Mamacita says:  I know I haven’t been keeping up with my posting, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t been a very good comment-acknowledger, but there is a reason I’ve been more absent-minded than usual lately.  My husband went to his doctor for a routine checkup last week and yesterday he had bypass surgery.  We were told that it was to be a quadruple bypass, but it ended up “merely” a triple.  I told him it was like golf:  the lower the number, the better.

There were no symptoms, none, zip, zero, nil,  just a general tiredness.  No pains, no chest-clutching, no drama.  Just a question from his doctor:  “How are you feeling these days?”  and Hub’s answer:  “Fine; I’m just tired.”  As I sat in the hospital waiting room with other women whose husbands/brothers/fathers were having this surgery also, I discovered that quite often there ARE no symptoms.  We associate open heart surgery with drastic happenings:  heart attacks!  vampire bites!  cutlasses!  sword fights!  karate kicks!  avada kedavra!  But more often than not, there is just that feeling of exhaustion.  One woman in the waiting room told me that her husband had just casually mentioned to his golfing partner that he got a funny feeling in his neck when he looked UP.  The partner had recently read an article mentioning that as a symptom of blocked arteries.  Who knew?  I didn’t.  But I do now.  I also now know that symptoms can be as simple as a pain in EITHER arm, or a persistent lower back ache.  Some people’s TEETH hurt when their arteries are blocked.  Women sometimes mistake breaking out in a cold sweat,  jaw or face pain, and hyperventilating as being symptoms of menopause, which they most often are, rather than symptoms of a pending or actual heart attack, which they occasionally are.

Now you all know these things too, and maybe you’ve learned them just in time.

I never associated a “funny feeling” or just general exhaustion with heart trouble, but from now on I will.  Maybe all of you should, too.

Thank you all for the kind words of support this week.  You have made a tremendously large difference in my life, and it’s such a GOOD difference.