December 5th, 2009

I started having pain in my chest and left arm a couple of weeks ago, and my blood pressure started going pretty high in the evenings even after taking my two medications to control it so I went to see my family doctor on the day before Thanksgiving. The doctor said that it sounded like I was having angina, and ran an EKG which showed that I was not getting enough oxygen to the heart. He gave me a perscription for Nitrogycerin, and wanted me to go see a cardiologist on the following Monday. I left his office feeling kind of shook up and scared.

Over the next few days I barely ate anything because I had heard that a lot of folks eat to much on Thanksgiving and have a heart attack because of it, and I was not going to be one of those folks. I made it through to Monday with having only one episode of the angina which lasted for only a couple of seconds.

My hubby and I showed up for my appointment to see the cardiologist, Dr John Harper, on Monday. He seemed to not know at first how to proceed with me, but after asking me a few questions he decided to run another EKG. He did not like something in the EKG, because after he looked at it he told me to go over to the hospital next door and sign myself in so that he could do a heart catherization later that afternoon.

When I came out of Dr Harpers office it was going on lunchtime, and my poor hubby had not eaten anything that morning. I could not have him sitting there waiting on me for what was going to be a long evening without eating anything so before signing myself in we drove to McDonalds to get him some lunch. I was not supposed to eat anything, but it did not matter since I was so nervous that I could not have eaten anything if I had tried.

Dr Harper did his catherization later that evening, and I had several blocked arteries, but just one had been causing my problems because it was blocked 95%. Dr Parker decided to fix the 95% blocked one with surgery, and wanted to try to fix the others with medication. He gave me three choices on how to fix the one that was blocked at 95%...uncovered stents where he said that I would probably be back in a year to get it fixed again because it would block back up, covered stents where I would be taking Plavix for a year, and heart by-pass surgery. I choose the covered stents and Plavix for a year, and he scheduled my surgery for the next evening.

The surgery went okay I guess. Dr Harper put four stents in to fix the one blocked artery, and I was given so much of the dye that everytime the nurses tried to give me a pill later I just threw it back up. They finally left me in peace so that I could sleep it off.

I got to go home on Wednesday evening, and I am doing okay I guess. It just seems hard to control my blood pressure, and I get swimmy headed at about 10:00 in the morning and it does not go away until in the evening, and my blood pressure seems to raise after the dizziness passes.

I also do not know what I am supposed to eat, but I am to go see a dietitian Thursday so maybe we can work that problem out.