Loving My Heart-The Pain Begins

Surely the heart of a remarkably healthy 56 year old wasn’t protesting so vehemently? Surely that jaw pain and nausea were figments of my imagination.

In this new series, Loving My Heart, the story begins of a painfully protesting heart, a major operation and the road to recovery/

Pic of the Day

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Journey to a Quadruple Heart Bypass

The medicos tell me that the beginning of the plaque buildup in the arteries leading directly into my heart probably began sometime when I was around fourteen years old.

Of course that sludge of the foods I consumed during the ensuing years up to age 56 when those same arteries began their painful protest of the strain likely started out slow, a flake from a shrimp here, a globule of fat from a fine steak there. We are talking, by my calculations, a period spanning 42 years.

The coronary arteries seem to be the end base for weirdly named things such as triglycerides and cholesterol. The body's blood transporting such things tends to leave these nasty bits in the coronary arteries rather than allow them to pass through the heart muscle which would really cause bodily havoc as I understand it.

At any rate there are four main arteries leading into one's heart from various body parts. Inside this part of the heart, the blood is re-oxygenated and sent out the other side for re-delivery throughout the body.

Hey, I'm doing this in the layman's terms as I've studied the issue but it's not that difficult a concept. We all have pipes that bring in our water and pipes that take out our sewage. We understand such as sludge and nasty blockages and how fluids tend to slow down then stop when enough of a clog bars the way.

While not allowing the blood to enter freely and abundantly into the heart chamber for thorough oxygenation, coronary artery plaque buildup presents an even more insidious danger in the form of a blood clot. For bits of the sludge buildup in the arteries can break free from where they cling to the sides of the artery walls and propelled by the blood being sucked in by the normal beating action of the heart can then be pulled down deeper and closer to that heart muscle until it lodges and cannot move, thereby shutting down blood supply to the heart completely.

Hearts don't like this sort of thing and tend to shut down completely in protest.

In my case, and in many cases, the heart begins its protest way sooner than when a complete blockage prevents its normal beat. My heart spent about an hour protesting some sort of distress on a pretty Fall day in 2006, during a visit from my mother-in-law from out of state, coincidentally.

We'd just taken a morning jaunt down to Delaware's Rehoboth Beach for breakfast. Husband was driving the Jeep and he was giving an impromptu tour of famous plumbers' houses with detail as to the status of each. This part of southern Delaware had been going through a renaissance during that period, husband sold plumbing parts, the morn was pretty and the drive was nice. The whole thing might sound boring but it was, oddly, pleasant.

Except for the awful pain emanating from my chest up through my jaw. I sat quiet as this scary pain coursed over my upper torso and as I pondered if I could possibly, an age 56 remarkably healthy female, be having some sort of heart attack. Husband continued his talking tour duties, mother-in-law responded as if a view of plumbers' houses was worthy of Hollywood and I wondered if I should mention my pain.

Then my stomach lurched with a jolt of nausea and now I was terrified.

"Something's wrong," I told the other occupants of the Jeep. "My chest hurts, my jaw hurts, and I now I feel like I'm going to throw up."

There was then great movement to obtain some sort of bucket should I vomit then great concern re this painful onset of troubling symptoms. I held up my hand that all was sort of okay. Husband and mother-in-law regarded me with troubled eyes. Finally the Jeep pulled into the driveway. Husband helped me out of the seat. Mother-in-law queried husband as to the locale of the nearest hospital.

We all got into the house but mother-in-law was very worried and husband was wringing his hands. I swallowed the large quantities of saliva generated when a stomach is about to upheave its contents and considered the hospital option.

My mind assured me that there was simply no way, no way at all, that someone in my health could all of a sudden, out of the clear blue sky on a crisp Fall day, be suffering some sort of heart attack. The notion did not compute. The concept did not fit my preconceived idea that it was more likely husband, a small at times sickly sort of fellow the same age as me, who would be suffering a sudden heart attack. I was a big strapping female. I tilled the gardens, I ate heartily, I carried heavy objects and I ran the household.

