John From Detroit said:
I am old enough to remember when for many your first heart attack... Was your last heart attack.
Today I know many how have gone into the hospital in full arrest and are still walking around today, in fact I have a sort of joke about one of 'em.
I walked in with Congestive heart failure. 20% function, walked out with 49% (50 and up is considered normal)
Best advice is do not inore your doctor. Keep a good relationship including regular visits.
Glad to hear you did that.
John, me thinks you don't know the difference between a
heart attack (commonly an arterial blockage causing a blood circulation problem),
cardiac arrest (simply put... an electrical problem), and
congestive heart failure (the weakening of the heart muscle leading to an inability to clear the lungs and limbs of excess fluids. Symptoms too numerous to list here).
My limited experience with heart disease consists of the following;
Constant AFIB
Stage one congestive heart failure.
A Pacemaker
Two quadruple bypass operations (1992 and a
re-do in year 2000)
Two heart attacks (resulting in the two listed operations)
Three additional heart attacks (discovered by ECG/EKG and Echo-cardiogram) that I was unaware of.
Three cardiac arrests (two
planned, during the bypass operations, and one
unplanned a few seconds after the second operation).
Just as an aside, my heart was intentionally stopped for one hour during the first operation and five hours during the second. I was hooked to an external blood circulation system during those times, of course.
I'm told that it was the
unscheduled cardiac arrest that caused the most panic driven activity, since I was about half way between the OR and the ICU at the time. I'm glad I was also out cold at the time.