Medical emergency won’t stop the music

Playing during Hospitality Night in Laguna Beach might not have been doctors’ orders, but it turned out to be some of the best medicine for musician Ken Garcia.

Garcia, 57, who founded the Ken Garcia Band in the 1990s, delighted the crowd with his guitar playing at the city’s annual holiday party Dec. 5, less than a month after suffering a brain aneurysm that forced him to spend three weeks in the intensive care unit.

For Garcia, playing that evening in downtown Laguna was the perfect relaxing outlet.

“I felt like I was in heaven,” said Garcia, a dentist who opened Island Dentistry in town in 2002. “I had no pain and didn’t think about the brain.”

His wife, Jody, had the car ready just in case Garcia felt ill.

It was a headache on Nov. 11 that sent Garcia to the emergency room. He described the pain as persistent and unusual.

“It was the most blazing headache I’ve experienced,” Garcia said. “I couldn’t turn my neck side to side. It was so intense that I woke my wife up.”

Jody called Kaiser Permanente and spoke to a nurse who asked Garcia a series of questions.

“They said you could be bleeding in the head. You better come to the hospital,” Garcia said.

Garcia went to Kaiser’s Irvine facility and had a CAT scan. Results showed bleeding in his brain, so paramedics took him to an Anaheim hospital.

Doctors performed an angiogram and admitted Garcia to the ICU.

“That morning my new doctor told me that they couldn’t find anything, but they were going to do another angiogram after a week because they said the blood would wash out of my head and they could see more,” Garcia said. “If not, then I would be one of the lucky ones who just had a bleed with no reason and would be going home soon.”

But after the second angiogram, doctors found a small brain aneurysm, a bulging, weak area in the wall of an artery that supplies blood to the brain.

After taking an MRI and discussing treatment options,

doctors told him they needed to take action.

“The radiologist told me that he would do a procedure where he would place a micro catheter in my femoral artery all the way to my brain and right to the aneurysm and shoot it with onyx [a glue-like substance], killing the aneurysm, but also the branch leading off the aneurysm, creating a stroke,” Garcia said.

“He also said that there was a 40% chance that I would not wake up from the procedure. I was really scared.”

The surgery was set for the morning of Nov. 24. That afternoon Garcia woke to the surgery team congratulating him.

Doctors moved him back to the ICU for the next two days, but the challenging part was just beginning.

“Those two days were the worst I felt in my entire stay at the hospital,” Garcia said. “I was disoriented, blood pressure was high and was feeling really weak and dizzy.”

Jody stayed with him, and friends Pete and Judy Gilmore watched the couple’s two children.

Garcia was released from the hospital Nov. 29 and went back to coaching his son’s basketball games and trying to return to a normal routine. He returned to work Tuesday.

Garcia said he is a changed man after the aneurysm.

“I have anxiety and so many emotions,” Garcia said. “I would never expect something like this could happen. I’m scared of getting the feeling again. I’ve got young kids. I coach my son’s teams. I’m so involved so when I was on that bed I was depressed.”

He said the incident made him realize he might need to slow down a bit.

“I always try to coach better, find a better way to do my [dental] surgeries, always willing to try new things,” Garcia said. “I want to try to be more at peace.”

That is why Hospitality Night was so good, he said.

Garcia plans to play Saturday during Winter Fantasy at the Sawdust Festival and next spring at the Blue Water Music Festival.

Music promoter Rick Conkey said Garcia’s influence on Laguna’s music scene is indelible. The band plays a diverse set of music but is known for Latin jazz.

“He has added a different flavor, with his Latin focus,” said Conkey, who has known Garcia for about 15 years. “This entire town has some of the best guitar players in the world, and he is a major part of that scene.”