So why did my jaw hurt ominously like that and would my stomach finally expel its contents as the nausea threatened?

If yon reader should ever have jaw pain like I describe, don't question a thing, don't pass go, do NOT collect $200. You will know it when you feel it. I knew that jaw pain was a result of a straining heart, I knew it deep in my soul and in every cell of my being.

Mother-in-law and husband were ready to call an ambulance or transport me physically to a nearby hospital but at the time I was busy rationalizing that I was no candidate for this type of thing and I would not give in to the very obvious symptoms.

After about a half an hour of nausea and jaw pain, all hurt disappeared and I mentally congratulated myself for refusing to give in to what I considered to be a statistical improbability. Husband and mother-in-law sought my reassurances constantly that all was fine with me, and it was.

In fact, I never had another single symptom of a troubled heart for well over a year after that. I could have done so much in that year had I simply followed my gut instinct and arranged a simple visit to a heart doctor to check out what all that pain was about.



Although I did, during that year of no symptoms take some actions that would bring me kudos for my forethought. I'd mentally decided that there HAD been something weird going on with my heart that weekend and perhaps it was time for me to do a health assessment and take some actions that would help my strained heart.

In the Fall following that first heart episode, I went on a diet and lost 60 pounds. Which, impressive as that might sound, wasn’t all that my body could handily have lost but it was a very good beginning. The February following that weight loss, February of 2007, I stopped smoking.

Indeed I was a heavy smoker. In fact, I entered into that weight loss program in anticipation of the cessation of smoking. Smokers notoriously gain weight upon quitting their habit. I figured I’d lose the weight first then, with the help of an exercise program, I would be able to stop smoking without a huge weight gain.

Still, I remind yon reader, there had been not one single symptom of any heart issues during this entire period. But I’d not forgotten the deep ache in my jaw that I knew was nothing other than my heart. If I was lucky I could finish all these noble healthy actions and perhaps I’d never hear so ominously from my heart again.

I should have, with the 20/20 vision of hindsight, gotten myself to a Cardiologist of some sort and began a medical protocol to ascertain what that jaw pain and nausea were about. This action, along with the weight loss program, the cessation of smoking, and my happening exercise program, would have been a complete and thorough action to take towards a healthy heart.

Such as doctors and endless medical tests scared the hell out of me. I figured should any more heart pain come upon me, THEN I would consult a doctor.

My exercise program consisted of walking in circles around and around in my own back yard but by me, even to this day, I consider it a stroke of genius. I have a dog and I had been walking said dog on a daily basis. On two separate occasions my dog was attacked by dogs running loose.

They were little dogs. My dog is a big Belgian Malinois. She’s got big teeth. She defends me and herself when dogs rush from inside their very houses out onto the street to attack her. With one enormous clamp of those jaws she grabbed a little cocker spaniel, in one instance, and some sort of fancy show dog with lots of hair in another. Each of the dogs, for reasons understood only deeply in the brains of these dogs evidently intent on a suicidal mission, were quickly dispatched by Jo-Ann, who clamped down on the mutts daring to attack her. She shook those dogs as if but small rag toys with which she loved to play. Those dogs yelped and screamed and I managed, somehow and shaking in great terror, to get the dogs loose from my dogs’ jaws.

Jo-Ann didn’t kill those dogs but she could have. Easily. I resorted to carrying a big can of pepper spray but once again an adorable little Bichon Frise comes running from its house one day. I used the pepper spray. Jo-Ann and the Bichon did not have a fight but I decided right then and there that the terror of the dog walk was not worth the benefits of the exercise.

Of course I was bitter. On all three of these instances my dog was fairly and firmly walking, fully tethered from leash to collar to harness, on a public street. The damn dogs were loose. I don’t know what brand of insanity would have a little poodle type of mutt attack a great big Belgian shepherd but I don’t make it up. I had to take Jo-Ann to a Vet because the dogs DID attack her. The local SPCA came out. It was ascertained that Jo-Ann is not at all a dangerous dog, mostly because she’s NOT.

