Fishermen’s Hearts
by Sandra Dinsmore
Blue Hill cardiologist Dennis Desilvey not only has many lobster fishermen patients, he has his own non-commercial license and fishes lobster, too. Listening to his fishermen patients’ complaints and having first-hand knowledge of the difficulty of their work gives him particular understanding of fishermen’s heart problems.
Asked why so many lobster fishermen have heart stents by the time they reach their fifties, Desilvey said it’s a combination of family history, lifestyle, and a stressful life. “Their diet is poor,” he said. “Fishermen rarely eat breakfast, they eat lunch on the run, and they go to bed right after eating supper.”
Scituate, Massachusetts, lobsterman Fred Dauphinee, 74, who had a heart attack at 50, agrees with Desilvey’s take on fishermen’s diet, admitting, “That’s about right.”
Noting that many fishermen are overweight, Desilvey stated that fishermen don’t have the time or inclination to get cardiovascular exercise. Dauphinee agreed, saying, “We spend every waking minute working on traps, working on rope, working on the boat, we’re out fishing, we’re running our catch somewhere, we’re looking for bait.” He added that after his heart attack he had to take six months off from work. (His sons ran his boat for him.) Seven years later Dauphinee had to have a three-way heart bypass, and in 2012 and 2013, 20 and 21 years after the heart attack, he had stents put in two blocked blood vessels. He said, “Each time I had heart trouble I lost time fishing.” He also had to do heart-strengthening walking exercise.
Cape Ann lobster fisherman Bob Morris, 57, who had a near heart attack at about 54, followed by other heart issues, says some fellow fishermen say they get enough exercise walking up and down the deck or that hauling traps is hard work and will keep the heart strong. But Morris was taught in heart health class that this is not the case. Lifting such weights as traps builds stamina and muscle, but provides little benefit to the heart. Morris sees only a couple of other fishermen walking. “The vast majority,” he said, “appear not interested in any cardio.”
But this may be because they simply don’t have time. Dauphinee’s next-door neighbor goes to the gym three times a week, but when the neighbor is at the gym, Dauphinee said he is busy with some aspect of fishing. And he knows he should be exercising; he majored in physical education at college.
Last fall the South Shore fisherman walked for about a month, but only because it was blowing all the time. On windy days he’d take a walk. “That’s what you have to do,” Dauphinee said. “You can’t walk every day; you can only do it on a day when the wind’s blowing or it’s raining or snowing. It’s a tough situation.”
Morris said many of his friends have been advised to buy a treadmill, but he has told them that such a machine would end up at the town dump. He opined, “A fisherman who has spent years looking out the forward window of his boat at oncoming seas or the beauty of being on the water will probably not do so well staring at the wall in his home while on a treadmill.”
Although Desilvey said of fishermen, “It’s a tough life. Health care is not high on their priority list,” that generalization may not apply to all fishermen.
Morris is quick to admit that he is in what he calls a state of neglect after an extremely hard winter, but intends to start again and get back into a healthier state. To do so, he believes in tricking his mind to get past pain. He remembers thinking to himself when he was first trying to get his health back, How the boys that suffered the Bataan Death March would like to be me now, and said, “I would carry on through the pain in honor of those who suffered.”
Dauphinee also mentioned that fishermen can’t take care of their teeth or their hearing because they can’t take a day off. He said, “If dentists and doctors had night hours, so you could do your work and then at night go see the dentist, that would be fine. But they’re not going to do that, so you miss out. It’s the way with everything.”
Unlike Morris, who looks at heart health the way he looks at an old boat engine—“You do your best to keep the son of a gun running,” he said, “but you know one day she’s gonna quit on you”—Dauphinee is fearful that every day may be his last. Yet he wants to continue to work because of the many people he has known who quit their job or retired and within a year were dead. He said, “I’m basically trying to stay alive.” The waters of southern Massachusetts do not produce great catches, but Dauphinee said, “As long as I can get up the next day and do it again, I’m happy.”
Healthy Heart
To keep a healthy heart, Morris suggests:
1. Walk no fewer than three days a week
2. Elevate the heart rate to a personally safe level for a steady 30 minutes (no stopping for a chat, etc.)
3. Buy new sneakers or walking shoes each year (the rubber breaks down, providing less support and shock absorption)
4. Eat a proper diet matched to your needs
5. Guard against excuses for procrastination