Not only am I incredibly grateful for waking up every day, but I also appreciate what I have got so much. It's not as much as many, but far more than some, so I'm one of the lucky ones.
I am not rich with money, but wealthy with life, love, compassion and happiness.
This is how I feel every day when I wake up and say I AM ALIVE!
So I thought I'd share a short story of survival with you today to explain why the first community I joined just 5 days ago when signing up to Hive was the I Am alive Challenge- why it resonated with me so much.
And that is because like No. 5 from "Short Circuit', I Am Alive- despite the fact that I dread going to bed every night and then lay awake for hours with serious anxiety with the fear of not waking up the next morning.
This is something that I am experiencing every night since 26th April 2010- and that was the night- about midnight, when I had my first heart attack at the ripe old age of 38.
It took the doctors 3 days to determine that I had actually had a heart attack because nothing showed up on any of the million monitors that they had me hooked up too- it was only because of the increased levels on Troponin in my bloodstream- a protein that is secreted from the heart muscle upon damage that made them believe.
Then I went through 4 yrs of denial from a range of cardiologists until one day I bumped into this great website called https://myheartsisters.org/ and read about 1 woman's experiences and the way that she described her issues were exactly the same as my (what I thought) where residual issues.
As it turns out, my symptoms were not residual issues- but were infact the main cause of the heart attack. A rare condition well-known in cardiology circles around the world since it was first discovered in 1959 by Dr Prinzmetal, but completely denied in Australian medical circles until literally 3 years ago. And renamed in Australia to CAVS- Coronary Artery Vaso Spasms.
I even had one cardiologist tell me that it didn't exist and even if it did I was on the right medications for it!
However 8 years later in 2018, during my 3rd heart attack in 1 week, I found out by thankfully an older German cardiologist during an Angiogram, that not only does it exist but the medication that I had been on can actually cause it.
This is a photo of my angiogram where you can see the image on the left (where the arrow is pointing) has the blocked artery and the image on the right is the artery at normal width-literally a second before they were going to stick a stent up there thinking that I have plaque build up from high cholesterol- not true- I have virtually zero plaque- my cholesterol has always been and still remains great- as do all of my other stats and absolutely no pre-existing condition such as heart disease/diabetes/obesity or anything then or since.
So what happens with CAVS? Well- it's always at night, between midnight and 8am....hence the bedtime trepidation....AND alternately, the suprise and appreciation when I wake up in the morning and think oh thank Fck #IAMALIVECHALLENGE!
Following info from https://myheartsisters.org/2009/07/05/angina/
...."Variant angina (also called Prinzmetal’s angina) is considered relatively rare (only 2% of all angina cases).
It’s usually caused by a coronary artery spasm, and is more likely to affect younger women than in older women or men.
The artery can momentarily narrow during this spasm, suddenly reducing blood flow to your heart and causing severe pain.
It nearly always happens while you are at rest. It doesn’t follow physical exertion or emotional stress.
Attacks may be very painful and usually happen between midnight and 8 a.m....."
For me, it is very sporadic and I might only get 1 pain over a 6 month period indicating constriction of an artery somewhere in there... (not the same spots in the arteries either) or I may get it every month and it will build up in pain level over a few days then just completely stop.
The pain is ALWAYS on my right side- just to the right of the bottom of my sternum, then a spot up the top of my sternum near my collarbone, then at a spot up on my far right shoulder, then if I let it go, it will start feeling like a hot, burning stitch down underneath my outer ribs, at points on my right arm- elbow and wrist (which I know is along the Brachial artery) and will go up the side of my throat and that's when I know I'm in trouble.
Sometimes it's full-on pain solidly traveling down a well defined, continuous pathway, sometimes it's just sharp pain on a few of points along that pathway.
I always have 2 bottles of Angina spray near me and when I use the spray to open the arteries the pain will usually go away and can completely stop for months, or may come back again within seconds of having a puff.
When it keeps coming back I know that I have to go to hospital as your are only supposed to have 3 or less, but I have had 12 puffs in a day and then it will suddenly stop for months.
I have to sit completely still when I have a puff, otherwise the spray doesn't work at all. Also the spray itself can not focus in and just open the arteries in your heart so it opens all arteries in your body, including the brain and that's when I get really bad headaches and I feel like a zombie.
I also have to be really careful of infections- from the benign sounding to Corona Virus for infection can cause heart attacks- especially in those with heart conditions.
So I'm not playing the sympathy card, nor will I ever play the victim card, and I only play the survivor card for I want to do my part as a community service announcement to educate everyone about this heart condition and in general, create awareness of the way that women's heart attacks are completely different to men's, so much so, that most women don't even know that they are having or have had one because the pain can be as small as a little bit of heart burn or just a headache. It can be a tiny bit of pain in the jaw or shoulder- most times never near the heart area.
OR you could actually be one of the few women that have the text book- 'Elephant sitting on the chest'.
When I had my first one, I literally thought that I had pulled a small muscle in my shoulder as I was closing my old gate and turning in my head at the same time. Then I went to bed and didn't think about the tiny throbbing pain in that spot on my shoulder until I felt a line of numb pain down my RIGHT arm and then I thought * Crap, I've pinched a nerve too...* and that was it.... until an hour later (still trying to go to sleep) that I swallowed a realised my throat was really sore- not scratchy sore, but like it was swollen... and then something dawned in my head when I put the 3 symptoms together and I thought that I was having a stroke- but a really weird one.....because we always see adds on tv about men having strokes and the pain being on their left arms... fair call, but NOT FOR WOMEN.
Womens heart attacks are completely different to mens, so please look at this website and educate yourself and your family https://myheartsisters.org/about-women-and-heart-disease/myths-facts/ because this could be you, your mother, sister, wife or girlfriend and without getting the proper care and in time, it could be their death too.
I was lucky, when I added my 3 symptoms up, my St John Ambulance First aid knowledge from 25yrs beforehand kicked in.
And please, don't be a bystander in your health (or ill health) journey. Don't be afraid to get 2nd/3rd/4th and even 10th opinions. Do your research. Question everything. Trust yourself. It is your body and your brain. Doctors in all disciplines have hundreds- if not thousands of patients to think about, whereas you only have you to think about.
Trust me, you should have seen the consistent and unbelievable debacles from the medical 'professionals' that my mum went through for 9 months before she died from Bowel Cancer. Lucky I was her F/T carer and am not opposed to being pro-active or afraid to question, query, pester and persist.
So thank you for having me in this community and I hope that you can all use my experiences to save your loves ones.