I Am Thankful To Be Alive

My name is  Anthony  Nadeau and I  had a heart attack on April  21, 2018. I am 51 years of age now.

I was taken to the emergency room at noon Maple Ridge Hospital where a few minutes after arriving I was admitted to a bed in the emergency ward.

Upon entering the ward there was a nurse there ready to take my blood and as soon as she was done another was waiting to hook me up to the ECG.

Some more minutes passed and then the doctor in charge came to see me and told me that he was in discussion with the Royal Colombian Hospital with the heart specialist there and they were in talks of getting me there. In the process, they hooked me up to an IV and then 3 ambulance attendants came and rushed me off to Royal Colombian. They alongside one of the nurses came with and after minutes in traffic with the sirens blazing we were there.

They assured me that I was in good care they kept me calm and they kept asking me questions along the way.

I was anxious but tried to remain calm as getting worked up would only make matters worse.

They had me in the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory within a few minutes, the nurses and doctor were all ready for me and he had a few questions and had me sign a form before we entered the operating room. I tried to keep my wits about me and joked around a lot to hide my nervousness.



I had a 90% blockage in one of my arteries to my heart, they had to do emergency surgery to put 2 stints in the valve to my heart, the picture is below I have circled the part where the stints were put in.

I was  taken back to Maple Ridge Hospital

by the same ambulance attendants & nurse as well.

I had asked a few times for the names of those that had helped me that day but I have still not heard word on who they were/are.



I was taken to the ICU ward of the hospital and there I would spend my next few days recovering.

This was a first for me as I had never had any kind of surgery in my life before this day, I had broken my left arm in 2 places when I was about 14 years old in Calgary Alberta when I was racing to get my favorite candy from the store before it closed.

The staff at the hospital were simply fantastic the amount of care and consideration and just plain pleasantness was something that I have been wanting to share with you for some time now, but as luck would have it two days before I was released from the hospital my computer got killed in a power outage and when the power came back on it seems to have fried my motherboard. I have researched how to try and power up after a power outage and have tried all the suggested ideas to no avail.


My last post was April 15 and this is the reason why I have not been on here as much as I would like to be. But now that I have this and my keyboard and mouse hooked up its not so difficult as it once was. I still have issues typing on a laptop keyboard, having come from typewriter classes in high school and always having a desktop computer as well. I have some personal changes to my diet and I am taking steps to make sure this does not happen again. I am very lucky, I am very thankful and grateful to be alive. I am thankful to my sister Noelle, who drove all the way down from Kelowna to be with me in the hospital for the last 2 days of my stay. She has always been my rock, always there for me--she went and bought my new medications that I had to take as I was in hospital for 4 days.



I want to thank Sandy and her sister Laurie for visiting and bringing my son Jack to see me as well.

I want to thank my brother Joe &  his girlfriend Lynn for visiting me and bringing me things to read and clean socks and underwear. My friend Hilary who came and visited, also to my boss Scott and his wife Noreen. My friend Meagan and her dad Mike for the visit.

I also received some cards at home from friends, Kathleen & Art from Little Shop of  Movies & Corisa Bell as well. I was deeply touched by all the kind messages left for me on social media.

I have checked out and will probably buy some books on managing heart disease, I am taking this very seriously.

I sincerely thank all of you who have been reading my blog all of these years, I missed my 7th Anniversary last month as I was still not feeling up to writing and this is somewhat of a hard one to post about, at the same time the most real post that I have done in years as well.

My numbers have actually increased when I was away on social media --which is odd but then again isn't it all a little weird?



Thank you for reading this

Sincerely

Anthony Nadeau