Sunday, June 14, 2009

This is CRAZY!

The Start of a Bad Week
In 4 days it will be the 1 year anniversary of my car accident. Monday, I started to feel sick. Scratch throat, head ache, body aches, and a fever. I felt terrible! Monday night a friend (and first counselor) and his wife came by. He gave me a blessing. Tuesday came along, and now three daughters and my wife are sick. My wife takes the girls to the doctor and I go to my own. The girls test positive for strep. I take the same test, but I don't test positive for strep, the doctor decides that if it looks like strep and acts like strep then it is strep. Everyone gets some antibiotics and we take the rest of the day off.

My Sister-In-Law
My sister-in-law came up to visit with here son and twins. Well, the kids got strep too. So it is now 2 adults and 5 kids with strep. My oldest daughter and my sister-in-law become the care givers. I felt bad that we gave her kids strep.

Wednesday
Everyone seems to be getting better, except me. I feel worse. I stayed in bed most of the day. I even stayed home from church. Sorry I missed the Court of Honor Jesse! That night we all go to my mother-in-laws for dinner. I still feel really bad. I take some Motrin and try and relax. We had Tacos for dinner. I start feeling what seemed to be indigestion and take some Tums. We all play some games, and since the kids are now out of school, we stay up late. We finally go home around 12:30am. We put the kids to bed and my wife and I go right to sleep.

Then It Happened
About 1:00am I wake up and the feeling is back, this time it feels more like pressure than indigestion. I take my medication and go back to bed. Well, around 3:00am I wake up again and it is worse! Now it is more like a "Oh my gosh! I cracked my sternum" kind of pain! I lay there for about and hour and then I get my wife up and go to the ER.

I Had A Heart Attack
At the ER my EKG looked fine, but I responded to Nitroglycerin and my blood test say that I had a mild heart attack. Once I am stabilized, I get a room. My wife is freaking out. Not on the outside. She is a pillar of being calm and cool under pressure, but she is just tore up. She makes me promise to giver her at least a 45 year notice before I die. I make her that promise.

The Procedure And Tests
The next day I am transfer ed to another hospital that has a special Cardiology Lab and the to a Catheterization to see what they can find. Also, If they find anything, they can take care of it. They find nothing. They do a chest x-ray and find out I am recovering from pneumonia. What!? Pneumonia? They to a chest CT scan and it looks just fine. They do an ultrasound of my heart and It is just fine. They do an electrocardiogram and it is just fine. They did and other test (I can't remember what it is, I call it the bubble test, because they run small bubbles through the hear to test to see if there are any wholes in the walls of the heart or between chambers.) That test is just fine too.

The Risk Factors
I don't drink or smoke. My cholesterol was 200. It should be bellow that, but is not a big problem. I am a little over weight still, but I am loosing weight. I do exercise a little, but Ia m gradually increasing what I am able to do. I am only 42. There is nothing that a doctor would see and say, "Hey you need to change now or you will have a heart attack in the next few days." but that is what actually happened.

Home
I am now at home on bed rest. I feel tired and take twice as many pills. Now I carry Nitro pills, just in case of another heart attack. I will be setting an appointment with my Cardiologist tomorrow and see about getting into a recovery exercise program and now no fat or salt. An entire new diet.

Thank You!
Thank you to all my friends and family for all the support you have given me, my, wife and my family. Everyone stay in touch and post a comment. It looks like I now have more to blog about.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sean, I am glad that you are doing better! I know this has got be so hard on Stephanie! Anything I can do?

Shiloah Baker said...

I'm so sorry to hear of your illness and heart attack! That is so scary! We're praying for you and your family for a speedy recovery!

Missy said...

I bet it is frustrating to be a healthy person and have no idea how to be prevent these things from happening again or getting worse.