Heart Attack-My own story-1

I shall like to publish my own story through this media starting this post and subsequently in a series of posts with an objective to drive all readers towards self preservation which is the key in our urban lives for longevity, may it be in life or any special en devour. There will definitely be a lot of take aways for everyone from it.

I was a corporate executive and in Feb 2007  I went through a sudden cardiac catastrophe as I would like to call it. I was thoroughly into my job and stress and strain meant nothing to me. I confined all health rules to the books only. I have been a smoker and a average social drinker.

On a sunday being spent with family playing cricket in the park I suddenly developed tightness in the chest with a burning pain, like a ring around my entire chest. Sweating profusely I was taken to nearby hospital by my beloved wife and after a series of electrocardiogramsI was declared suffering from an acute Infarction (Heart Attack) and was advised that I be taken to Delhi from Agra (5 hours). I was given a streptokynase drip to dissolve the clot which was a hundred percent blockage in the left coronary artery and was heavily drugged with sleep inducing medicines to numb the pain and activity (standard procedure). But mind does not sleep in such danger of death. It in fact becomes hyper.

Memories and insecuririties were more for kids and wife- the word family-the nucleus around which the whole world revolves rather than yamraj and hell and cooking ovens.

I was lucky to have survived the attack upto now and had a 50-50% chance.

After doing angiography , the doctor did angioplasty, my blocked artery was stented (medicated stent placed inside) to open the blockage, a procedure which takes more than 2 hours. This is a time when you are ready to believe in anything, God, Devil or even politics. Somehow I survived thanks largely due to my wife who was taking all the decisions with efficient clarity and who stood like a rock with me as always she has done in my life.

I was sent back home with a regimen of medicines to eat for the rest of my life, i regimen of diet and a modified lifestyle, requiring urgent and permanent changes to be made to my body and mind handling.The heart attack had damaged my heart muscle permanently and heart efficiency was down to 45% although it is said that even a normal person has a heart efficiency quotient of average 50-65%.

The worst thing about heart attacks if you survive them is the fear of their recurrence. This is a haunting that you have to live with day in and day out and pray, hope and believe that it will not happen again. The mind gives you sympathetic pains in the chest and various times I got up in the night and sweated through the day suffering bits of the pain again and the trauma, thinking it was happening again. It reached a point where my doctor performed another angiography on me.

So far so good as 8 years have passed and I am still running a hectic schedule because my company was clear that they would not treat me lesser and i either perform or perish. the golden corporate rule applied to me in no lesser terms.

Just when I thought life was settling down again atleast medically I started to realize that all the betablockers, Statins and anti hypertensive drugs that I was taking regularly were keeping my heart condition stable but they had their own side effects and they were slowly eating into my liver, kidneys etc.

Story continued in next post….

#Cardiovascular #Fitness #Wellness #Healthyheart