A very important step forward is learning about the disease you are fighting, you are smarter than it! Learning the real facts allows you to develop informed options to exercise going forward. The thing I can say about this disease is each of us is too busy "living" to learn that what we are doing mostly to ourselves will "predictably kill us" sooner than expected. This is not an indictment against us, it's just human. The disease we are concerned about is not just heart disease, the disease is a "Main Systems Blowout".
I have also concluded that in my life and certainly as a "patient" I don't like being preached to or bullied into doing things that I don't understand the reason behind. This is again a very human trait made worse in an age of consumerism where choices are so influenced by uncanny marketing. We simply are not motivated to do things differently in these situations.
Another troubling issue is something we could call the "Slap Butter on it" syndrome. This is in honor of all of us who in the past have suffered a serious 2nd degree burn at the stove; the only thing present in your head that you can remember as the pain is mounting is that for such burns you should "Slap Butter on it" as an effective first aid treatment. Not exactly state of the art first aid knowledge but countless well meaning families have passed on stuff like this for generations that is flat wrong. I am sure you can come up with you own example which required debunking.
Getting the best facts today about diagnosis, treatment options and best practices provides us with a level of control over our actions and decisions. Getting better educated, particularly those of us who are actively engaged in halting a disease process, provides us the ability to be motivated. In my ten years of managing cardiovascular disease I have found motivation to be critical.
When trouble develops we have a tendency to label them by the body part that screws up and kills us. We know these things as strokes, heart attacks and blocked carotid arteries. This is "ALL THE SAME DISEASE" and the "Dirty Secret" on us is we mostly control whether we have it or not. It took me a long time to really have this sink into my head and integrate what it means. I hope you are motivated to hear this message because the good news is you can start today doing something about it. You are never too old to make healthy changes and the earlier you start the better. This is not preaching or being bullied. The medical facts bear this out giving us options and hope.
You want a wake up call?
Seriously try to calculate how much you should be saving to support yourself after your primary work related income stops. Regardless if you do this calculation mentally, use a money manager advisor or create a fancy excel spreadsheet, at some point you have to answer the big question: "how long do my savings need to last".
That's a nice way to ask what year you want to assume you will die. I realized just how bizarre my personal behavior had become when I caught myself adjusting my expected lifespan shorter to show a higher estimated retirement income!
The take away message about this is not that you must become a medical expert. Rather, the take away message is that you must become a better critical thinker and decision maker about your life care. If you have already begun having health problems associated with this disease then you likely have experience in such skills as a mother, father, boss, pastor, business person, consultant, and others. You needed some training to be highly skilled at those type jobs. All I am advocating is that you act now to find some credible sources of information about causes, cures, treatments, options and critically assess how it impacts you and your life.
Because of my public health and hospital administrator experience, I used my ability to access and read approximately 100 serious and credible studies about cardiovascular disease to absorb whatever I could understand. If you have similar abilities, I certainly would encourage you to do the research.
Everyone else should start reading too! If you were to read only one thing about this disease, I highly recommend you begin reading this work of Dr. John R. Guyton, MD Department of Medicine, Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Nutrition at Duke University.
I found that Dr. Guyton created the most readable, understandable paper I could find to read about cardiovascular problems. I recommend you begin to read it and then read it several times over and use it as a reference tool as it begins to be more understandable. You will find a full PDF copy of his paper you can download if that is your best way to learn. I have also added the full article in sections on this website. Feel free to bookmark each section and return to it and read it piece by piece. Don't be afraid to keep coming back to the different sections. (I still do; the key I found is it is a good gage of how much I have learned.)