A Cautionary Tale

4 May 2008

Here's the story, fresh from the source:

John Powers (perfection on a bicycle) had been managing high cholesterol through diet and exercise. He'd had a burning in his chest for a few weeks but thought it was allergies, which is an easy assumption to make considering the pollen levels around here recently.

Two Saturdays ago he went on an 100-mile ride from Cranbury to the Pinelands. He felt fine, no burning. He even pulled the group back after 80 miles, into a headwind. For the rest of the week he didn't feel any burning while he wasn't active, so he didn't think much about it.

But last Saturday morning he woke up with the classic symptoms of a heart attack. He called 9-1-1 immediately.

At the hospital the doctors found one artery fully blocked and another partially blocked. They put a stent in for the total blockage.

Meanwhile, while John was being worked on, a nurse noticed that John's wife, Carolyn, didn't look right and sent her to the emergency room, where the same team who initially worked on John determined that, because of the stress, Carolyn also had a heart attack. Hers was a small one.

The two of them spent the weekend in the hospital. John came home a day before Carolyn did.

Now John is on beta blockers. He says he's tired and gets winded easily. He also says it'll be a while before the doctors can assess how much damage his heart sustained. I asked him if Carolyn will have to pull the pedals off of all his bikes. He says that won't be necessary. He's going to behave.

The moral of this story is best put by John in an email to me:

"Yes, denial is indeed something that you may be doing without thinking you are. I mean you don't have to be flat out stubborn [tho that will make it worse I'm sure] the rationalization process is often more subtle than many of us realize. Mine was that if I wasn't having trouble when not working hard it couldn't be serious, right?"

Denial is the primary reason people die from heart attacks. Know the symptoms and get help right away. It's better to be embarrassed than dead.