Unreal the last 3 weeks

[phanson32258]

I am 38 years old and it all started about a week before Xmas. I had pain going down my left arm and went to the emergency room and they could find nothing wrong. The following Monday I went to my doctor and explained what happened. I asked him to refer me to a Cardiologist in which he did. I setup an appointment 2 weeks later and the cardiologist talked about diet and setup a time for a stress test for me the following week. I went in and my stress test was abnormal and they scheduled an angiogram the following day. The next day I discovered I had my 99%, 2 that 95% and one that was 70% blockage. It was a Friday had to stay in the hospital until they preformed the surgery that Monday. That was 2 and a half weeks ago. I have been recovering fine, but have so much mixed emotion and slightly scared. Do others feel this way? I want to live until my 80’s and feel that I might be dreaming to make it that long, but am also lucky to have discovered it before I had a heart attack. I smoked, but have not really wanted one since this ordeal nor will I ever smoke again. Waking up on a respirator and walking around the icu takes care of that. Also I am willing to change my diet and my life style eating habitats exercise and so on. My cholesterol is 92 but my good cholesterol is only 27. I am also sick of being told how young I am to have gone though this, it almost makes you feel hopeless in sense. It just seems like a dream I should wake up from anytime. I wonder if other people feel this way?

[sca2013]

Yes, I had some of those same feelings after two cardiac events 12 years apart (heart attack 2001 and cardiac arrest 2013) both caused by too high of stress, over treatment by ER doctors with nitroglycerin causing my blood pressure to bottom out. Turns out there were no blockages at all. Anyway I went through the emotions of what happened, similar to what you experienced. I had to stop thinking about how long I would live and instead focus on doing things to have the best quality of life possible and let the longevity take care of itself. You'll find as time goes forward your focus will shift. I found myself developing new compensating skills to deal with what happened, which made things better. Yes, forget about the age references, it's just a number. Any of this can happen at any age. Invincibility is gone. Some days I have to take things an hour at a time. This made things more tolerable to deal with for me. Feel free to contact me if you have other questions or want to talk further.