I'm in Rehab!

Cardiac Rehab, that is

Had my first rehab session today.  And, no, it is not a 12 step program.  It's for folks who have had some sort of cardiac intervention.  And, no, it isn't about getting us to go through some other kind of 'intervention' of the psychological type.

I thought for sure I'd be the youngest one there.  But, no.  I was probably right in the middle.  The oldest was 88 and the youngest 49.  Six men and 2 women.

I was the only one who had not had a heart attack.  Turns out that for all of them, it was a complete surprise.  My surgery, of course, wasn't a surprise given that I'd known about the problem 6 months before it was fixed.  But for all of them it was something out of the blue.  One day they were feeling good, healthy, normal, and fit as a fiddle ... the next, they were in the hospital, on medications, being anesthetized, and having blocked heart arteries fixed with stents.

All of them spoke about denial; they didn't believe it was happening to them.  They thought the hospital had it wrong and they weren't the ones who needed to go to Calgary.  All talked about having a variety of symptoms that were strange but that they thought were not related to the heart.  Sore, numb, achey arms; sore backs; aching jaws; nausea; pressure in the chest.  No one felt at the time, ah ha, this is it, I'm having a heart attack.  Most of them lived with the vague symptoms for a day or two before they went to emergency.  Only one took an ambulance ride.

So most of the class was about how the heart works, what a heart attack is, what the cardiac team did in response, and how medications (and we were all pretty much on the same ones) help the heart to recover and to prevent things from getting worse.  I guess I was fortunate in that I'd learned about my problem from doctors and my own research well before I ended up in the operating room.  For these folks, though, it all happened so quickly that perhaps this was their first opportunity to learn more about what they'd been through.

Why would it make sense to provide this information after the fact?  They'd already had a heart attack; why learn about heart attacks?  A friend of mine (who'd been through the experience years ago) was told that about 50% of patients who have blocked heart arteries repaired end up back in the cardiac unit later needing to be repaired again.  They don't make the lifestyle changes needed to keep their arteries clean.  They don't stop smoking, they don't change their diets, they don't exercise, they don't keep their weight down, they don't manage their stress.  So, I guess if education can help keep 75% or 90% from a return trip for further repair, then it would be good - big savings to the health care system and more healthy people.

We all should know the risks for heart disease: smoking, being over-weight, high fat and high salt foods, lack of exercise, too much stress.  But we also don't believe that these things will affect us.  We maybe smoke a bit (or a lot), we let our weight go, we indulge in those high fat meals and desserts, we are too tired or it's too hot or too cold for exercise, and we let our busy lives rule.  And nothing happens.  We get away with it.  Until, BAM, there are those vague symptoms and we end up in the hospital with a heart attack. Or dead.

We in this class are the lucky ones, I guess.

The moral of the story: don't smoke, keep the weight down, eat heart healthy food, avoid fat and salt like the plague, exercise, and relax.  Otherwise you may end up in the morgue too soon.  Or you'll be lucky, like me and my rehab classmates, but with a scar on your chest and an insiders view of the cardiac health-care system.