Big and Broken Heart

Back to my “crapshoot” theory of life. Think of any heart attack you’ve ever seen on TV or in films; it probably looked like this: A guy suddenly clutches his chest then drops over dead. As Tim O’Brien’s character Kiowa says, “Boom. Down.” And the guy is usually 150 pounds overweight, and he’s either choking down a ½-pound double bacon cheeseburger at the time, or he’s having a red-faced screaming match with a mobster, right? Well, once again, Ray and I have been lovingly kicked in the arse as a reminder that real life is not like the movies.

Ray had his first heart attack ten years ago, at age 50. Ray is not overweight. He’s fit and exercises regularly. Our diet includes very little fat (and rarely anything but olive oil), loads of whole grains and vegetables, little red meat, as much organic stuff as we can get here in South Dakota, and Ray has been eating only fresh fruit till noon every day for many years. We both drink liters of water daily. Seriously…we couldn’t eat more tofu and tabouli if we tried.

The day of Ray’s first heart attack, he was at work when, mid-morning, he had a bellyache. He thought he had gas, and he felt faint. He called me and said he didn’t feel “right.” I told him to eat an aspirin and I’d pick him up. We went to the ER, and sure enough, he was having a heart attack. By the time the whole adventure was over, he’d had a couple of stents to get some temporary heart-healing blood flow, then quadruple bypass surgery to get around eight blockages in his coronary arteries.

His second heart attack was last week. He’d been having occasional heartburn for a month or more. It woke him up a couple of mornings but went away if he got up and moved around. Then one morning, it wouldn’t go away. It was right in the middle of his chest, and he described it as a slight burning sensation—hence, the heartburn—and he said, again, he just didn’t feel “right.” He took an aspirin and we headed to town to see the doc. An ER visit, ambulance ride, and hospitalization later, he now has a new stent in one of the original bypass grafts that had slowly closed down to around 99% blocked.

Ironically, I had been planning to spend the day of Ray’s procedure with a friend in the waiting room of another hospital, where his wife, our friend, was having surgery that morning. He and my mom had waited with me through Ray’s bypass surgery years before, and it had been a great comfort, so I was looking forward to doing the same for him. Alas, the best laid plans... It all got even more comical when I discovered another friend’s mom three doors down from Ray in the same hospital, in to have her heart meds adjusted. So now I’m calling the whole affair The Great 2012 Tuneup. It will be cause for a new party each January—one with heart-healthy red wine and a delightful assortment of low-fat, high-fiber, organic, flax-encrusted hors d'oeuvres.

Anyway, here’s the thing, people: A heart attack isn’t necessarily a single, sudden, isolated event. It may sneak up slowly, giving little warning signs that most of us would probably ignore. Ray didn’t have ANY of the classical symptoms this time: faintness, shortness of breath, radiating pain or ache in the arms, back or neck, clamminess, cold sweats, tightness or pressure in the chest. All he had was a little heart burn.

Ray’s home for a week of R & R now, and he’s feeling fine. We’re grateful he didn’t need another bypass re-do (they tell us the average “life” of bypass grafts is ten years, after which some patients need the procedure re-done. Since it involves cracking the chest and stopping & re-starting the heart, we’d like to avoid that). We’re also grateful for yet another reminder never to take life—or each other—for granted.

So now we’ll both take aspirin daily. We’ll both carry nitroglycerin in our backpacks. Maybe we’ll institute an evening constitutional to get in a little more exercise. And we’ll pay close attention to anything that doesn’t feel “right.” 

I’m puzzled when I see people whose lifestyles or body conditions scream “heart attack!” but who have NOT furnished a wing in the Heart Hospital, as Ray probably has by now. I'm amazed at the powerful influence of a few crummy genes. I’m befuddled by how crafty, subtle, slow or cleverly disguised a heart attack can be. I’m baffled that it can happen to lean, fit folks leading healthy lives. But then I remember the lesson Life keeps throwing like an adorable little grenade in our path…it’s all a crapshoot.