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.