Wow. We didn't expect that!

 

First, let me report that we’re home and in pretty good shape, considering.

 

We were at the Cardiologist’s Office by 9am yesterday.  They had us to the Heart Lab by 10.  Dr. Holland was already there operating on somebody else.  They just dropped me into the queue.  The queue was longer than expected.  Becky, Matt, Judy and I waited 5 hours in the pre-op room.  I think it was a longer wait for everyone else than for me.  As far as I know, I was the only one on Valium.

 

So the Cardiologist agreed that yes, it’s time to go into the heart again.  Before I went in, the entire conversation was about Plavix.  There are different treatment options, depending on which arteries are clogged and where they’re clogged.  I’ve voiced that I’m not sure I could survive another year on Plavix.  Plavix seems to want to treat my brain as much as my heart and I’m concerned it will change my brain irreparably.  Anyway, we talked about bare metal stents, medicated stents, and bypass surgery.  Bare metal stents only require Plavix for a month, but they don’t stay open as long as medicated stents.  Medicated stents require Plavix for a year.  If they crack my chest and tag bypasses onto the outside of my heart, I won’t have to take Plavix at all.  So in I go to the cath-lab.  Out I come 40 minutes later, no new stents and no new blockages in my heart.  That’s the part we never considered, that I would have no new blockages.  That changes everything!

 

First, it means that all the nutritional supplements I’ve been taking for the last year might actually be having a positive effect on my heart.  They may have stopped the plaque formation.  That is great news, because it takes Statin drugs (which I can’t tolerate) out of the picture.  I don’t need to take a Statin drug to lower my cholesterol more aggressively if I’m not accumulating plaque.  Second, it takes Plavix out of the picture.  I won’t have to whine for another year about how Plavix makes me feel.

 

Of course we still have to deal with the symptoms that drove us to the cardiologist this time around, but it’s nice to know they were not the result of a clog in a major artery, and nice to know that if I need to, I can take another Nitro-glycerin for relief.

 

The diagnosis is indirect, but if I’m having the symptoms and Nitro relieves them, and there are no new major artery blockages, then I’ve probably got Small-artery disease which is interfering with the blood flow.  Small-artery disease might be annoying and decrease my exercise capacity, but it doesn’t lead to heart attacks and sudden death like Major-artery disease does, so that’s a giant improvement.  If the quick-release Nitro-glycerin pills work, there are slow release forms that should work as well.  If I’m not having side-effect troubles with Nitro-glycerin, there is a good chance I won’t have them with slower release forms either.

 

All this is a surprise; new information to digest, and there are still issues to deal with, but all-in-all, I consider this to be a very good surprise.