Wakeup call?

[Guest guest]

Late last Saturday night, I got one of those nasty surprises that nobody

is really

prepared for, and especially not someone who has tried hard to make healthy

food choices:

 

I had a heart attack.

 

It was mild, and I got to a hospital very quickly (may the Goddess

bless EMS, they

reached me in two minutes flat!), so there wasn't much permanent

damage to the

heart muscle. They did an angioplasty to clean out the blocked

artery, installed

two stents in the newly unblocked vessel to hold it open, stitched me

up where

the hardware had gone in, and were able to send me home after a couple

of days.

They said that vegetarians with good cholesterol readings (my LDL is 96)

can have

heart attacks simply from getting the wrong gene, and apparently I did.

 

But it was a grueling and painful few days, and if that was a mild

attack, I certainly

hope never to have a bad one. So I've been taking a look at how I

eat, and trying

to figure what I can do to make that less likely, without forfeiting

flavor.

 

Yes, I know it's not just diet. I have too much orthopedic disability

to exercise as

much as I used to, but i do what I can. And I can't avoid stress, but

I think I handle

it fairly well. The one I've gotten a little slack about is food: I've

been eating too

much junk, and especially too much trans fat, which inflames blood

vessels and

causes them to accumulate plaque faster. It may not have caused the

attack, but

it can't have helped.

 

So what I had for dinner tonight was all from a local streetcorner

veggie stall:

a stir-fry of locally grown broccoli, green beans, kale, turnip greens

and onion

in a sauce of miso, garlic, ginger, chiles and a very faint bit of

coriander seed

and fennel. It was very tasty, and reminded me that I do know how to

cook that

way when I takle the trouble.

 

I feel very lucky to be alive, and I'd like to keep it that way.

 

Rain

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[Guest guest]

Rain, I'm so sorry that happened to you! Please take good care of yourself and

allow yourself time to recover. It's amazing, isn't it, that even if we eat

right and watch our cholesterol and other lipids we can still have heart attacks

and heart disease. I guess much of it is dependent upon genetics; a great many

of our medical conditions seem to stem from our family histories.

 

Be kind to yourself, OK?

Ellen

 

, bluezinnia wrote:

>

> Late last Saturday night, I got one of those nasty surprises that nobody

> is really

> prepared for, and especially not someone who has tried hard to make healthy

> food choices:

>

> I had a heart attack.