Elephant Heart In The Room

2007-12-11T17:25:00.000Z

There's really only one way of putting this - when I was 28 years old I had a heart attack. There I've said it - it's out there - no-one has to feel embarrassed now if they accidentally mention the word 'heart' or 'attack' and feel they have to give me a sideways apologetic glance.

For the record I'm not fat, I like to think of myself as athletic, though most people would go with thin. I have never smoked, not even a sneaky one behind the bike sheds or at a party to look cool and aloof. I hardly drink - in truth up until the heart attack I was teetotal and it's only since that I've started to drink red wine - for purely medicinal purposes of course. I've never taken hard drugs - unless a slight addiction to that sweet pink medicine we used to take as kids counts.

The only risk factor that I can safely place a tick next to is family history and there the blame lies firmly with my dad. I love my dad, but he's over-weight, drinks heavily, used to smoke (the dying art of the pipe) and the only part of his body that is ever exercised is the finger that switches channels. He was diagnosed with angina in his fifties and a year before my attack he had, what doctors like to term, a cardiac event. This is not as serious as a heart attack, but serious enough for doctors to give it a name.

My dad went into hospital and had two stents put into his coronary arteries - for those of you who don't know a stent is like a really small Smarties tube they insert to widen the collapsed arteries that caused the problem in the first place. Before people start complaining I'm fully aware that Smarties now come in rectangular boxes, but to me they will always be tubes - just as Snickers are Marathons, Cif is Jif and McFly is the surname of a character from the classic 80's film, not a strange manufactured teen punk pop band.

After my heart attack I got a stent of my very own, making my dad and I stent brothers - something I pointed out to him from my hospital bed. My dad's brow furrowed and he comfortingly replied;
"Yes, but I only had a cardiac event, you had something far more serious."
"This isn't a competition!" I spluttered.
"But if it were you'd win." He thought for a moment. "Though a stroke would probably trump you."

Attack Of The Heart

Elephant Heart In The Room