As many who read my occasional diary know, after my heart attack it was discovered that I had a totally blocked artery, and the remedy was an attempt at doing an angioplasty. I arranged a consultation with the cardiologist, Dr Grech, who put my mind at ease and said he had a 70% chance of successfully unblocking the artery. In my mind that’s a high chance of success. It’s certainly at least a glass half full situation. And, at the end of the day, even if it couldn’t be unblocked, there are alternatives.
\nSo I decided to go ahead.<\/p>\n
Since that day, the bit that’s concerned my is the odds within the angioplasty procedure. The risks are explained in advance. <\/p>\n
Firstly, there’s a 1\/100 chance of a groin injury – the angioplasty is performed by inserting a tube into the main artery in your groin and then feeding a catheter through up into the heart. Then hole is a couple of mm thick in the artery, so is plugged up at the end of the procedure to stop the bleeding. I guess it’s quite a strain on this area hence the risk. Now I’d rather have discomfort in the leg\/groin than the blocked artery in the heart, so I’ll happily take that 100 to 1 gamble without too much worry.<\/p>\n
But there’s also a 1 in 100 chance of a stroke, heart attack or fatality…and it’s this that’s been playing on my mind for a few month since my last health blog post, while waiting for the date of the procedure. <\/p>\n
I thought I’d share how I coped with this. If coped is the correct word. I’ve gambled a few times in my life and enjoy playing games that involve the role of a dice. So on one hand I had the thought that 100 to 1 was pretty risky, but on the other hand, and this is the thing that gave me a glimmer of hope in my half empty glass head, is the fact that I rarely get a \u00a310 win on the lottery (54 to 1 chance); I rarely get number 23 on roulette (36 to 1) and would I bet on a 100 to 1 horse? I have done, but I never expect to win. Even down to a roll of a dice. How often does 6 come up when you need it (6 to 1)? <\/p>\n
So still with a sprinkling of doubt I entered the procedure room at about 9.15am yesterday in a fairly relaxed (well I hadn’t any brown stains in my pants) state. An hour or so later I was out. I had a sore leg, an aching heart, and three inserted stents, but I was still alive. Of course, I have to thank the skilful cardiologist and his excellent team. And I guess the next time when I’m presented with a health odds situation I’ll feel less anxious. <\/p>\n
So anyone reading this with the decision ahead of them, I’d recommend going ahead. Of course this is just an opinion I’m no medical expert – so please seek professional advice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As many who read my occasional diary know, after my heart attack it was discovered that I had a totally blocked artery, and the remedy was an attempt at doing an angioplasty. I arranged a consultation with the cardiologist, Dr Grech, who put my mind at ease and said he had a 70% chance of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1294,708],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bargh.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bargh.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bargh.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bargh.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bargh.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bargh.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bargh.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bargh.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bargh.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}