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A lot has happened to me in the last 4 days. As I was working Wednesday just after lunch, I felt a tightness across my chest and noticed that my shoulders and upper arms had gone numb. The missus drove me to the emergency room and after sitting in the waiting room for 3 hours, they finally confirmed that I had indeed suffered a 'mild' heart attack and I was admitted and put on a nitro drip.
The next morning I received 2 stints, with a third scheduled in a few weeks. I'm finally back home and getting caught up on work as well as adjusting to new diet/meds/routines. Getting old sucks, but it sure beats the alternative. Anyways, it's good to be back! 
If you are over 50 and haven't had your heart checked, do yourself a favor and get it done. I have been the healthiest of my siblings, managing until a few years ago to not have any daily medications, then just one miracle heartburn pill. Now I've got a new addition to the kitchen table...a pillbox with AM/PM slots and taking a total of 7 pills each day. This is my new reality.  I'm not complaining, as I understand that it could have ended much differently.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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Good advice. Welcome back! and be well.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I'm really glad your wife was bright enough to do that - but if it happens again please, please call for an emergency ambulance: they have experts and kit on board that can make a huge difference to outcomes.
Statistically, only 10% of people who suffer a heart attack outside a hospital survive.
An ambo can improve your odds by at the very least having the right people waiting for your arrival!
Congratulations - and you also move up the vaccination list! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote:
Statistically, only 10% of people who suffer a heart attack outside a hospital survive.
An ambo can improve your odds by at the very least having the right people waiting for your arrival!
AIUI the 10% figure is mostly due to heart attacks that stop pumping entirely. Even in cases where the heart itself is recoverable, doing CPR well enough to keep someone revivable long until they can be defibrillated is beyond what most people can do. The latter is why over the last decade the standard method taught to most non-medical professionals is now chest compressions only. The most common failure point is not moving enough blood, and except in sparsely populated areas ambulances can generally arrive fast enough that the supply of O2 in the lungs/blood stream isn't depleted before paramedics are on scene.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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Great that you are recovering. Stay safe and welcome back.
If you can keep your head while those about you are losing theirs, perhaps you don't understand the situation.
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You are indeed lucky.
I had a mild heart attack several years ago while working and had my daughter-in-law drive me to ER, they admitted me after many hours of sitting in the waiting room. The only room they had available was in a supply room on a gurney and in the middle of the night when they changed my drip they did it wrong and it leaked all over the bed. It was a miserable night and I was glad to get out the following afternoon!
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Great to have you back! 
Modern cardio technology is truly amazing. I should have died back in 2000, when I started to suffer serious angina, but the cardiologist saved my life with 5 bypasses. 16 years later the bypasses were 90% blocked and I got a number of stents, that are still serving me well 5 years later. I have truly been living on borrowed time for 21 years! And thank God I moved to the USA 25 years ago!
So many of the men in my immediate family died in their 40s or early 50s of heart attacks. Somehow I beat the grim reaper (so far) by submitting to what modern medicine has to offer.
By the way: After he placed stents in my heart, I gave the cardiologist a magnum bottle of single malt. I was so grateful to be rid of the angina!
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
modified 7-Feb-21 18:35pm.
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Best of luck man, and I'm with you on that. I had an ambulance ride several years ago and got a few stints myself.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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Welcome back, Kevin. Wishing you good health!
/ravi
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kmoorevs wrote: I felt a tightness across my chest and noticed that my shoulders and upper arms had gone numb. The missus drove me to the emergency room
Most don't recognize those symptoms, your missus is level up! Few would do.
kmoorevs wrote: If you are over 50 and haven't had your heart checked, do yourself a favor and get it done
Just "nearly" fiddy. Back in school, there was mandatory sports. We got those new-fangled heart beat meters. I did 220, and never needed to sport again. She didn't like the excuse of setting a record either.
kmoorevs wrote: a pillbox with AM/PM slots and taking a total of 7 pills each day. This is my new reality.  I'm not complaining, as I understand that it could have ended much differently.
Without your missus it would have. Take her out for dinner. Ehr.. wait. Covid, yes. Order some fancy dinner to be delivered, light some candles. She saved your life.
Not yoking there. She did. Few recognize the symptoms, fewer react.
And we was doing 25 pills each day for some years. I knew what each pill did, had the doctor explain me each detail before making a decision. Didn't know they'd interact, and they didn't either.
