Staring at Mortality

Over the last two weeks I was given the gift of facing my own mortality, again. Several years ago I took a very hard look at my mortality after experiencing severe chest pains while on a flight to Singapore through Japan.

The short story about "flying the unfriendly skies to Asia" covers my having to return from Asia and get a thorough exam by Dr. Kereiakes at the Ohio Heart Center at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati. While lying uncomfortably on a very narrow steel table in the cath lab Dr. K and his minions shot some radio isotopes into my blood stream and then took xrays of my heart and arteries while I looked on from below the monitor.

It is a strange thing to look into a computer screen and see one's heart pumping away over 70 times each minute while a Physician is pointing to the areas of danger called blockages that can cause instant death if they break away and hit the heart. It may be routine to the doctor but not to the patient.

That ended in a stent inserted into one of my arteries and the pronouncement that I had lost about 1/3 of my heart muscle to some former unexplainable event. The docs all agree that once a muscle is damaged there are no medical cures only supernatural ones. I have regularly applied prayer to the hopeless region and found significant relief but more prayers are needed.

One of the blockages was in such a tight spot that a stent could not be applied. I take a daily pill to keep the arteries spread wider than nature intended so the blood can move around the dam caused by excess hamburgers. I take another pill to reduce future damming and exercise to keep the parts of my heart that are still healthy ticking strongly.

But recently I began experiencing some tightness in my chest and when I told Dr. K he immediately prescribed another nuclear stress test. More on those results later, but it was a great opportunity to face my mortality and my need for self care, again.