Open Heart Blog

I sched­uled an appoint­ment with my doc­tor on March 11 because of an intesti­nal virus I had been strug­gling with for over 3 weeks.  By appoint­ment time, I finally felt that I was over the virus, but I told her that dur­ing the pre­vi­ous week I had been expe­ri­enc­ing a “gur­gling” sen­sa­tion in my throat dur­ing the night — sim­i­lar to what I expe­ri­enced prior to my heart surgery in 1995. Dur­ing the past week I had also been expe­ri­enc­ing some minor chest pains/discomfort. I thought both these symp­toms might be left over from the intesti­nal virus, but wanted to see if she felt they should be checked out.

She took an EKG on the spot and after review­ing with me my fam­ily his­tory of heart dis­ease (my mater­nal grand­mother died of con­ges­tive heart fail­ure at age 68, my pater­nal grand­mother died of a heart attack at age 62 and my dad had quadru­ple bypass surgery at age 58), she decided that I needed to have an echocar­dio­gram and a stress test that she sched­uled for that after­noon.  The stress test showed some “abnor­mal­i­ties” so I was sched­uled for a “Myocar­dial Per­fu­sion Study” the next day to see if I had any blocked arter­ies. I got a call from Kaiser the next day to let me know that I had been assigned a car­di­ol­o­gist and an appoint­ment had been set up for March 15.

The car­di­ol­o­gist told me the tests revealed that I had some minor block­ages in a few small arter­ies in my upper heart and gave me the choice of hav­ing fur­ther, more inva­sive tests, or resum­ing my nor­mal exer­cise sched­ule (some­thing I had stopped as a result of the virus) and to wait and see if my symp­toms recurred. I opted for no fur­ther tests and she then rec­om­mended that I start tak­ing a stain drug (Pravas­tatin — 20 mg) that she felt would ben­e­fit me. I was relieved by the test results and agreed to tak­ing the drug (as much as I really hate tak­ing any medication).

I started tak­ing the statin on March 22.  I noticed no adverse reac­tions that I asso­ci­ated with the drug. I resumed my water aer­o­bics exer­cise pro­gram 3 times a week. I started feel­ing mus­cle aches in my legs and my upper back but asso­ci­ated that with resum­ing my exer­cise pro­gram.  By the first week in April the pain in the mid­dle of my upper back was excru­ci­at­ing. I had an appoint­ment with my chi­ro­prac­tor who worked on the area but the pain con­tin­ued to worsen as did a new pain on the left side of my lower back (some­thing I asso­ci­ated with the pain I expe­ri­enced when I had a kid­ney stone attack the year before).  I was unable to get a good night’s sleep because of the pain. I felt “foggy” through­out the day and had dif­fi­culty con­cen­trat­ing on my work but I asso­ci­ated that with not get­ting a good night’s sleep. I also noticed that I was hav­ing mem­ory lapses.

On April 19 I had a severe attack of diar­rhea and nau­sea. I have been on a gluten-free diet for over a year, but on that day I had a pizza at a local restau­rant. I ordered the pizza as part of an exper­i­ment to see if the gluten-peptide digest­ing enzymes I had pur­chased would do what they were adver­tised to do — help digest gluten! Well, they did not work and the result was the onset of diar­rhea and nau­sea. Those symp­toms con­tin­ued for the next two days.  On April 22 I went to my water aer­o­bics. The back and leg pain was worse and I had a dif­fi­cult time fin­ish­ing the rou­tine.  My water aer­o­bics part­ner asked me if I had con­sid­ered that the pain I was expe­ri­enc­ing might be the result of the statin med­ica­tion.  A light-bulb went off in my head!  It had never occurred to me that the statin might be respon­si­ble for my symp­toms because the symp­toms didn’t start imme­di­ately after I started tak­ing the drug. That night I went to bed ask­ing my angels to give me some insight into was was going on with my body.

The next morn­ing (April 23) I received an email that had a link to a movie: The Great Cho­les­terol Cover-Up: Statin Nation.

The movie was eye-opening to say the least.  It made me decide to imme­di­ately stop tak­ing my statin med­ica­tion in order to see if my symp­toms sub­sided and to do addi­tional online research. On April 24 I went to water aer­o­bics and was able to fin­ish the rou­tine with­out a prob­lem.  That night I had some mild dis­com­fort dur­ing the night but it was man­agable and I was able to get a good night’s sleep. Today is April 25 and I’m happy to report that my upper back pain is gone and the men­tal fog­gi­ness I have been expe­ri­enc­ing seems to have lifted. I feel I’m on the road to recov­ery and really dodged the statin-bullet before hav­ing to endure any fur­ther suffering.

I highly rec­om­mend any­one who is tak­ing a statin med­ica­tion to watch this movie. I actu­ally ordered the DVD so that I could watch it again with my hus­band who is also tak­ing a statin medication.