So, to make this matters clear, and prevent the need for more explanations, I'm going to cut-and-paste what I wrote elsewhere:What happened, briefly, is this: two Sundays ago, my wife and I were walking in a park enjoying the weather when I experienced acute heartburn. It went away after I sat down for 15 minutes, but fired up as soon as we moved back to the car. We tried treating it as acid reflux, then as an allergic reaction, then gave in and went to a hospital emergency clinic. They moved me by ambulance to a regional heart hospital, with what was subsequently diagnosed as a heart attack. This heart attack was in an ironic way a good thing. It was a minor artery, and the "fishtank of dye" (to quote one nurse) that they flushed through my heart to pinpoint it revealed three major heavily occluded arteries. If any of those had gone first, there would have been far worse permanent damage to the heart. Not that this is something I would recommend to anybody looking for a vacation, but...the permanent damage I've got is probably small, assuming we can get this under cointrol.
Regrettably, there's next to nothing I can check in my lifestyle that would improve matters. I barely drink at all. I don't smoke, and avoid places that permit it. I eat sensibly, and we avoid salt because we don't like it. I'm somewhat sedentary, but that's all. I found out yesterday from my mother about a number of relatives on her side of the family who suffered from extreme high blood pressure, cholesterol, and/or early heart attacks, but she evidently didn't think this important enough to pass along, before.
I've got a ton of drugs intended to lower my (average) blood pressure, increase heart efficency, widen my arteries, make my blood "more slippery," reduce cholesterol, etc. In a few weeks, they'll schedule a stress test and take some more diagnostics. (Translation: blood. They took more blood from me, at more times of day, than can be imagined. I suspect them of keeping a vampire chained for sexual experimentation in the director's office.) After that, it's either meds, or a bypass. Stents are ruled out. They're nowhere near as grueling as a bypass--where they have to crack your sternum to get inside to your heart--but the damage to one of the arteries is too lengthy for that kind of repair.
That's it. You can tune your minds back to something else, not. I'm not being snooty. I'm just not up to arguing or even writing a great deal, at the moment.
