week, landing him back in the hospital for three days.
His decision to stay home and take care of himself Tuesday meant that the Lake County Board of Supervisors did not have a quorum, or a majority. Of the five supervisors on the board, two were away on trips to Washington, D.C., according to assistant clerk Mireya Turner. With Brown unexpectedly calling in sick, the meeting was put over until April 8.
“There”s still a lot of work that needs to be done. Fortunately, a lot of it can be done from home,” Brown said.
“I”ve been spending a lot of time working hard to get the MDIC (multidisciplinary interview center) done,” Brown said. Prosecutors will be able to record child victims” statements for use in court, lessening a child”s need to re-tell the story of his or her victimization to multiple interviewers. Housed behind the Lake County Victim-Witness building, the center is under construction.
Brown largely coordinated the community”s efforts to get the building up and running, sometimes putting in the necessary manual labor himself. Brown said that he may need to “slow down.”
“The plus out of all of this is that people should be encouraged not to wait till the last minute to see their doctor if something isn”t right,” Brown said.
A hereditary artery condition makes Brown susceptible to heart attack. He said his proactive approach averted a second heart attack. Brown is running for re-election in his district ? supervisor district 5 ? which includes Kelseyville, Clear Lake Rivieras, Buckingham, Loch Lomond, and parts of the Cobb Mountain area.
“I am feeling really good,” Brown said. He plans to be at the April 8 board of supervisors meeting.
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