Twypo, should have been PCP, primary care physician.
Ahh… I came pretty close myself.
About five years ago, I started having pain in my left arm. I used to wrestle around with my youngest just for fun, so I initially assumed I had simply pulled or strained a muscle. My PCP prescribed a muscle relaxant, and the pain went away.
A similar episode happened again while I was on a company outing in Florida. I’d had a couple of drinks, and this time it started to worry me.
Then one afternoon, while I was vacuuming up some water I had spilled after lunch, I suddenly became severely short of breath. That was enough for my PCP to send me to a cardiologist.
After a battery of tests, they found an abnormality in the blood flow to the back of my heart. An angiogram was done with the expectation that they would probably put in a couple of stents. Instead, they discovered multiple blockages, with all three major coronary arteries more than 95% blocked. The “widowmaker” was at 99%.
I ended up having quintuple bypass surgery.
My friends tell me I caught it just in time. I suppose they may be right.
Recovery was slow, exhausting, and, at times, pretty painful. I also developed fluid around my lungs and needed an outpatient procedure to have it drained.
One of my first questions to my cardiologist at the follow-up was, naturally, “When can I go hunting and shoot my big bore again?”
That was about four weeks after surgery. He smiled and said, “Not yet. Your sternum was cut open, and it heals from the inside. Give it another few weeks.”
It actually took me more than eight months before I felt fully fit enough to start shooting again.
So, please take care of yourselves and listen to your body. It doesn't actually speak, but it certainly gives you plenty of hints and sometimes those hints are impossible to ignore.
Looking back, I was lucky. Very lucky.
