b2curious
Well-Known Member
At my daughter's Girl Scout meeting recently, when the girls were working independently, I joined an already in progress conversation that the troop leader and one of the other mom's were having, so I missed a few things. It seems that our troop leader's husband, Craig, who is in his mid-40's, and about the same age his father was when he died of a heart attack, had been having trouble with shortness of breath. Somewhere along the way, he was sent for a cardiac work up. The stress test was fine (more on that later), but another test had one minor abnormality. The doc, deciding to err on the side of caution, given Craig’s family history, wanted to do a cardiac catheter, just to see if there was anything going on, but did not expect to find anything
The day of the appointment arrives, Craig drives himself to the appointment, and his wife (our troop leader) meets him there. They weren’t expecting to find anything, so they expected him to be able to drive himself home. As the procedure starts the doc, the staff, Craig, his wife, are all chatting, then suddenly the doctor says, in a serious voice “Oh, I didn’t expect to see that” and the room went silent. It seems that Craig had a 90% blockage on one side and a 95% blockage on the other. The stress test didn’t pick this up because it measures the difference between the two sides, and 5% is too small to pick up. They put in 2 stents in line with each other on one side. Because the procedure can stress the heart, they did not do both sides. The next stent procedure is in about a week or so. Craig’s heart was a ticking time bomb. The doctor said that if Craig had had a heart attack, it would have been a “widow maker.” They wouldn’t have been able to save him, even if it had been right there in the cardiac unit. They’ve not placed any restrictions on his activities, save the standard ones following the procedure, because “He’s better off now than he was before. If he did it before, he can do it now.” So I’m asking for prayers that there be no problems before his next procedure and that be even less eventful than his first one. And the only eventful thing eventful about that one was that it was a surprise.
The day of the appointment arrives, Craig drives himself to the appointment, and his wife (our troop leader) meets him there. They weren’t expecting to find anything, so they expected him to be able to drive himself home. As the procedure starts the doc, the staff, Craig, his wife, are all chatting, then suddenly the doctor says, in a serious voice “Oh, I didn’t expect to see that” and the room went silent. It seems that Craig had a 90% blockage on one side and a 95% blockage on the other. The stress test didn’t pick this up because it measures the difference between the two sides, and 5% is too small to pick up. They put in 2 stents in line with each other on one side. Because the procedure can stress the heart, they did not do both sides. The next stent procedure is in about a week or so. Craig’s heart was a ticking time bomb. The doctor said that if Craig had had a heart attack, it would have been a “widow maker.” They wouldn’t have been able to save him, even if it had been right there in the cardiac unit. They’ve not placed any restrictions on his activities, save the standard ones following the procedure, because “He’s better off now than he was before. If he did it before, he can do it now.” So I’m asking for prayers that there be no problems before his next procedure and that be even less eventful than his first one. And the only eventful thing eventful about that one was that it was a surprise.
