So during our world wind tour back to New Jersey for the weddings, and visits, and to close up Cape May for the year I also made sure I followed up with my medical appointments. That would take me from Mt. Sinai in NYC last week to seeing my favorite cardiologist at Monmouth Cardiology in Eatontown. That's Dr. Jeff Osofsky who I first met in 2013 when my heart went wonky after a guided trip in the salt with another Doc, Dr. Ron Benitez.
Dr. Ron and I fished the early morning in Deal on September 30th, HERE. During the trip my chest started to feel weird, which left my brain feeling weird as well. As a registered nurse I should have known better, but I just thought it would go away. After the four hour trip I headed home and figured I'd just sleep it off. By 7 pm I was in the ER at Monmouth Medical and on the monitor with a heart rate in the 160-180's.
They tried to control it with medication and the next morning was when I met Dr. Osofsky who stood over me explaining that he would like to do a synchronized cardioversion to zap my heart back into a normal sinus rhythm. I guess he scared me enough because as he was talking with me I converted, on my own, back into a normal rhythm. And since then he's been my guy.
Like every other old guy out there I've been on a mix of antihypertensives and statins over the years for blood pressure and cholesterol control. I've had a few admissions for hypertensive crisis,
worn a Holter monitor, and have been on the treadmill for a stress test. It's always, "It's all good, I'm not worried". He's kinda like my 9/11 Doc up at Mt. Sinai. when my CT came back, "Suspicious for primary indolent lung cancer", he too said, "I'm not worried". "Do I have lung cancer?", I asked, to which he said, "I'm not concerned, let's wait and see". Those are my kinda docs.
While I try to make sure I get into the office from time to time I've been that patient who makes excuses when it comes to getting meds refilled. They always do it but it was time to see Osofsky in person. With us moving down to South Carolina, where we have no Docs, it was good to get prescriptions filled, with refills, before we head home. I anticipated a quick uneventful visit.
When I arrived it was the usual, height, weight, vitals, and a 12-lead EKG. Soon he was in sitting there with Theresa and I going through my recent labs and seeing how I was feeling. Luckily at Mt. Sinai last week they drew blood so I had stuff for him to review, which included my Lipid Panel, or cholesterol numbers. A year or so ago he started me on a statin, or cholesterol lowering med which did its job. My bad numbers went down and my good numbers went up. But I didn't want to be on a statin so I stopped, and just kept the Coenzyme Q-10 as part of my daily pill popping routine. Well I guess statins work because my numbers all went back in directions they're not supposed to go. Basically I've got butter running through my veins, and heart.
When he got to reviewing my EKG he said, as usual, "I'm not worried but there's something here that's a little concerning". It was just a few lines in the upper right hand corner of the 12-lead EKG, "Old Inferior Infarct", followed by "Old Anterior Infarct vs Lead Placement". In laymen's terms that could mean a few things, it's nothing, or I had a heart attack, or two, and didn't know about it.
I've seen this in the hospital countless times. People come in for an acute cardiac event only to learn they had a previous heart attack. The same can be said for strokes, with old cerebral infarcts showing up on CT scan. An on my paper the word "ABNORMAL", in caps, stood out.
Old heart attacks, or myocardial infarctions, or MI's, are concerning, but there's nothing you can really do about it. As I sat there I had no chest pain, no dizziness, no palpitations. My vitals all checked out so there was no reason to head over the the ER or the Cath lab. But we needed to know, at some point, what the computer was interpreting.
There's heart attacks and then there's heart attacks. There's places in the heart not to have them or to have them. The hope is any blockage or damage doesn't affect the left ventricle, which is basically the big pump part of the heart. Well inferior and anterior wall MI's are all about the ventricles, with having and inferior MI's the better of the two. There's something called "The Widow Maker", which is a blockage or MI involving the LAD, or Left Anterior Descending artery, and that's when people have "The Big One".
So our return trip back home will be delayed as I'm now scheduled for a nuclear stress test. It's the definitive test, outside of a cardiac catheterezation, to see how blood is flowing around the
heart and if there is ischemia, reduced blood flow, or infarction, no blood flow and cell death, to the heart muscle.
On the drive home back to Cape May Theresa and I tried to remember if I had any kind of event that we just brushed over. Have I exerted myself in the last few months? Yes. Have had some chest discomfort? Sure? Have I worked until the point of exhaustion? Well, let's see...
To say I, well we, both killed ourselves to get ready for and then move might be an understatement. If I did have some kind of silent event it was most likely during the last six months. This easily goes two ways, I had a heart attack, or attacks, or not. No need to fret over it, the damage is done, or not. The NST will provide all of the answers.
So like I've always said here, early detection, and routine check ups are key. That's for men and women. That includes the prostate exam, colonoscopy, vitals, blood work, and an EKG. Basically all things done during a routine physical. The goal is to do some prevention, either by lifestyle changes or medication, before you have an acute event. And if there's nothing to be found as least you have a baseline if things in your body were to go sideways in the future, and then will.
Don't wait until you can't pee, shit blood, have pain, or can't speak, before you get checked out. By then it could be too late to reverse the damage. Our bodies are working 24/7 and compensate for things that happen not under your watchful eye, nor give you symptoms. So for me, I'll be in the waiting room, sorta, waiting to see what the nuclear stress test says. The only thing is I left my sneakers back home in South Carolina, so I'll have to hit the Goodwill to find a pair, so I can get the treadmill speed and my heart rate up. Parts of my heart will either light up or not, but hey, like my Doc's always say, "I'm not worried".