--edit
Hope you stay safe in any form. Take your meds, listen to the missus. And she invested in you being alive, no? So do just that, stay alive.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Happy to hear that it ended fairly well...
I'm under 50 for the moment, but had installed emergency button in the car and the app in the phone... It calls in everyone - including firefighters 
In any case - if it ever happens again (hope not!) - it is much wiser to call an ambulance. They will check you on the way and deliver you to the right place at the right time. It may make all the difference for you...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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Nice to hear you are good.
Take care. ![Rose | [Rose]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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good advice. I watched my brother die at 35 of a massive heart attack. So I have been watching my heart since I was like 20.
It can hit anyone. But primarily those who smoke, drink, are overweight and don't work out. My brother was all four.
Enjoy life.
To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer
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Yep. Proper diet and exercise are a life extender. My grandmother died from a heart attack in her 50's and my mother had a heart attack while I was in college (survived luckily). I decided to watch my diet and to get regular exercise. I'm now 68 and don't take any medicine, just a few supplements.
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I am always cognizant that although life sucks the alternative is not that great.
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Glad you are back and well. The three hour wait is scary. I hope the doctor enjoyed his movie!
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Sorry you had a close call, but as you say, it beats the alternative.
I take two meds for hypertension and a statin, the purpose of which is to keep me from having the close call you endured. Taking a small handfull of pills every night is a small price to pay to keep some distance between you and the Reaper, especially once you've seen him up close.
And that's "stents," with an "e."
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Welcome back. I am glad your feeling better and hope that taking those pills is the only downside.
You were one of the lucky ones. It was not a sudden catastrophic event and you had someone with you that was able to help.
As a former KIA from a deep thrombosis (both sudden and catastrophic) before I was 40, I know these type of events are traumatic and our examples should serve as warnings for others.
In my case it wasn't a problem with my heart. It was a blood clot that blocked the entire right hemisphere. It was caused by overwork (and stress from being overworked), doing 10h/14h work days sitting down, seven days a week, for years, with almost no vacation, no time to exercise, eat or sleep properly.
Eat and sleep properly, and exercise are fundamental so, now I put those before work otherwise I will be working for a retirement that I may never have. My event was five years ago and I still haven't completely recovered. Dying sucks more than living.
Corporate society tries to get us going faster and harder but we have to say slow down.
Like the character of one famous actor in a probably not so famous movie says "We adapt and overcome" so do not let this new routine affect you. Adapt to it, increase your quality of life, and live .
Best wishes
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That started for me when I hit 40
In the space of 2 years, I was diagnosed as being hypothyrodic, which I have to take daily meds for, then they found I have nerve damage at the base of my spine, which I now have to take daily meds for.
Shortly after I went deaf, now I have to have two hard lumps of plastic shoved in my ears every day in order to hear.
Then I developed a disorder in my lower jaw which can't be treated and sees me having to take regular over the counter pain medication to control the pain.
Out of all the examinations I've had though, every time my doctors have said my cardio vascular system is in great shape (But it's about the only thing that is)
WORST PART ABOUT IT ALL YET?
I'm still 2 years away from hitting 50!
Serious though, glad you survived it, it's a scare when something like that happens, I broke my left index finger at about 42, and when they xrayed it they saw something inside the bone which made them think there may have been a cancerous tumour in there, that was one of the scariest weeks of my life, not knowing if it was, or wasn't and if it was, was it malignant...
One area of having to deal with daily pills (and a more healthy eating routine) did make me focus on was, as a software developer gave me lots of new reasons to write software to help manage and to some extent automate my life.
I retro fitted my oven for example, so I could control it remotely, now when I make breakfast on a morning, I prepare my lunch and put it in the oven ready, then the oven just switches on when needed, cooks it, switches off and sends me an email to tell me it's ready, I just sit here working away in my home office, and wait for the lunch bell so to speak.
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Epic Games[^]
Not played it, but Steam and GiG both have it at £15, so ... free sound like a good price! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Haha! As a seasoned developer and long time married, the queen and I elected to invest in a very nice hot tub. So, change the background and replace coco with two wine glasses...
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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We were thinking along that line, but with ice-water tub - as we mostly have hot weather here
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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It’s a balmy -26C here in Calgary right now. Maybe you could visit and bring some of that warmth with you!
If you can't laugh at yourself - ask me and I will do it for you.
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We are in the - probably most cold - part of the winter so not much warm just now... We as low as 10-12 C nowadays...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
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