Heart Health Awareness......For Liz Wallace- Please Share to Help Others.
Liz Wallace wrote a post today asking us to share her information with 3 others for Heart
Health Awareness Month. Since it is Members Only, I will ask that you head there and read her story.
But in light of the focus on Heart Health Awareness Month, I would like to share my husband’s story.
And, I suppose you could say, that because he is my ultimate soul mate, it is my story as well.
Fourteen + years ago, Larry had 2 stents put in to clear a 99% blockage in his right artery, fortunately NOT the widow maker.
However, the important part of the story is not that he had the stents, but his road that he had to take to get there.
Beginning in January 1999, Larry started to experience some odd feelings. They weren’t the shooting pain symptoms that you think of when you think of the heart. Once, when he had finished washing his car, he came in and said he felt a little light-headed.
I had him take 2 aspirin, then took him to the emergency room to be safe. Many tests were given, including the one that can detect if you’ve had a heart attack. All of them came up negative.
Larry continued doing everything he had been doing including diving almost every weekend.
He saw a cardiologist, several times, a wonderful gastroenterologist and had numerous tests. The thought was that his problem was digestive, such as acid reflux or GERDS.
He passed every test and still nothing was found.
However, he was still experiencing some strange episodes.
Finally, before his next appointment with his cardiologist, I told him to ask for an angiogram, and if the doctor was not willing to do it, we were going to another doctor.
What happened- after his angiogram, they scheduled him for coronary angioplasty the very next morning.
Two stents were inserted, but aside from that, the rest of his heart is healthy.
Here’s what I hope you will take from this:
1. As his physicians said, his symptoms were atypical of heart disease.
Here are they symptoms you are having a heart attack.
Here are the heart attack symptoms for women.
2. Don’t just rely on the outcomes of tests.
3. Listen to your body. If something isn’t right, your body is usually telling you this.
4. Doctors aren’t omniscient.
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