Yeah, you are reading this now searching for answers. If you are like the rest of us, it may be late at night and you are searching for information that will confirm your worst suspicions that you may be showing symptoms of heart disease.
In my case, I denied my problem and searched for over 2 years until I reached a point of crisis. I was lucky to receive proper intervention which saved my life.
You also may be reading this now because you have already joined our "Cardiac Club". You will be an active member of this club until the day you die. If you are smart, work hard on the problem and create a sustainable program I think you have cause to be optimistic about living an enjoyable normal life. That's my mission in any cse.
If the first symptom of your disease was an actual heart attack, you are truly one of the lucky ones given another chance; 50% of the time attacks like that result in death. Death is a real tough complication to overcome!
I hope you have an interest in knowing more about what I did to make changes in my health status and to improve my probability of a longer life. The information I am sharing is a "work in progress" and about what I have already accomplished.
In the beginning of this journey I had to overcome a sense of awkwardness as I have a Master's in Public Health (MPH), was a US Navy Hospital Corpsman, was previously licensed as a Practical Nurse and have operated hospitals over thirty years. I think I was a little embarrassed that I hadn't done a better job with my own health.
| "It might be helpful to know that I did not want to make any lifestyle changes and avoided making change until it became a necessity. The good news in this for you is that if I can embrace this different approach then there is most certainly hope and reason for you to think you can do it too, perhaps even better!"
Ron Yates |
I realized I was just doing the best I could with the typical understanding of what constitutes a good "Healthy lifestyle". I learned I was normal about these things, just like you. I made a decision to make whatever changes were required to live free of discomfort (angina, chest pain) and to stop the continuing deterioration of my health status. "Pain is a very strong attention getter and signal that something is wrong."
But, even with the two year span of pain I didn't get the message which I have found is just being human. The trap I fell into was my significant first angioplasty resolved the pain therefore my denial of the problem overrode good judgment. I embarked on the next phase of denial and rode the yo-yo of multiple heart catheterizations & angioplasties.
In my reading I found one study that indicated it took men 4 heart catheterizations to learn that the path they had chosen wasn't working so well. Boy, it took me five! I may have even gone for more but, you guessed it, my last one kicked up a very significant recurring angina problem which I had trouble controlling. I soon realized that I had overlooked an important goal available to all of us today, disease reversal.