Wellness

[squeaks]

Monday I saw my cardiologist for a checkup.  He asked if I was tired and how was my sleep pattern. At the end of the visit, according to the EKG I had had a heart attack.  Mind blowing!  Went home and looked this up.  About 40 to 80% of women have this.  Needless to say, I am having all kinds of test run in the next few weeks.

[Trinity11]

---

@squeaks wrote:

Monday I saw my cardiologist for a checkup.  He asked if I was tired and how was my sleep pattern. At the end of the visit, according to the EKG I had had a heart attack.  Mind blowing!  Went home and looked this up.  About 40 to 80% of women have this.  Needless to say, I am having all kinds of test run in the next few weeks.

---

After I had my first heart attack, I was told I had a silent heart attack previously. Consider yourself lucky @squeaks because you can now take steps to improve your health. Preventative medicine can help.  A beta blocker, statin, anti coagulent and less meat and fat seems to have helped me. I was very thin, so weight loss was not an issue but if you are struggling with your weight, this can be a new incentive for you to reach your goal. 

Best of luck to you! 

[05gage25]

Oh my!  That's scary. Prayers for a great outcome on all your tests.🙏🏻

[4kitties]

@squeaks 

My mother had a silent heart attack.  Scary to think this can happen.

Wishing you the best possible test results and the best of health for the future.

[hckynutjohn]

The same can be true with a stroke, and neither of these are gender specific. I do however believe the heart attack you mention, is more common to women than men. I have 3 friends that had strokes of which they were unaware of until much further down the road.

That is why health maintenance is so important, and I don't consider a checkup that consists of, blood pressure/heart rate and clear lungs, as a full physical.

Silent heart attacks also kill portions of the heart muscle. Unlike other muscle tissues of the body, heart muscle cannot be rebuilt, it is dead tissue. Having this silent heart attack discovered is a blessing, just as finding out one has severely blocked major arteries, before suffering a heart attack.

@squeaks  Do whatever your Cardiologist deems necessary to continue to live a good and long life. My best to you,

hckynut(john)🥅🏒  🇺🇸

[meallen616]

Keep us posted,

[Effie54]

---

@hckynutjohn wrote:

The same can be true with a stroke, and neither of these are gender specific. I do however believe the heart attack you mention, is more common to women than men. I have 3 friends that had strokes of which they were unaware of until much further down the road.

That is why health maintenance is so important, and I don't consider a checkup that consists of, blood pressure/heart rate and clear lungs, as a full physical.

Silent heart attacks also kill portions of the heart muscle. Unlike other muscle tissues of the body, heart muscle cannot be rebuilt, it is dead tissue. Having this silent heart attack discovered is a blessing, just as finding out one has severely blocked major arteries, before suffering a heart attack.

@squeaks  Do whatever your Cardiologist deems necessary to continue to live a good and long life. My best to you,

hckynut(john)🥅🏒  🇺🇸

---

Exactly John. It seems that the insurance companies have streamlined physical into a wellness visit. This makes me hopping mad! If I want an EKG, which I do, we have to pay out-of-pocket for it. I'm not sure if it's a regional thing, but in the Northeast that's what they've been doing. It's so sad. We want to know about the condition of our heart before we have a heart attack, not deal with it after.

[chrystaltree]

My mom had at least 2 silent heart attacks.  They could tell by the heart damage they saw on cardiac imaging scans after she developed breathing problems.  

[On It]

@Effie54 Your reply that the insurance has changed annual physicals into wellness visits jarred me. Both my husband and I had our annual visit last week. The nurse did the Medicare cognitive test and questions. The doctor came into the room and asked if we had questions or concerns.

He altered medications and made necessary changes. He listened to our chest and examined ears. I do not allow some tests on myself, but my husband is game on for anything they want to do. My husband requested a chest x-ray, but when we got downstairs it was not in the lab work orders. No EKG offered.

The building had gotten a new computer system that had lines backed up to check in, so we thought the snafu came from the change. Now you have me wondering if it was an insurance issue. The state of Texas changed the retired teachers to United Healthcare PPO Medicare plan. A little over two years ago while under Humana, I got an EKG in Dec. 2019 before COVID. Last year we did a Zoom call so no office visit or EKG under the new United Healthcare Plan. We thought it was to our advantage to stay out of public buildings since the vaccine was not yet available.

Fastforward to this January when Omicron was raging, and I requested another Zoom visit but was told insurance would not pay for it. Our problem may be United Healthcare since we have no track record of their policy under normal circumstances. We postponed our visit to March and had the in-person visit.

The insurance companies are doing the same thing as the food companies. They are merging and gaining monopolies.

[FLgardener]

When my dad was in his late 70s it was discovered that he had had a silent heart attack, date unknown.

I won't speak to the specific diagnosis, but it may reassure some that my dad lived to 87, which is a ripe old age considering his lifestyle/diet choices. His true decline was fairly short.