MY HEART ATTACK

Introduction: There always seems to be fascination when it comes to the subject of a Heart Attack. By far and large though the biggest questions I am asked constantly is "What's it like?" and "What happened on the day that you had your heart attack?”   

So, this is my story about my heart attack.....

I had always been a big chap, I smoked in my youth and into my adulthood, but I had given it up long ago. When I did smoke it wasn’t a great deal, I was more social, and when it came to drinking, if I had a couple of drinks a month that would have been a lot. I was certainly a couch potato.

I had just got into my forties and I decided that it was time to seriously think about how I lived my life. I started taking nutrients such as multi vitamins in my late thirties, and whilst I enjoyed the odd naughty food delight it wasn’t all the time. Generally our dietary intake at home wouldn’t have been too much of a worry.

So just after I turned 42 I decided it was time to head back to the Gym. I found a nice small boutique Gym close to my home that was staffed by real people (apart from the pumped up posers) and I started going most mornings per week. It was tough in the beginning but it soon got easier. I started off mainly on the treadmills, then after a couple of months I went onto the cross trainers, then after that I did a mixture of both.

Where I really started to enjoy it though was when I discovered the wonderful world of Russian Kettlebells. I became obsessed, which was surprising for me because I normally had the attention span of an amoeba. I read, studied, observed and did everything I could to find out about these wonderfully simple pieces of ancient exercise apparatus. I learned how to do the kettlebell swing, snatches, presses, jerks, etc, and I kept the weight level low at the 16kg mark because I didn’t want to bulk up like Arnie. 

However, after a couple of months I was looking at myself in the mirror and I didn’t know who was looking back for me. The muscle definition was certainly starting to show particularly around my torso area. (why the heck didn’t I know about these things in my youth?). My legs felt like they could have kicked a brick house over!

Anyway I was getting more and more confident with these things. This was it. Finally exercise that I loved!

Right up until July 28 2008.
 
I want to make a note here. Kettlebells and exercising in general did not cause my heart attack. Crap living, lazing around all day, eating bad food in my youth and early adulthood along with smoking certainly did, along with eating an inflammatory diet. Putting myself through unnecessary stress over the years contributed, along with the old problem of my genetics. My dad had angina, had a mild stroke in his late fifties, and had had multiple stents put in. He had clear evidence of Coronary Artery Disease. My older brother had undergone angioplasty and eventually a quadruple heart bypass in his late forties so it wasn’t foreign to our family and particularly the males to have these problems. Both were heavy smokers right up to when they had serious illnesses.

On July 28 2008 it was a Monday and I headed off to the Gym as usual. In the previous weeks I had been learning about tabata intervals and interval training, and there was a man at the Gym that had studied in the USA with the same personal trainers that had trainer the Actors for the film ‘300’, the one about the Spartans. This man was in his fifties, incredibly lean and as fit as a buck rat. He was great to talk to and a great help on tabata.
 
I did three tabata training sets of 4 minutes each using kettlebells, cross trainers, etc, this only lasted for 12 minutes tops, and you certainly knew you had done some work. The only trouble was that after ten minutes after i finished I still had a big pressure in top left area of my chest and it was very uncomfortable. It felt like someone had put their hand around my heart and was squeezing. I had cold sweats. I felt slightly nauseous.
 
I went upstairs to the shower and ten minutes later I still had the pressured feeling. It was then I rang my wife to say that something was not right. I also told her that I had rung an ambulance and I was waiting outside for it to arrive. She went mad at me for not telling the Gym Instructors about what was happening but let me tell you, having something happen to you at the Gym and having to ring an Ambulance is probably one of the most embarrassing things ever to happen to you. I suspected I was having a heart attack, after all, it was around the heart area, but to have a heart attack happen at a Gym, I felt about 2 inches tall.

My wife rang the Gym and told them what was happening. The Instructors came outside and gave me a chair to sit on. It was the longest few minutes of my life waiting for the Ambulance to arrive. It got even more strained when I watched them drive past the entrance to the street and come in the exact opposite end via another street entrance. I think one of the Gym Instructors doing star jumps in the middle of the road is what allowed them to see where we were.

