The Hidden Horror, or: My Dad Has A Heart Attack
Last Saturday morning I got a call from my half-brother. We almost never chat on the phone, so I was immediately concerned about why he'd be calling me on a Saturday. I just sort of knew it was bad news. And it was, he told me that my dad was in the hospital. He'd had a heart attack.
Now, when you hear "your dad has had a heart attack" all kinds of things race through your mind. Images of people on stretchers being rushed to the hospital with oxygen masks on their faces, crash carts, screaming doctors, awful things. But as I soon found out, my dad's case wasn't exactly TV drama. He started feeling severe chest pains while he was packing up after a one of his craft shows. Because he is a certified idiot (who I love dearly and unconditionally), he finished packing up and then drove himself to the hospital. There, he calmly told the nurses what was going on, and they rushed him in for an evaluation. Within an hour, they'd shoved a tube up his femoral artery and put stents in his heart. Two days later, he is home and resting.
Science is fucking incredible.
Anyway, I am extremely relieved that he appears to be making a full recovery. The good news is that he's likely to be fine, and he just needs to rest up for a few weeks before returning to his regular schedule. The bad news is that two of his arteries were 70% blocked, and a third was 50% blocked. Holy shit.
What particularly alarms me about this is that my dad is really very healthy. He's never been overweight. Let me repeat that, he has never been overweight. He eats a fairly healthy diet, doesn't consume much red meats or sugary snacks, and exercises almost every day. He quit smoking 30 years ago and did physical labor most of his life. And yet, here he is at 66 years old with major artery blockages. The primary factor here seems to be the genetic component.
I don't like to dwell on what that means for me, but it's clear that I have to consider my risk factors much more carefully than I ever have before. My mom died of cancer at 62, my dad has heart disease at 66, and I'm a serious fat-ass at 38. That is fucking scary.
It's a wake-up call, that's for sure.
Now, when you hear "your dad has had a heart attack" all kinds of things race through your mind. Images of people on stretchers being rushed to the hospital with oxygen masks on their faces, crash carts, screaming doctors, awful things. But as I soon found out, my dad's case wasn't exactly TV drama. He started feeling severe chest pains while he was packing up after a one of his craft shows. Because he is a certified idiot (who I love dearly and unconditionally), he finished packing up and then drove himself to the hospital. There, he calmly told the nurses what was going on, and they rushed him in for an evaluation. Within an hour, they'd shoved a tube up his femoral artery and put stents in his heart. Two days later, he is home and resting.
Science is fucking incredible.
Anyway, I am extremely relieved that he appears to be making a full recovery. The good news is that he's likely to be fine, and he just needs to rest up for a few weeks before returning to his regular schedule. The bad news is that two of his arteries were 70% blocked, and a third was 50% blocked. Holy shit.
What particularly alarms me about this is that my dad is really very healthy. He's never been overweight. Let me repeat that, he has never been overweight. He eats a fairly healthy diet, doesn't consume much red meats or sugary snacks, and exercises almost every day. He quit smoking 30 years ago and did physical labor most of his life. And yet, here he is at 66 years old with major artery blockages. The primary factor here seems to be the genetic component.
I don't like to dwell on what that means for me, but it's clear that I have to consider my risk factors much more carefully than I ever have before. My mom died of cancer at 62, my dad has heart disease at 66, and I'm a serious fat-ass at 38. That is fucking scary.
It's a wake-up call, that's for sure.