Thursday, May 29, 2008

Stress Test

Memorial Day weekend was not exactly what I had planned.

My brother-in-law had his usual five-mile run last Thursday. After his run, he experienced some chest pain. He thought that it was significant enough to run over to the nearby hospital and get it checked out, just in case. M walked through the doors into the hospital about the same time that his heart stopped. He collapsed. In minutes, they had done CPR, used a defibrillator, and brought him back. Within a few hours, he had received a shiny new stent in a major coronary artery.

He would have been dead (permanently) if this had happened pretty much anywhere but inside a hospital. I dashed to their house to watch their kids so that my sister could be with her husband at the hospital.

If he had had a recent cardiac stress test (called for due to his age and a strong family history), it would have detected the occluded artery.

Get yourself checked out as needed.

1 comment:

richgold said...

About the boys getting together ... think kittens, lots and lots of kittens and trying to keep them in place. That's what I think raising boys is like. Am I right?

Re height. I've got one of those. My eldest is a diva-boy. Whiny and a bit soft. (The girls are the toughies.)

The fourth child-unit is in a home day care right now. He'll be going to pre-pre-school next September (when he'll be 2.75). He's almost as big as the four year olds who are starting JK this fall.