How This Got Started

“Your EKG is fine.”

Somehow that is not very comforting when you are lying on a bed in the Emergency Room recovering from your second nitro tablet of the night. The first one wasn’t bad; the second one packed a punch.

This bit of medical news was soon trumped by the results of the blood test they had seemingly just taken. Time tends to get a bit distorted for me in situations like this, not that I’d ever been in a situation like this. “Well Mr. Lane, you’ve had a heart attack.”

Okay, so far I’ve learned that the EKG didn’t mean shit.

To tell you the truth being told that I had a heart attack was a little anti climatic. I mean I knew something major had occurred after all I was laying on a table in an emergency room with oxygen in my nostrils and three IV drips in my arm. Since my blood pressure had already been running high, a heart attack was high up on the list of probabilities. Still this was big news. I had a heart attack. People die from heart attacks.

The thing was, it really didn’t feel like a heart attack. At least it didn’t feel like I always thought a heart attack would. A heart attack sounds like something that should knock you to your knees. Mine didn’t. It also didn’t kill me which has allowed me to start this blog.

This is a place to share the everyday experiences of regular folks who through the luck of the draw live with heart disease. This is the non clinical view from the pointy end of the needle. This is a place for folks who have had a heart attack and those who think that having one in their life is a distinct probability. This is a place for humor, real stories, and perhaps some useful advice. I am your host, the heart attack guy.