Send to KindleDon’t worry, I won’t take you back to my birth, even though that’s when it technically all began. ?
I’ll start in 2001, before 9/11. I hadn’t been to a doctor in roughly 10 years, and hadn’t been to one regularly in way more than that. Lois was seeing a dermatologist regularly. She really liked him, and encouraged me to see him as well.
I did (who doesn’t listen to their wife?). After examining me, he strongly suggested that I see a primary care physician as well. He highly recommended a cardiologist, who was also a primary care physician, who happened to have a practice on the same floor next door to the dermatology practice.
I took his advice. For some background, at the time I weighed something like 265 pounds. It was by no means my all-time high, but it was wildly over-the-top nonetheless.
When I saw the cardiologist he gave me a thorough exam, drew blood (and the other stuff). At the end of the appointment he said: “BTW, I have no fat patients!”, which I understood very clearly meant that I better lose weight if I wanted to continue seeing him.
When my blood test came back, my cholesterol was high (not dangerously, but enough to warrant the talk). He wanted me to immediately take Lipitor, offering me samples that he had in the office. He said that if I tolerated it well enough, he’d prescribe it.
I asked if I could try diet and exercise before taking a statin, and while he agreed, he told me that most people don’t stick with either, and that only 25% of the world’s population can control cholesterol levels via diet and exercise. He told me to come back in two months and if my level hadn’t dropped, he’d insist on putting me on Lipitor.
For two months, I was religious about eating healthy and exercising (or at least what at the time I believed was healthy eating). My cholesterol dropped significantly and was below the level that any doctor would prescribe a statin, so at a minimum, it proved that I was in the lucky 25% that could control it via diet and exercise.
He scheduled me to return for a Stress Echo test (that’s where you walk on a treadmill to stress your body, then immediately have a full echocardiogram exam). It was brutal. While I lost weight during those months, I was still very overweight and the stress test was awful.
Every time I tried to run on the treadmill, he’d admonish me to walk as fast as I could (even though I was huffing and puffing and obviously couldn’t keep up with the accelerating pace and angle).
After the echo exam, I got the bad news (thereby considering this the beginning of my Health Journey). I had a Bicuspid Aortic Valve (a birth defect that causes the aortic valve to only have two functioning flaps instead of three).
In addition, likely due to the valve, but possibly also due to my weight and previous lack of exercise, I had an enlarged ascending aorta (technically, an aneurysm). It wasn’t dangerous yet, but would need to be monitored regularly.
He told me that day that eventually, with no way to predict when, I’d need a valve replacement (for sure), and possibly the need to repair the ascending aorta as well.
Since then, I get tested regularly, and the story will unfold in future posts…
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