Tag Archives: heart attack

A New Adventure Begins

22 Friday Sep 2017

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Discerning readers will vaguely recall that I had my first heart attack the day before last New Year’s Eve. This surprised absolutely nobody, as my BMI is pushing 50 the way those guys on the Tokyo subways cram in the commuters. It wasn’t a BIG heart attack, feeling more like recalcitrant indigestion, but when they got inside with the widdy-bitty camera, my right coronary artery was 95% blocked. A little bit of titanium fixed that mo-fo, but in the recovery room, a nurse shared that they called situations like mine “One cheeseburger away.” (Hear that, Elizabeth? I’m comin’ to join ya, honey!)

Since then I have been on three new meds and had the dosage cranked on the Lipitor. And I’ve felt fine, except for a rather Victorian over-attention to my heart. I went in to see the cardiologist for the six-ish month check-in this Monday expecting only to possibly be released from a pill or two.

Instead, he scolded me for letting the baby aspirin lapse, and told me I was taking it for the rest of my life. And while he was on the topic of “the rest of my life,” he in so many words intimated that it would be a short story unless . . .

“Have you ever thought of bariatric surgery?”

Now, every fat person in the Western world has at least thought about it, so I parried by sharing my PCP’s aversion to the practice. (Malabsorption issues.) The cardiologist pooh-poohed this; said they had that under control, and went down the list: Diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and the ever-looming sin of having a heart-attack at only 54.

Now, I am something of a fat activist. People were saying stupid stuff to me about my weight back when I was only 170, which is a hundred pounds or so ago. *I* was saying stupid stuff to myself back when I was in high school, at 129. I got tired of it after I had the kids and found that the baby weight had come to stay. So I left myself alone about it–started buying jeans that actually fit instead of jamming myself into a number that I thought was more reasonable than reality. I started being nicer to myself, which was groovy, seeing as sporadic attempts to Do Something about it kept putting another several pounds on, topped with the five I picked up from being sidelined by the double knee replacement last year.

I now weigh 274; been told I carry it well, but apparently my coronary artery wasn’t listening to the compliments.

The cardiologist, a former Marine, doesn’t do bullshit, but he doesn’t do fat-bashing, either. He was just laying out the facts, and this week I heard him. (It didn’t hurt that the podiatrist told me last week that my clumsy attempt to continue cutting my own toenails wasn’t gonna fly and I had to leave it to the professionals, ’cause I can’t really reach them anymore.)

I got referred to Local Hospital, which my insurance told me was out of network, and then went to (sigh) Beth Israel, where I had my knees done, so at least I know them there.

I discovered that the road to bariatric weight loss is long and dotted with hurdles: Mandatory info sessions. Psychologists. Social workers. And of course nutritionists and exercise physiologists and about a billion nurses. I need to have tried (failed) at least two formal attempts to lose weight. This is a bit of a sticking point for me, as I’ve never done Weight Watchers or fen-phen or any other fad, because I already knew what the surgery people posted in their PowerPoint: Only 5% of the people who do them succeed. At least I had a little time with a personal trainer. Sigh.

I don’t know how this story ends, but that’s the sitch whenever I begin a new book, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see. A big part of me wants to hide under the covers and pretend it’s not happening, but I know I need to be really social about this and have support. (Besides, it’s a Rule of the Blogosphere.)

Next stop for Beth Israel: I join a “new patient group.” Next stop for me: I tell my PCP on Monday. Yeep.

Season of Epiphany

07 Saturday Jan 2017

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I had a small heart attack a week ago, probably some little clot, and it led to the surprising discovery that my right coronary artery (that’s one of the big ones) was 95% blocked. They squooshed the clot with a balloon, and put in a teeny titanium tube to hold the artery open.

Yikes. Had to process this.

Confession:

Truth to tell, I was so ready to go, except for my being the material support of my kids. What was up with that? Feeling ready to quit. To be beaten. Life always wins, but it shouldn’t cheat that hard, and my Life seemed to hold mostly bad cards.

