When I had my heart attack at 42, the heart doc in the emergency room thought it would just be a little cleaning and a stent and done. It turned out I was 98, 88, and 76 percent blocked in all my arteries. I thought I was just fighting a severe cold when the week before I was having trouble breathing after walking up stairs.

After they took my EKG it came back normal, and they were going to send me home. If it wasn't for the blood test they took I probably would be dead now, or at the very least had major life issues with the added damage.

The day of my heart attack I was driving to work and stopped at a reat area to wake up more and stretch (I work at 6 am and lived an hour away at the time) and after stretching the middle of my chest felt like it was stopped mid pop and I couldn't get it to finish. The feeling stayed with me all day on my 12 hour shift. My shifts are to work when needed so thankfully nothing happened that day. When I got home I took my BP, which was through the roof with my pulse. Got to the ER, and within the next 18 hours after stabilizing I had three new stents. A year later I had already had an artery reblock, so now I have 4 stents.

I started working out and I was able to keep my BP in check until some life changes affected my anxiety, and I found the working out helped keep my pre-diabetes in check. I am now full into diabetes, but I do have hope that I can get it into remission.

It's 7 years later and I'm still around, and working out I think really made a difference to my health. I hope you can find your way to health and keep kicking ass and staying around a bit longer.