Oct 23, 2009 - So what just happened?

Ok - so here it is October 23, 2009, I'll start right where I am. I'm a fifty year old male, in seemingly good health, and recently diagnosed with a completely blocked right coronary artery. I'm once again on cholesterol and blood pressure meds that make me feel just a little ill all of the time. Great. How did I get here?

In mid-July, 2009, after a great six week road trip, I headed back to the gym and start running again. Things were a bit different this time - I hit 98 BPM on the treadmill and started feeling a constriction in my neck - just like someone was choking me. I'd back off, the discomfort would subside. Try again - same thing.

"Nuts - this may be a real problem", I thought.

The symptom did not go away, so eventually around the middle of September 2009, I head for the doctor's office and explain my symptom and anticipate the worst.

My blood pressure was now 160/90 and just a quick jog up the stairs to the doctor's office brings back the symptoms, which now have extended to discomfort in my left arm and in my left carotid artery. He makes a call to a cardiologist and I am sent immediately right over.

The cardiologist hears my symptoms, tells me it seems serious, and says she won't even bother with a stress test. She gives me a couple of heart calming pills and I'm scheduled for an angiogram the next day. On the plus side, my EKG was normal. No sign of a heart attack.

So the next day I'm laying on the bed getting prepped for the procedure when the nurse brings me a single valium.

I said," UMMMM...this isn't going to do it...'.

To which she replies, "It's not for the procedure, it's for your recovery so you don't move around alot (essentially bleed out) afterwards".

So I was interveiniously wired up for something MUCH better for the procedure.

Angiograms aren't the worst experience, at least it was not for me. Once the real drugs kicked in, I knew where I was on the table, I heard the idle chit-chat in the operating room and thought of a million funny responses to their comments. Funny indeed, I just didn't want to say anything. Maybe I couldn't, which is closer to the fact. I felt some movement down around the groin where the catheter was being inserted, but that was it.
No big deal.



I get wheeled out into recovery after the twenty minute procedure, and the cardiologist tells me, "You have a completely blocked RCA". He hands me a little picture of the discovery, which I present to the left.

The 'EF' essentially means normal pumping action."


Notice the hand drawn arteries near the bottom. Bonus!

He hands me a disk showing video clips of dye

going into the left coronary and

NO dye going into the right.

Now I see it for myself.

What is shown here is dye in the left artery.

Isn't technology great?

I ask, "What are my options?"

He replies,"We could try a stint, IF we could get a wire through the blockage, which may or may not work, and a bypass seems like overkill in your case".

Then he explains the overkill statement. My blockage has been in the making for years apparently, giving my left coronary, which is only 20% blocked (pretty normal for my age, actually), time to create some fantastic collateral arterial growth to compensate, for the most part, for the closing of the right coronary.

This has kept me alive, and maybe this explains a lot of my past symptoms, ie., slow recovery after workouts, slow run times and a gradual decline in desire and 'oomph' to improve my health to where I felt it should be. I've been swimming upstream for years. Just pushing through the pain - no pain, no gain, as they say. It worked for awhile, I guess.