Dodged a bullet

I'm pretty good at talking my way out of most things. Helps being an older white lady...(if they're gonna stereotype me, I'm gonna use that shit against em). I don't know if anybody else does this, but when I'm doing something mildly illegal l am usually at the same time always thinking up and practicing alibis in my head to use in case I get caught.

For example, last night I was driving a little over the speed limit on 4th St. and thought of a good one, "Oh, I'm sorry if I was speeding, Officer. My husband just had a heart attack." (Who's going to give me a ticket after that?)

But this one was true. Byron had a heart attack!

He'd been having indigestion/heartburn lately, so was carrying Baking Soda with him on his 30+ mile bicycle rides most days. Last week, he did a 70 mile ride around the mountain, much of it on a remote dirt road. A few days ago, he took the train to Santa Fe and then rode his bike home on back roads. He kinda bonked (lost steam) one time, but for the most part - other than the occasional heartburn - he was doing fine.

A couple of nights ago, Byron woke up at 3am and is complaining about chest pain. He gets up and takes a Tums. The pain gets worse. Finally, he is kneeling on the floor, clutching his chest, starting to cry. I called an ambulance.

At the hospital, they looked him over, took a blood test that showed elevated cardiac enzymes and said, "You just had a heart attack."

What?? They transferred him to the Heart Hospital, admitted him and continued to monitor him. Yesterday, they did a cardiac cath, where they send dye into the heart and send a camera up in there on a wire from a hole in his wrist. They find one vessel 99% occluded. The other veins and arteries are fine. So they put in a stent - a metal straw that holds the vessel open. They put him on blood thinners. The prognosis is that, after some rest, he will probably be better than he was before! Wow. We went from feeling alarm and fear to real relief that things could have gone much worse.

One of my friends, a doctor about my age, went for a jog one morning and they found his body later after he died from a heart attack. Another friend was out hiking on a remote mesa with some friends and collapsed with a heart attack. They were too far away to get help and he died, too. What if Byron had had this heart attack out on one of his rides? What if he had had the heart attack while I was in Portugal. Would he have called an ambulance, himself?

I feel so relieved! Byron is supposed to be home today sometime and he really wants out. The challenge will be to keep him off his bike for awhile.

So anyway, I'm sorry I haven't posted here in a few days, but you see, my husband had a heart attack.Read more