The day I found that my heart attack was my second heart and not my first.....

As we approached Christmas time again.

I stopped and remembered the 13 December 2014.

It was a Saturday after a long week of sadness, we lost my wife mother.

She was cerement on Thursday, we took Friday off, then back to work and school on Monday for the family.

I never made work on Monday; I was in hospital after suffering a heart attack on Saturday.

Where to start.

My parents at worst where nicotine riddled and alcoholic with a gambling addiction on the side.

I maybe a little harsh on them, but my lifestyle was still the problem, yes, I smoke and drank.

Both my parents smoked, my father heavily up to a hundred cigarettes a day, they drank plenty of beer and wine.

My mother had rheumatoid arthritis, and my father had a heart attack at 54, and lived, something that shocked his cardiologist, who told him to go a buy lottery ticket.

Heavy smoker usually does not survive a heart attack, Shane Warne comes to mind.

A friend of mine from primary school, passed away from a heart attack, no long before I turn forty-five.

I wonder what could happen to if I passed at forty-five.

To my wife and our children.

By the age of forty-five, I realise that I had become my parents I was nicotine riddled and alcoholic without the gambling addiction. I am grateful that I miss the gambling addiction.

It was about this time I notice that my fingers and knee were aching often.

My wife booked me in to see the doctor for a physical examination.

I saw the doctor; he asked the question THAT no smoker never want to answer.

How many cigarettes a day do you smoke??

I said twenty.

How many forty

How many 60ish. Ok a lot

.

The doctor was not happy with amount I smoke or what I drank, but he was concern that I may have rheumatoid arthritis. Then he explained to me the way they bring arthritis into remission is they put you on a drug called methoxide.

On methoxide, you cannot drink six beer a night, a couple of glass with dinner and a few bourbons after that.

Then he took blood and gave me the rest of the week off, which was nice of him.

I realise quickly that if I stop smoking, I had a chance to keep drinking some alcohol while on methoxide.

After thirty years of smoking, it was time to stop. I remember that my father was cranky as hell when is cardiologist told him to stop smoking or find a new cardiologist.

Yes, he did stop smoking, and so did I.

A couple of weeks later I went back to see the doctor, again.

Yes, I have rheumatoid arthritis.

I stop smoking, a beer at night, or a glass wine or a bourdon and my methoxide.

Will admit that I struggle with my blood test for my methoxide, and the amount of alcohol I consumed.

The heart attack did not scare me, I was relief that I had one, and I survive it.

Yes, there more to the story.

I went shopping for buy present for my soon to be ex colleagues, I was made redundant in January 2014, I was asked to work until July. I decide that was fine, we used my leave entitlements and booked a trip to Singapore in October. Then my boss asks me to work until December that was fine, we still went to Singapore. My wife and a daughter went shopping at another shopping centre, I went west, and they went east along the river where we live.

I rang them while I was on my way home and said that I developed a pain in the centre of my chest.

About the pain.

The pain was unbearable, that best description is having a thirty stone bloke standing on my chest.

I arrived home, my daughter call again and ask if I am at home.

Yep, was the reply.

Ok

I will call ambulance; Mum thinks you are having a heart attack.

Fuck me.

My wife and the ambulance arrive together.

Ok she was right, again.

At the hospital, I saw a cardiologist and his team worked on me.

He asks me during the testing if I had a heart attack previously, I said, No.

He said it looks like this is your second heart attack, since there is scaring around your heart region.

SO today this my second heart attacked, not my first. Bugger me.

My wife made a little out of this begin my second attack, and how did I miss my first one.

I have no idea either.

The results are not good, I require a quadruple by-pass, my heart is irreparably damaged to say the least.

Later during the week, they decided that I need a defibrillator as well.

I arrived at a ward, then my placed me upwards in a bed while the hole in my groin region stop bleeding where they put the camera up my vein to see my heart.

The enjoys of having a heart attack in 21st century.

So that was my day 13 December 2014.

Thankfully, I may it to Christmas and beyond.

PS. My daughters took my present to my colleagues.

A little over six months later I was asked by my ex-boss if I could give them a hand for three days.

Three days end on 24 December 2018. A little over three years later.

Such is life.