My week's schedule was "overtaken by events" on Wednesday morning when I had what the doctors are calling a "massive heart attack". The short version is that I left the hospital this morning, with no complications and full recovery in sight.
Wednesday started normally. I got to the office at 7:30 am. I was the first one in, so I turned on the lights and started coffee. At 9:00 am I went into the CEO's office for a conference call with Europe, which ran until about 10:00.
Around 10:15 I left the office to go to the offices of one of our members. We were having a 4-hour "pre-meeting meeting" to review some PIDX presentations.
I parked my truck and began walking across the lot to the door when I broke out in a cold sweat. By the time I got to the front desk, my chest was burning so I sat down. A co-worker who was attending the same meeting signed me in and got my vistor badge. After a couple of minutes we went up to the meeting.
I asked the guy hosting the meeting if they had any antiacid, thinking the burn was an ulcer. The antiacid didn't help and the pain got worse, so we went back to the lobby. The company policy was to call an ambulance for anyone complaining of chest pain. The ambulance showed up in about 10 minutes.
I ended up at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital 10 minutes later. After a quick look in Emergency, they rolled me up to Cath Lab #4, where Dr. Chang performed an angioplasty on my left main coronary artery and inserted a stent to keep it open. The pain went away immediately.
After a couple of days of observation, I'm home again. My heart attack was caused by a 100% blockage of the left main artery. Luckily, my other arteries are clean or I would have likely dropped dead from this type of blockage. I have about 40% damage to my heart, but the doctor thinks most or all of that will come back, since they got to me so quickly.
The two pics below show a "before" and "after" view. Notice that you don't seen any arteries in the white circle of the top pic. That's due to the blockage stopping the bloodflow. The 2nd pic, taken after the stent was installed, shows what the bloodflow is supposed to look like.
All in all, I would have rather gone to the meeting.
Big S Ranch
