First of all, he's doing great!
Just after Thanksgiving we both came down with a cold and his lingered on into what we thought was pneumonia because his chest hurt. A trip to the Urgent Care and an EKG later told us there was something really wrong with his ticker and he was to make an appt with his GP. That was between Xmas and New Year and the office was closed and the secy told him he couldn't be seen till Jan 11. The Mon after New years he just showed up there and insisted on being seen and his doc said he'd had a mild heart attack and he'd schedule an angiogram down in Charlotte ASAP. Of course we waited and waited and no one called and a week later, Tues morning at 2:20 AM he woke me up in the middle of the night complaining of chest pain and pain in the left arm, and I called 911 and the EMTs came and took him to the hospital.
I followed them and after the docs poked and prodded him for a while they said he had definitely had another heart attack--a mild one and they put him in an ambulance for the 2 hr trip to Carolinas Medical Center. i drove down to our son's and he drove me into the city. By early evening they had gotten Dr Love into the cath lab and found he had a total blockage in one artery leading to the heart and 2 partial blockages of 60 and 20% respectively. They went into his arm with the roto-rooter, up into his chest, and installed a stent in the blocked artery and put him on statins and a blood thinner for the other 2. Amazing modern medicine--I didn't even know they could do that!! All this time he was never in really bad pain, but it was still really scary.
He is doing great, has been out walking a little in our foot of snow and has been taking his meds. I think this was a wake-up call to take better care of his health even though we are healthy eaters and he gets a moderate amount of exercise. He has promised to join the gym with me (as soon as the weather breaks--we are snowed in a lot of the time lately) and my back is feeling better.
Not a great start to the New Year for us, but it is behind us now and we will continue to take care of each other!
Thanks to those of you who checked up on us--we are doing fine,
Hugs,
Capt Deb
