It was a routine angiogram my husband had put off having for over a year due to questionable test results, high cholesterol, and a strong family history of heart disease. That and he was beginning to have shooting pains down his left arm and into his neck several times a day which he had chosen to keep to himself.
I was told where to wait during the procedure that would likely last from 45 minutes to an hour or more. It turned out I had just enough time to go to the first floor and back up with a cup of coffee when the cardiologist met me in the waiting room to tell me that Clay would need open heart surgery.
I had him repeat what he was telling me a couple of times to process the information and finally nodded and said, "So this is something we will need to look into down the road?"
And he said, "Yes, within the next two weeks." In the meantime, he was to do no cardio or heavy lifting. He suggested not to talk to him about it until he could be in the room with me when we explained the situation. I was agreeable to do this because I was still in a state of shock.
I had been planning a surprise 60th birthday for Clay and had joked the angiogram would either give us good news or news we needed to celebrate to forget. In hindsight my jokes were to cover up a hidden fear I had had for 38 years knowing that all the Foreman men before him from grandfather to father to brother down had suffered massive heart attacks. But we were getting ahead of it by doing this and we figured that a couple of stents would fix him up just fine.
Within 24 hours we were confronted with tidal waves of new vocabulary, new information, and new plans. We were suddenly juggling everything from mortality to what to do with pets. Getting the house disinfected to fixing the tires on his truck. Cleaning out the refrigerator to reviewing important papers. Paying bills to discussing a will.
Words like cardiothoracic, aorta, aortic dissection, atrial fibrillation, catheter, coronary artery were tossed around. And every so often words would come through like widowmaker, 90% blockage, main arteries to the heart, all at least 75% blockage. Words like 98% success rate, risk factors, infection, recovery plans bumped into the mix.
I asked everyone I knew who had gone through this to give us whatever advice they could. I crammed in probably a lot more online reading than I should have and still was not prepared at all for the past three weeks. I cannot speak for my husband, but I feel he would say the same, but when it is a life-or-death decision maybe a little bit of naivety is not a bad thing. And I thank my Creator to the core of my being that where our naivety left off our faith stepped in, and the Lord carried us through the storm.
The cardiologist told Clay it was likely because he had lived a healthy life of exercise and eating that his heart disease went undetected to the age of 60, but he could have lived a perfect life, and this is where he would have ended up.
He is now the first Foreman out of three generations, 7 other men, who wrote his own script to this terrible inherited disease and did not have the heart attack first. Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. It accounts for about 1 in 4 deaths in our country.
I've been offline with this column as Clay recovers, but I encourage everyone to pay attention to warning signs, get advice from your physician, and if you do not have a nagging spouse, pretend you do and take the lead on your heart health.