I wouldn’t say I was depressed, but I’d had no perceived purpose in life. Evolution was done with me, so that made the rest of it up to me. Problem was, I had no answers, just a vision of a blank wall coming closer and closer.

Now that I’ve seen the Precipice, I am ever so excited and joyous that I have been given another chance at life.

Another chance. Another life. Washed clean. My sins have been forgiven.

I feel different now. Every beat of the gelatinous sack of vibrating goo is special, sacred, valued, thanked. I love my heart now. This must mean something.

I think part of why I’m so happy is the sense that I mattered to some non-coincidental angel. I have realized that I am, actually, pretty damn cool, and that losing me would have been a Bad Thing.

Yeah, I need to get my books out, but in terms of purpose: If there’s a shortage of something on this Earth, it’s people who maximize their coolness. So why don’t I try to do that? Spread it as far and wide as I can. Try to make the world a better place, one smile at a time.

In return, I am prepared to be delighted with Life, having been shown with a tube of titanium where to look.

 

Season of the New Year

07 Saturday Jan 2017

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The day before New Year’s Eve, I got up from an indulgent post-breakfast nap with my throat on swollen fire. I had a column of nasty pain running up from about where the esophagus hits the stomach, all the way up to my jaw, and it was even going into my left arm a tad.

“GERD,” thought I. But it seemed unfair. It had been a small breakfast. And sitting up wasn’t relieving the pressure in my neck. It had never made it to my jaw before. Tried TUMS, tried milk, and sent the kid to the store for Mylanta. By the time he got home, I was feeling some better, but it was still bad. Mylanta did jack. That was when I . . .

. . . started Googling. Heaven forfend I act on impulse and call 911 or something. For GERD? It was most assuredly bad GERD. I’d had most of those symptoms before. But . . .

. . . women and chest pain, we’re weird. Both in the way it hits us, and in the way we handle it. That is to say, our cardiac symptoms are not classic, and ever since menarche, we are conditioned to shrug off pain. Tell you a secret, guys? We think you’re big, wussy babies; we tell jokes behind your backs about how tough you’d be with period cramps. Having a baby, ma’am? Walk it off!

SO there I was, fully dressed and ready to go–and not ready to go. My son, however, snarled at me, which is unlike him, so we . . . called a cab. No fuss here, just GERD.

They let us sit for ten minutes in the ER, which told me the admissions clerk must be just as impressed as I was with my chest pain, especially since I only got about a C+ on the little test she gave me, consisting of male-normed symptoms of The Big One. But they took me in, gave me an EKG–which I aced–and took some blood. I didn’t even ask them why, because that’s what they do: collect samples just-in-case, and send in some brave soul to put in an IV.

Welp, I failed the blood test. The resident was freakin’ perky as he told me that one of my heart enzymes was 50 times normal: My heart muscle had been damaged, and I had had a heart attack. Small, but undeniable.

“Oh, shit,” I said, and started to giggle. I mean, a heart attack? I’m 54. True, I have every other major risk factor except being a smoker (let’s not be excessive here), but it just seemed so surreal.

Because it was a three-day New Year’s weekend, I spent it in the hospital, waiting for the slightly fancier hospital’s center for angioplasty to open on Tuesday. I had many sticky things placed under my left boob and a heparin drip in my inevitably screechy IV. As holidays, despite visits and a good view of the fireworks, it sort of sucked.

Tuesday came, however, and I started off with an echocardiogram, which is a sonogram of the heart. I was a little appalled to learn that the heart doesn’t politely and sedately tap out a simple one-two; it dances sort of gelatinously, and the Doppler picked up several different rhythms, including “du-wacky-du-wacky-du.” What was this thing in my chest, anyway?  Then I had the angiogram.

I thought I’d known what it was and what it was up to.Wrong. Right coronary artery was 95% blocked. In the words of the OR nurse, I was “one cheeseburger away.”

This is having your guardian angel scruff you seconds before you go over a precipice, only it’s THE Precipice, and why not have gone there in the Sooner rather than Later?

Kinda leaves you with a question that wants answering, that does.