Angina
In the winter, I first noticed pain in my chest when pushing myself on steeper runs while skiing. I originally thought it was from the terrible air quality, and the pain was originating from my lungs. Once Covid19 had run though and slowed or stopped all of the factories in the area, the air quality was fantastic. In the spring, I went out camping in a remote spot in a valley where I knew I wouldn't come across any other campers, but still get my two young boys out into nature. Climbing out of the valley with all of our gear, in that perfect clean air, I felt the same chest pain and knew that my original assessment was wrong, and I likely had a heart condition. I made an appointment to see a cardiologist the next week.
I went for a series of tests, an ECG, a blood test, a urine test, an x-ray, and a treadmill test. All of the tests were normal, except for the treadmill test, which was abnormal. This abnormality indicates a condition commonly known as angina. Angina is basically when the arteries feeding the heart with blood are falling behind on their job and leave the heart starved of oxygen.
https://socratic.org/questions/what-are-the-three-major-coronary-arteries-called
The heart is a muscle. Muscles need oxygen when they work, and the heart never stops working so it needs blood to deliver oxygen at all times. Through genetics, food, drink, and especially smoking, the arteries of your body begin to get coated on both sides with plaque. This coating builds up on the outside as well as the inside of our arteries. The state of a blocked artery is called stenosis. If you have this condition, you will hear your doctor say this a lot; it just means blocked arteries. Doctors also tend to be quite interested in what percentage of blockage each case of stenosis has. Depending on the percentage of blockage, doctors will make different decisions for you.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/angiography/what-happens/
If the doctor feels that he should have a closer look at your heart's arteries, the doctor will perform an angioGRAPH. In this procedure, you will probably hear the doctor say "percutaneous" quite a bit. All that percutaneous means is that they will go under your skin. Angiography gains access to your heart's arteries through your wrist, into the artery there, and snake up through your arm, past your shoulder, and into your heart's arteries. It is a bit painful, but an easy procedure.
Once into the arteries, the doctor will then run a catheter into the various veins. A catheter is just the name doctors use for any tube that has one end in you and one end out of you. With the catheter start injecting "contrast medium". It is contrasting because is that it is much darker than the tissue of your heart and arteries when shown on x-ray. A small percentage of people have a reaction to this medium -- that is one of the risks of this procedure. A nurse or orderly will warn you of that if your doctor didn't. You will be able to see it happening on the monitors. it swishes in and everyone can see what the interior of the artery looks like -- that's the whole reason you're sitting there with your arm strapped to a table and a tube going into your heat.
https://www.heartfoundation.org.nz/your-heart/heart-tests/coronary-angiography
If the blockage (stenosis) is 70% or more, the doctor will decide to insert a stent. It is named after a dentist who invented the goop that dentists use to make a mold of your teeth. Though adaption and confusion, doctors started using the name as a verb, and now his name is commonly used as noun, a tubular cage that can be expanded in any vessel to open it.
http://www.secondscount.org/treatments/treatments-detail-2/heart-stents-tools-treating-blocked-blood-vessels-2#.XvqGBSgzY2w
The reason the doctors decide to stent at 70% is that at that point, the stuff clogging your arteries has no room to accumulate on the outside and begins building up on the inside of the artery much faster and will more quickly lead to a complete blockage. Doctors will say "medicasial infarction" this is when the tissue dies due to a lack of blood. Sometimes doctors interchange the term "heart attack" and Medicasial Infarction, but I think this is because Korean doctors are not familiar with the colloquial terms for medical conditions. For this reason, it is good to make a glossary of terms before and after your visit with any doctor. Also, don't be afraid to ask doctors to explain if you are confused. That is why you are speaking, and in my experience, they tend to like it when patients take initiative in understanding their meaning and their science.
As the doctor is placing the stent, you will feel an acute pain in your chest. That will subside immediately when he is finished, but there will be a dull discomfort for next couple of days. That is normal. You will have to stay the night in the hospital to be sure that you don't have a reaction to the material of the stent in your heart or any other things that might lead to a Meicasial Infarction (heart attack).
