The new year has taken quite a turn for me -- I had a heart attack on the first. It couldn't really be a heart attack I thought. I mean my blood pressure and colestoral have never been high enough to be a problem and I finished the Portland Marathon just a few months ago . The pain hadn't gone away by Friday so we decided it was time to check with the doc.
My regular doctor was taking the day off but I had him paged and he suggested the emergency room. Since we were sure it wasn't really a heart attack, we went to a doc-in-a-box place only to have them tell us that they don't have the facilities to handle what might be a heart attack (this after waiting and hour). So finally to the emergency room of our local hospital.
They took blood and did an EKG and kept shaking their heads because I didn't "look like I'd had a heart attack". They gave me esophagus numbing stuff to see if it was a stomach problem. The finally the lab work came back and, low and behold, the "something happened to your heart" emzimes were elevated. And the cardiologist looked at the EKG and he said some thing wasn't right.
So, Friday night was spent at that hospital being monitored and pumped full of blood thinning and platlet taming potions. Saturday I was transported in an ambulance to the big cardiology center where they continuted to monitor and pump me full of chemicals.
Saturday, I had an angiogram. That's where they run a tube up an artery in your leg to your heart, inject die and then look to see where the die goes to find blockages and constrictions. The cardiologist figured that, since I was a young fellow, they'd find a small constriction that they could fix with a stint and send me on my way. Saddly, they found several problems and I'm now scheduled for triple by-pass surgery tomorrow.
I'm writing this from my hospital bed and, after open heart surgery, I probably won't have many updates for the next week. If I'm one of the 1.5 in a hundred that doesn't survive this major surgery, you might not hear from me at all. But, I'm rather young for this surgery so my chance of survival is very good.
Wish me luck.