HEART ATTACK

I vividly remember waking up in the middle of the night with chest and arm pain. I went to take some Tylenol, but we were out. So, I took a handful of Baby Aspirin and went back to bed.

The next day, since I thought I still had bronchitis, I went to the doctor to see what he could do for it. After some initial tests the doc didn't think I had bronchitis and asked, on a whim, if I thought my heart, was the problem. I told him I didn't think so, but we decided to run an EKG anyway. I'm glad we did because it turned out that I had experienced a major heart attack and didn't even know it. The doctor called the EMTs, and they rushed me to the hospital. I later learned that the Baby Aspirin I took probably saved my life. 

The doctors at the hospital initially performed a heart catheter because they were unsure of the damage. However, they soon discovered that there was too much blockage in the arteries of my heart, and I would have to have open heart surgery. I ended up having four arteries to my heart replaced. 

When I was admitted into the hospital my total Cholesterol was 1600+. The doctors and nurses were amazed that I was still alive. We later learned that a Cholesterol medicine that I was taking had some serious side effects when stopped cold turkey. I didn't know it at the time, but when I stopped taking the medicine altogether it probably rocketed my Cholesterol up and played a major role in causing my heart attack.