The next day you will wander out of the hospital with a bit of pricy metal that is likely releasing medicines into your blood as well as a big bunch of medicines. Your Angiography is over, but your job has just begun. In order to continue our lives, we have to make immediate, direct, and permanent changes to the way we live.
I went for a series of tests, an ECG, a blood test, a urine test, an x-ray, and a treadmill test. All of the tests were normal, except for the treadmill test, which was abnormal. This abnormality indicates a condition commonly known as angina. Angina is basically when the arteries feeding the heart with blood are falling behind on their job and leave the heart starved of oxygen.
https://socratic.org/questions/what-are-the-three-major-coronary-arteries-called
The heart is a muscle. Muscles need oxygen when they work, and the heart never stops working so it needs blood to deliver oxygen at all times. Through genetics, food, drink, and especially smoking, the arteries of your body begin to get coated on both sides with plaque. This coating builds up on the outside as well as the inside of our arteries. The state of a blocked artery is called stenosis. If you have this condition, you will hear your doctor say this a lot; it just means blocked arteries. Doctors also tend to be quite interested in what percentage of blockage each case of stenosis has. Depending on the percentage of blockage, doctors will make different decisions for you.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/angiography/what-happens/
If the doctor feels that he should have a closer look at your heart's arteries, the doctor will perform an angioGRAPH. In this procedure, you will probably hear the doctor say "percutaneous" quite a bit. All that percutaneous means is that they will go under your skin. Angiography gains access to your heart's arteries through your wrist, into the artery there, and snake up through your arm, past your shoulder, and into your heart's arteries. It is a bit painful, but an easy procedure.
Once into the arteries, the doctor will then run a catheter into the various veins. A catheter is just the name doctors use for any tube that has one end in you and one end out of you. With the catheter start injecting "contrast medium". It is contrasting because is that it is much darker than the tissue of your heart and arteries when shown on x-ray. A small percentage of people have a reaction to this medium -- that is one of the risks of this procedure. A nurse or orderly will warn you of that if your doctor didn't. You will be able to see it happening on the monitors. it swishes in and everyone can see what the interior of the artery looks like -- that's the whole reason you're sitting there with your arm strapped to a table and a tube going into your heat.
https://www.heartfoundation.org.nz/your-heart/heart-tests/coronary-angiography
If the blockage (stenosis) is 70% or more, the doctor will decide to insert a stent. It is named after a dentist who invented the goop that dentists use to make a mold of your teeth. Though adaption and confusion, doctors started using the name as a verb, and now his name is commonly used as noun, a tubular cage that can be expanded in any vessel to open it.
http://www.secondscount.org/treatments/treatments-detail-2/heart-stents-tools-treating-blocked-blood-vessels-2#.XvqGBSgzY2w
The reason the doctors decide to stent at 70% is that at that point, the stuff clogging your arteries has no room to accumulate on the outside and begins building up on the inside of the artery much faster and will more quickly lead to a complete blockage. Doctors will say "medicasial infarction" this is when the tissue dies due to a lack of blood. Sometimes doctors interchange the term "heart attack" and Medicasial Infarction, but I think this is because Korean doctors are not familiar with the colloquial terms for medical conditions. For this reason, it is good to make a glossary of terms before and after your visit with any doctor. Also, don't be afraid to ask doctors to explain if you are confused. That is why you are speaking, and in my experience, they tend to like it when patients take initiative in understanding their meaning and their science.
As the doctor is placing the stent, you will feel an acute pain in your chest. That will subside immediately when he is finished, but there will be a dull discomfort for next couple of days. That is normal. You will have to stay the night in the hospital to be sure that you don't have a reaction to the material of the stent in your heart or any other things that might lead to a Meicasial Infarction (heart attack).
The next day you will wander out of the hospital with a bit of pricy metal that is likely releasing medicines into your blood as well as a big bunch of medicines. Your Angiography is over, but your job has just begun. In order to continue our lives, we have to make immediate, direct, and permanent changes to the way we live.
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