They popped me in the back of the Ambulance and connected all manner of contraptions and wires up to me. Even though you looked like that you are something out of the Alien guest star section of Star Trek, it is a good feeling that you are in the right hands. We started towards the hospital and the paramedics weren’t too concerned, the hospital was only 5 or 6 minutes away and we didn’t have the emergency lights and sirens on. I thought to myself “it can’t be too serious.”
The paramedics gave me a couple of sprays of Nitrolingual under my tongue. It didn’t do any good.

I arrived at the hospital’s Emergency Department and was processed as normal. Nobody was too concerned. It wasn’t until an Emergency Department  Doctor came and spoke to me that everything started to spring into action. He was an absolute star. I noticed him talking to a couple of other Doctors and then he picked up the telephone and made a call. After the call ended he came over to me and said “Paul, we think you are having a heart attack and we want to take you into the Cath (Catheter) Lab now.” I signed the forms and that when it really sprang into action.
 
To go from everyone being quite casual to everyone having a serious look on their face followed by everyone running alongside your bed was the single scariest thing I have ever experienced. Those that have had a serious heart related event or any health scare will attest to this. Running into surgery means something is drastically wrong .
 
In the Cath Lab they prepped me and gave me a wee shot of morphine. I have a friend who told me about the magical delights of this essential drug, and boy he wasn’t wrong. It was looooooooveely!

The Cardiologist was a serious man and he was doing a serious job. You stay awake throughout the whole procedure and he is talking all the time. It was a reassuring time to have a person so competent talking you through the entire process. Being half pickled on Morphine helped too!

The Cardiologist told me that I had a blockage in my Left Anterior Descending (LAD) Artery with a 30% blockage of my Circumflex. Everything else was clear. He placed a drug eluding stent in at the scene of the blockage.

This is the scan before and after 

 
This is the one Artery that supplies the blood to the muscle area of the Left Ventricle area of the heart, or the main pumping chamber. As anyone knows once you have a blockage the heart muscle starts to die past the site of the blockage, so having the heart muscle die on one of the most important areas of the main pumping mechanism is not a good thing. In fact, its terminal. So thank you Professor Mark Richards for your competency, your ability, your knowledge, and your skill. You saved my life.

By now I was out of the Cath Lab and in the Cardiology Ward. At that stage it was too surreal to think about what had happened. It does take a couple of days to take it all in. You go through the complete range of emotions from fear, to anger that it happened to you, to happiness that you survived. One thing that does become evident to you is that you know who your friends are, and you know who your family is. You take these areas of life for granted, but when you have a serious health issue and people are standing there with you, it puts everything into perspective. To have your life long partner standing there when you go in to have a life saving procedure, and having them there in support when you go into the ward afterwards is amazing and makes you feel like the luckiest person on earth.

To give you an idea of what time period had elapsed during this time is that I started at the Gym at 7.30am, I rang the Ambulance at 8.00am, I was in the Cath Lab at 10.00am, and in the ward at about 11.15am. The maximum time that I had the blockage before it was cleared was about 2-3 hours.
 
Has having a heart attack changed me? You bet it has, but for the better. I don’t waste my time on anything or anyone that doesn’t contribute something back, and I have made it my life’s’ work to study everything I can about heart health and the care of ourselves after a heart attack so I can tell others. I don’t have Angina, I take low grade meds and I am conscious of everything that happens now within my body.

There is a downside after you have a heart attack in that people want you to become a victim. ‘You have to do this’ and ‘you have to take that otherwise you will be in trouble’ is something that I heard time and time again. When you are feeling vulnerable it is easy to buy into the concept of ‘woe is me.’ It is a liberating feeling to go and take responsibility for your own health.

Footnote: I haven’t bought into the victim mentality - hence the website! I hope you will find the reports and products as helpful to you as they are to me.

A heart attack is not the end of your life, it is the beginning of your second chance - seize it!
 
Paul A.J.