Last summer my husband went in for a routine colonoscopy. He was not looking forward to the prep, the procedure, there is always a risk the doctor will discover something. He could not anticipate the journey this routine colonoscopy would put him on…

His vitals were taken once we arrived, his Blood Pressure was 210/124! It was taken several time and several ways (automatic & manual) to be sure the BP was accurate. A team of medical professionals visited his bedside to evaluate his situation. I kept thinking “With his BP so high will they even do the procedure?” The good news is they were able to do it and his procedure turned out fine.

We decided to make an appointment with a cardiologist and due to his extenuating circumstances he was seen within a day or two. The cardiologist took a 2 prong approach as he described it.

1. Immediately get the BP down.

2. Further testing to determine what is causing the high BP. Ultimately the high Blood Pressure puts a strain on the heart the body. It was important to uncover what the issue was.

He had a Heart Scan that showed he was at risk for a cardiac event. The cardiologist office went over the Heart Scan and the next step was to do an Angiogram, it was explained that they were 99% certain he would be getting stents. End of July last year he went in for the angiogram. Before he got back, the doctor came in to tell me he was 100% blocked on one side and 90% blocked on the other…he described it as a “widow maker!” We left the Angiogram procedure in a daze realizing we are now preparing for Heart ByPass surgery.

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It was a very scary time preparing for the unknown. We were not sure how things would turn out, yet we needed to have faith in the medical personnel and in the process and this journey we were starting out on, luckily together. Faith is easy when things are “smooth sailing”, it can be challenging when its time to practice having faith and we haven’t tried it on for awhile, when things are going great…somehow its does not seem necessary.

Stay tuned for Part 2-The Journey “Starting Over”