Take Heart to the Finish.

Part two of my little story.
My trusty partner Robyn (no that does not make me Batman....or?) and I fronted up to Breamar Hospital In the Waikato to find I was to be the last patient of 2010.Was this a sign? Well staff were really friendly and I got the feeling they wanted everything to go well and fast so they could get their "one drink" finishing up party started. Sure enough it was soon time to get started. Yes out came the needles sedation and a little later the procedure.
Outcome?
Yes I have CAD (Coronary artery disease) but luckily not in the main arteries. One of my diagonal branch arteries is completely blocked and another is 50% blocked. According to the Cardiologist (cool guy Gerry Devlin) he decided not to try and open the closed one  or stent the other and we agreed that an aggressive statin (drugs I am already on) plan to lower LDL (Low density lipids) to well below what's considered normal will slow or even reverse the problem. In his words this explains everything. The feelings and pain I have had and the medical professions inability to detect the problems by all other methods. Hell after all I went to max heart rate on the stress test and nothing showed up, not to mention all the other "all ok" tests. Apparently this is not a common situation. But what's the reason for me writing all this down here? While I have my own health management plan to review I really wanted to pass a few suggestions on to my family as we all share the same genes. So here goes and I will keep it really simple.

• Get you cholesterol measured and take action to bring it back withing range.
• Any strange chest pain or feelings check it out.
• If you are 40 or over get a calcium score done LINK (pain free scan) or even a CT angiogram if you have high cholesterol. Yes this sounds over the top but remember our parents and grandparents.
• Absolutely keep a substantial fitness program rolling as part of your life. 4 or 5 workouts  per week that will keep your heart rate between 60 to 75% of your max for 30 plus minutes. That's a good sweating work out. But do your own research and talk to your doctor beforehand.

Finally to quote Gerry Devlin to me. Its your vigorous exercise life style that has kept your main cardiac arteries free.
So begins a new era for me and I have not figured out exactly what changes I need to make except they will be made. There is a lot of living and loving to be done. Happy Christmas.