The discomfort increased in intensity and duration over time and my doctor kept telling me it wasn’t my heart -- even though all the symptoms indicated that it was. During my last exam, I lost patience. “Something in my chest is screaming for attention and the screaming gets louder every day!” I said. “If it isn’t my heart then let’s find out what it is and fix it.”
My physician prescribed Nitroglycerin tablets for “Just in case”, she said, and asked me to schedule an appointment for further tests that were not heart related. And then she added, “It isn’t your heart.” I was growing very, very tired of hearing that.
That incident happened a few days earlier. Now I sat with my friend, a very wise and sympathetic RN, who listened compassionately while I purged frustrations. The discomfort was still in my chest, just behind the sternum. It felt like an elephant was resting its foot on my chest. As with previous episodes, I’d found it increasingly difficult to breathe. I’d break out in a cold sweat, experience nausea, dizziness, and an overwhelming feeling of weakness and fatigue. Still, the words echoed in my memory, “It’s not your heart.” Something inside me bought into that so I ignored significant warnings. It was easy to do when an EKG indicated that my heart was OK. Yet the pain was getting worse as time passed -- month after month after month. It didn't matter what I was doing, the pain persisted. One particular evening an episode of chest pain lasted more than an hour as I sat quietly reading in my lounging chair at home. Even when the pain went into my jaw and I struggled to breathe, I kept hearing, "It's not your heart." I'd become programmed into believing it wasn't my heart, so I did nothing.
Days later, as I sat chatting with my nurse friend, I experienced another episode of chest pain. “Do you have Nitroglycerin tablets with you?” She asked. I did, and took one at her urging. The chest pain subsided, but five minutes later I had another episode and took an additional nitroglycerin tablet that aleviated the pain. I was experiencing unstable angina, she said. I knew the symptoms. I'd had them many times before.
With my friend's concerned urging, I called my cardiologist. She called my cardiologist too, and expressed grave concern as a medical professional. An angiogram was scheduled. And there it was -- the problem was my heart after all. A stent that had been implanted a year earlier was now 99% occluded with scar tissue. The stent had been placed in my coronary artery because the artery had been 85% blocked with plaque, even though my cholesterol and triglyceride levels were perfect.
My cardiologist calls me a mystery, but he performed an angioplasty with a new stent implant inside the old one. Afterwards, he told me I had been only minutes away from a fatal heart attack. Fortunately, there was no damage done to my heart. "If we had not done this procedure today," he said, "you would have been dead tomorrow."
Psalm 121: 7,8 says: "The Lord will keep you from all harm – he will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore".
I believe this. I am living that promise.
After a nuclear stress test just a few months ago, my cardiologist turned to me with joy dancing in his eyes and said, "You have the heart of Wonder Woman!" He pointed to the computer screen to show me the images of my heart, and there it was in amazing glorious color on the screen, a heart completely healed!
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