It took a while for Jo-Ann to acclimate to the notion that walking a circle in her own back yard was somehow akin to a morning walk along public streets with its many different sights that would intrigue any dog. But every day I went out into my own backyard. I took a cup of coffee, some chalk, an umbrella or sweater as required, and I walked around my yard in circles.

So lock me up in my own insane asylum because the public street wasn’t working for me. To add to the serendipity over the dog walking, at one point there even was a damn dog on the other side of the big 5’ fence in my own yard, this dog trying desperately to get INSIDE of our yard to attack my dog in her own damn yard!

Yes I write fiction but no way I could make this shit up.

In due course I came on a system which worked well with me and I’d recommend my own brand of genius to everyone. For many of us regularly walk upon a treadmill which takes us nowhere and on which dogs generally cannot join in. So why not walk around your own yard in circles? Dogs are mostly happy to be walking alongside their masters and don’t much care that they are walking in their own yard.

I’m a bird watcher so I use the time to regard the many birds who visit my yards, either for the feeders or during times of nesting. I’ve worked out a system where the dog is free to run like the dickens inside of our own well-fenced in yard as I walk the first half of my morning routine. Over time we’ve learned to play certain games that would have me pretending to take her ball or toys and she’ll run around trying to keep her cherished objects from me. Meanwhile I walk around, she runs, we exercise.

For the last half of my routine I slip a leash on Jo-Ann. By this time she’s tired from running so much. Recall that on our former public walks, Jo-Ann never had the opportunity to run free and play so happily as she did in her own yard. For half of my circuits I walk with her. She joins me in the walk, this after her own playful romp. She’s tired by then, she walks along by my side, dutifully and happily.

There’s also such as Ipods and other distractions that can be used for these walks and an existing backyard is always cheaper than a treadmill. Certainly it’s not for everybody but it works for me.

After I quit smoking, which wasn’t easy as one might imagine, I began this morning exercise routine, all to keep me from gaining so much weight as to negate any health benefits caused by the cessation of smoking. And still, despite my best efforts, I gained about 30 pounds back of the 60 pounds I’d lost. Mostly, as I now understand, I was slowing down all of my movement due to a straining heart.

For my heart was in trouble and despite all my efforts, symptoms returned.

This time, of course, I did not ignore the symptoms. This time I sought medical help. This time I knew something was seriously wrong with my heart but at least I was through with the smoking, I was a bit smaller in terms of weight, I’d been regularly exercising every morning except Sundays for almost a year.

I was in the best shape an overweight woman with a serious heart problem could be, if such a thing is possible.

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The symptoms began as a racing heart. Indeed. At times my heart would launch into some sort of weird but not necessarily painful, episode of a heart on a rampage. I didn’t know what to make of it. Is such a thing considered a medical emergency I wondered? Does one call an ambulance with a complaint that one’s heart seems to be running amok although no, technically there’s no pain? Would I be arrested for presenting myself at an emergency room with such a complaint? Further, aren’t hearts supposed to, from time to time, launch into little racing episodes, say when danger is upon or fear permeates the body?

Although I really wasn’t fooled. Many times when my heart would go on this sort of racing rampage it would beat wildly, sometimes for hours at a time. I’d sit in a chair almost curled up in a fetal ball, wondering what to do, what was happening to me, why was my heart doing this?

Which wasn’t at all a symptom like the ominous one then almost a year and a half prior when my mother-in-law was visiting, my jaw aching and my stomach nauseated almost to the point of vomiting. This racing heart thing was completely new to me and for sure, what with my cessation of smoking, the weight loss and that regular exercise program, well I had to be imagining things right? I was on my way to being a happening healthy woman, free from the dangers of the cigarette and dedicated to my morning walks in my own back yard. Why was my heart giving me a hard time now?

