1 in a Million

I have been thinking about mortality lately.  My inquiring mind wants to know.  I have been diagnosed with a total occlusion of the right coronary artery.  I suffer from angina on heavy exertion.  I am not happy about it.

First course of action: treat it with expensive pills (and some cheap ones).  Exercise more.  That did not seem to work.  I get stressed when the angina kicks in.

Second course of action: angioplasty.  No one in Cincinnati doe this operation for a total occlusion.  Why is that?  Too risky, too many failures, incompetent?  Go to Columbus or Cleveland.  Spend three hours in the cath lab.  Been there done that.  Close but no cigar.  Let’s give it another shot in July.

Third course of action:  Google everything that you can find about total occlusions.  Read about mortality rates.  Some of them don’t sound so good…

Fourth course of action: open heart surgery.  That really does not sound like a lot of fun.  Crack open the chest, stop your heart, do the operation and hope that the heart restarts.  Leaves you with a nice scar and a lengthy recovery. 

Fifth course of action:  Ignore it and maybe it will go away.  Or maybe I will go away.

Which leaves me alone and overthinking.  I have had a pretty good run.  Most of the pieces are in place.  My sons will be ok.

I read that in the U.S. (USA Today) there will be 1 million angioplasties with stents this year.  That seems a little excessive for a country of 300 million.  I am one in a million.

 "We must pay greater attention to keeping our bodies and minds healthy and able to heal. Yet we are making it difficult for our defences to work. We allow things to be sold that should not be called food. Many have no nutritive value and lead to obesity, salt imbalance, and allergies."

David Suzuki