What happens if this guy dies?
From the AP:
The 78-year-old lawyer who was shot by Vice President Dick Cheney in a hunting accident has some birdshot lodged in his heart and he had a “a minor heart attack” Tuesday morning, hospital officials said.
The victim, Harry Whittington, was immediately moved back to the intensive care unit for further treatment, said Peter Banko, the administrator at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial in Texas.
Banko said there was an irregularity in the heartbeat caused by a pellet, and doctors performed a cardiac catheterization. Whittington expressed a desire to leave the hospital, but Banko said he would probably stay for another week to make sure more shot doesn’t move to other organs or to other part of his body.
“Some of the bird shot appears to have moved and lodged into part of his heart in what we would say is a minor heart attack,” Banko said in a news conference outside the hospital.
The doctors said Whittington did not experience symptoms of a heart attack or any other problems. They left the birdshot in place and said he could live a healthy life with it there.
David Blanchard, chief of emergency care, called it “a silent heart attack, an asymptomatic heart attack. He’s not had a heart attack in the traditional sense.”
White House physicians who attended to Whittington at the scene after Cheney accidentally shot him were involved in the treatment, the officials said.
Whittington had initially been placed in intensive care after the accident Saturday evening. He had been moved to a “step-down unit” Monday after doctors decided to leave several birdshot pellets lodged in his skin rather than try to remove them.