During one racing heart episode, I became so nauseated that I did, indeed, projectile vomit so violently that I knew it was time to seek out medical help.

“Something is wrong with your heart,” the Cardiologist told me, kindly but firmly. The ECG taken during that first visit showed up abnormal and a prior heart attack could not be ruled out. The Cardiologist might not have known at the time just what was amiss with my protesting heart but God Bless America’s medical system, the machines indicated it was time for further tests.

Something was wrong with my heart.

Of course the Cardio guy was delighted that I was, by then, a FORMER smoker, and that I was thirty pounds lighter than I’d been. He was happy that I exercised regularly and he told me that walking was the absolute best exercise for me, given my circumstances and the state of my health. He thought I was a good 40 pounds heavier than I should be and I was. I don’t know, by him I was likely a medical basket case but it was important to me that he understood my history that year and half prior to my visit. He figured the racing heart was some sort of tachycardio thing and he prescribed something called Beta blockers. He sent me on my way to obtain chest x-rays, blood work ups, echocardiograms and finally, a stress test during which my heart would be put to the ultimate test.

It was a sane medical protocol for this middle aged woman suddenly presenting with complaints of a racing heart from out of nowhere.

The blood work showed that my cholesterol was way high. The echocardiogram, an
Ultrasound of the heart muscle as I understood it, didn’t show anything unusual with my heart muscle.

There were problems but throughout that month of April in the year of our Lord 2008, nothing terribly unusual came to the fore as regards my protesting heart. The Beta blocker medicine seemed to work as the racing heart episodes stopped but a time or two during all that medical protocol, my heart would suddenly seize up with chest pain and a time or two I’d get so nauseated I’d vomit violently. The Cardio guy told me to get myself toot de sweet to a hospital emergency room in the event of such chest pain but always, once I stopped whatever I was doing when the pain came upon, it would go away. I figured why rush to a hospital when by the time I’d get there the pain would be long gone? I figured in due course the Cardio guy would find something.

All hell broke loose on the day of the stress test.

My daughter and husband were by now well aware of my heart issues. They knew that something was not right but ever convinced that a fine strapping woman such as myself couldn’t possibly have an ailing heart, I was sure that my problem was probably hormonal, a bad signal sent in error to my healthy heart that confused that muscle all to hell. Daughter arranged to go with me the day of the scheduled stress test.

I got on the treadmill as instructed and the nurse told me to start walking. “You need to get your heart up to 140 beats a minute,” she told me. The Cardiologist was in the room as well, urging to speed up my walk, informing me that I was only up to 109 beats a minute and already I was struggling for breath.

I’d been fairly smug that day. Hell I walked around my yard every damn day. How hard could a treadmill be? Only my walks around my yard were monitored in terms of speed by me and my heart had been deteriorating for so long that I’d automatically been slowing down the speed of my walk as we are all wont to do based on the demands and strains of our heart. The treadmill showed me no mercy.

“I can’t do it,” I gasped, finally falling off the treadmill gasping for breath.

The nurse told me it was no problem, that they would use chemicals to speed up my heart.

My screams of pain could be heard up and down Route 1 in Rehoboth Beach Delaware.

I begged for relief. The pain was beyond anything I’d ever experienced before in my life. I wanted to die.

“I’m putting in the antidote,” the frazzled nurse told me, holding my collapsed body over her own as she hastily inserted a needle into a prepared injection site. “It will be over soon,” she told me. The Cardiologist was wringing his hands with concern and from my painful screams, no doubt.

In due course, very quickly probably, the pain stopped. I was able to get up and for the most part, life was normal again.

“I am very sorry,” the worried Cardiologist told me. “You have Coronary Artery Disease. You need to go to the hospital. Your heart is in serious shape.”

Thank God my daughter was there. In fact I did go to the hospital. In fact I was admitted and over the course of the next week and a half, I discovered how close, how very, very close, I came to dying, walking around with a ticking time bomb in my chest.