Ignoring health issues almost cost me; my journey goes on (update)

[Sled21]

Glad you seem to have it in hand and getting it taken care of. Sounds like a close call. My own close call was with my heart. I started having chest pain under exertion, like when I was mowing uphill, or walking to the building at work too fast. I finally convinced myself that it wasn't just being out of shape, and went to my Primary Care physician, who then sent me to a Cardiologist. I got an appointment in about a week, and went in and talked to him. He scheduled me for a stress test and heart echo cardiogram, which was in about another week. Went in and did the test, and when they cranked the treadmill up I started having the sharp pains. More and more people came in the room and checked the monitors, mumbled, then the test stopped and I hopped on the table to get the echo. Back to the exam room, the Cardiologist comes in and says they don't really see anything. He said I had some PVC's (bottom of heart just a little out of rhythm, so he prescribed me some beta blockers, said that should take care of it and come back in 2 months. So, I go home and take the blockers, continue pushing through the pain while mowing, exercising etc., go back in 2 months and tell him nothing's changed. He says well it's time for a heart cath then. Scheduling that took another week. So I'm on the heart cath table, in lala land getting the cath, when doctor wakes me up and tells me I have to go to surgery immediately. I'm like, wtf, If I'm having heart surgery there are things I need to do first at the house to get ready to be down for months (My son was living with me at the time) and I needed to make a will. So, I say "Well what are my options?"  thinking I can schedule it for the next day or so. Her response... "You're only option is immediate death....you're LAD (Widowmaker) is 99.9% blocked, and we just hit the blockage with the catheter. You will not walk out of this hospital alive!"  Well, that sucked... so off to open heart surgery I went. Several days later, the surgeon came into my room and asked me if I had any questions about what he did. My wife got really pissed when I asked him if I could go to the Monday Night Football game against the Steelers in 2 weeks. He says "Really, THAT"S your question?"  But, 2 weeks later, there I was, surrounded by lifelong friends who wheeled me into the stadium in a wheelchair to watch my Bengals put a beatdown on the Steelers on Monday Night. It was SWEET, even if I couldn't get a deep enough breath to cheer.
(much to my chagrine, I later looked all that up, and if you have a heart attack due to LAD blockage, you have about 5 minutes to be on the table or you will die)