A Life Changer – Listen to your instincts (and your wife)

Posted Sep 28th, 2013

You always think it is going to happen to someone else but then you have to come to terms with reality and your own mortality. On Tuesday, the 24th of September, I was on my way to a training class for my job. The night before I was busy throwing out some old furniture which included some big mattresses and bed frame. I felt a little soreness across my collar bone and attributed it to the activity the night before. It got better and went away and then came back about noon time. It lasted about 15 20 minutes and went away. I started to wonder if it could be heart related because of the disappearance and reoccurrence. On the way home from the class about 5 in the afternoon it returned once again. It was never a crippling pain, never radiated to the jaw or my arms and I never felt light-headed or nauseous. It was just a nagging kind of thing that didn’t feel quite right. I got home and told my wife and she immediately told me to go in and get it checked. I was thinking about sleeping on it and seeing what it felt like the next day but my wife wouldn’t hear of it. Long story short I had a case of angina which left the enzyme present in my blood, when tested, showed positive for heart activity. They put me in an ambulance and took me to the nearest cardiac center where I had further testing done. IT was confirmed that I basically had a very mild heart attack. It left no damage to the heart muscle and was corrected by placing a stint in the affected artery. All in all I felt little to no pain throughout the procedure, other than the initial insertion of the catheter through the groin and into my femoral artery. Modern medicine is amazing. 30 years ago it would have been open-heart surgery. I was never even put under and awake through the whole procedure. I went in Tuesday night, had the procedure done Wednesday afternoon, and was released on Thursday morning. I got lucky that I listened to my body (and my wife) and went in to have it checked. Dr said another couple months to a year down the road it could have been much worse. Years of self-neglect, of eating whatever I wanted, and lack of exercise finally caught up with me.

This was a huge slap in the face and a wake-up call to do something about it. PLEASE do not doubt yourself and ignore the symptoms and signs of a cardiac event. It will always give you peace of mind to at least know what your condition is and if indeed you are traveling down the wrong path as I was you can catch it early and turn it around. God is Good!