Under Construction
This page will eventually contain posts and information / resources on heart health. Until then, here is my story.
On September 17, 2022 my life changed. I had just gotten back from Boston where I had met with the White Mamba – Brian Scalabrine – who I had connected with about an idea to start a virtual realty mental performance company. Scal is a great and real individual – willing to give someone like me a chance to prove myself and my idea by giving me a bit of his time. I was on cloud 9 after attending a practice of one of the team’s he mentors to record some virtual realty footage of Scal and some of the players in an effort to create the demonstration I eventually hoped to pitch to investors.
I had to do blood work for insurance and it came back a little high in terms of my cholesterol. My family physician asked me to do a routine ECG and more blood work out of an abundance of caution. I still remember being at the lab – the assistant asking whether I wanted to do the ECG that day – and me asking how long it was going to take because I needed to get to work. 5 minutes – she said, and so I gave in. The decision would save my life.
Within hours of getting the results, my doctor called me. In a calm voice she asked how I was feeling and if I had any chest pain. My answer was no – in fact a week or two earlier I had been running across the Charles River in Boston, in what felt like the best shape I had been in a long time, with no ill symptoms whatsoever. She told me that my ECG came back abnormal – it looked like I had suffered a silent heart attack at some point in the past. Again, she asked, if I remembered ever having any symptoms of chest tightness, difficulty breather, anything that stuck out in my mind, but no I didn’t.
From there, we went through a series of tests – a CT of my heart – which showed blockages somewhere in the range of 75 to 100% of my LAD – the major artery bringing blood to the heart. There were two other blockages on the right side too – 50 to 75% – we needed to do more tests. No problem – I was ready to tackle this and was optimistic that everything was on the lower end of the blockages. After all, I wasn’t even 40 years old yet – and I had promised myself that when I turn 40 I would ease up on the junk food, the alcohol, the sedentary life style – because after 40 I would have to be careful.
After the angiogram, I was told to stop exercising and think about taking time off of work. My LAD was 100% blocked. They call this the “widowmaker”. Now that’d be a great nickname if I was an MMA fighter, a sniper in the army, or some similar Hollywoodized idea… but when it was talking about making my wife the widow, not as cool. The reason they call it a widowmaker is because if you do actually end up having a heart attack when this LAD is blocked, the chances of you surviving are pretty small.
I was told that given my age, I would need open heart surgery, and thus began my journey towards confronting my mortality. Being me, I researched the hell out of this. I looked at every stat from survival rate to expected life expectancy post-surgery. I read about the surgery and even watched YouTube videos of open heart surgeries. I needed to do this to get my mind around the fact that for hours my heart was going to be stopped and my life would be in the hands of a group of individuals – many of whom I would have met for the first time that morning.
The “what-ifs” were the scariest part. No part of me wanted to die, but I had to prepare myself for the potential – even if the chances were minimal. The hardest thing I had to do was write a letter to my children – just so they could have some sort of message from me in case I didn’t make it. I had read about so many people who lost their parents, who never got a chance to say goodbye, and those who had letters, text messages, etc. that they would read over and over again just to have some sort of connection with that parent. I won’t share the entire thing but here is how it started:
Dear Banita, Rasna, and Gia
I hope that when you are reading this, I am old and gray and have lived a life full of memories watching the three of you grow up into the powerhouses that I know you will become. In a week from now I will be undergoing heart surgery and with that comes a very small risk that something might go wrong. If it does, while I know it will be sad, please know that the greatest experience I had in life was being your father and the memories I have of raising the three of you will bring me peace.
My entire life, I always wanted a daughter. The world is stacked against daughters, and I wanted to be one of those dads that makes sure their daughters know that they can achieve anything in life. I’ve seen that fire in each of you already and those memories will be cherished for eternity.
If I don’t get the chance to bore you with the nostalgia of my life, I want to leave this letter to give you some insight into who your dad was.
I then proceeded to tell them as much as I could about my life. It was incredibly hard, draining, and emotional, but it was necessary to help shift my mind past the fear that I felt. And here I am on the other side, to tell you that if you are in the same circumstance that I found myself – young(ish) – with a family that still needed me – there is a lot of hope notwithstanding how scary it is to know that you’re going to be undergoing one of the most serious surgeries that you likely ever will go under.
Here’s the good news – while the day of my surgery – January 4, 2023 was one of the biggest days in my life – to the wonderful medical team that was helping me out, it was a Wednesday. The resident surgeon who came and checked on me before I was wheeled into the OR basically said as much (in kinder words). This was a routine surgery with a very high success rate and I was one of the most optimal candidates for this – I was young, I actually had not had a heart attack before so my heart was theoretically as strong as always, and I had the easiest job – I go to sleep, wake up, and it would all be done.
I tried to stay calm when being wheeled to the operating room. Taking in deep breaths, being alert to all my senses, and being in touch with Sikhism – a religion that has always been in the background of my life, even if I was not the most devout Sikh at all times.
The OR was very cold and sterile. There were about 8 to 12 people in the room, lots of machines, and everyone was in a relaxed mood. They gave me some medicine through an IV to keep me calm – I think it was Ativan, and let me know that they were just waiting for my cardiac surgeon to come in and start things off. The last thing I remember was one of the team members putting a blood pressure cuff around my arm, having to change the size of it because it was too small, and letting me know that I could tell everyone that my biceps were too big for the cuff.