of heart attacks

Of Heart Attacks.

A friend of mine, Rino, just had a heart attack. It was not out of the blue. There were warning signs, just that these did not seem like real warnings. While on work several days ago, his blood pressure shot up to 180/100. He had to stop his work, while he was resting and for the blood preseeure to normalize. The next day he went to have a check up and was given an ECG exam. According to the results he was okay and off he went to work. After work, he went home, slept and 3 hours after that had a heart attack. According to him, he was brought to the nearest hospital, was given medication and then was transferred to another hospital. He thought it was just 30 minutes from the time he arrived at the Emergency Room to the time he was transferred, turns out he stayed in the first hospital more than 3 hours. Less than a day later, he was transferred to Heart Center. In all that time he was in the Intensive Care Unit of those three hospitals.

I visited him this morning after work, and he mentioned that after a day of staying in hospitals, he was bored. He joked that to keep from being bored he was playing around with what was in the room. He was playing with the heart rate monitor, trying to see if he can keep it low (his
record was 54 bpm).

He's going to have further tests come Monday, at which time his condition would have stabilized. And maybe an angioplasty to decongest whatever blockage they find.

Yesterday, when my friend Bravo informed me that Rino was rushed to the hospital, he sounded distraught as he was giving me whatever minimal information he knew. Turns out that was an understatement. Seems he was crying over the news that Rino had a heart attack.

People respond differently to stress. And I gave a hint that Rino might be in the wrong job (for health reasons.) He retorted that at least in our account, there was less stress compared to his old account. I joked that another account might need trainors, and he said that he'd rather stay with our account.

--andoy