Heart Disease

After John's passing, my life changed in ways that I could never thought of.  We had 2 more than amazing sons. I never imagine what life was without John. I just felt that, if anything, I would be taking care of him for a very long time if his health got worse.

I noticed something seriously wrong in his body, I got so scared, that I had to give him an ultimatum, about leaving him if he didn't go see a doctor. That was in 2008. He did, we found out he had diabetes. In addition to that, in 2010, he started having issues with high blood pressure. John had  many childhood traumas and bad experiences with doctors and hospitals, that created his fear and phobia of doctors and hospitals. I didn't know how bad his phobia of hospitals was till last year when he had the first stroke and we found out that previously to the stroke, he had had a Silent Heart Attack due to diabetes.

Many people ask me, what was he feeling. He was feeling a lot of things, many of those, he was hiding from me. I couldn't tell many times when he was feeling in pain or sick because he would hide it, and pretend that everything was okay, just like he did on the day that he got the second heart attack. He was at work all day, sitting down, quiet with a serious face, so I thought he had a moody day or was just upset for something that I couldn't tell. On our work days, he used to be always hugging me, kissing me, or bugging me, on that day, he was quiet on his desk all day. My guess is that he was feeling lots of pain and was sucking it in. As a matter of fact, on that day, he was going to do garbage for his mom, I finished my paperwork early and was going with him, since I never left him alone, just about, I was his tail, he told me "No, you don't have to come", so I went home to cook Farina, one of his favorite meals. He never came home, he never re-gain consciousness. He got the second heart attack, lost the pulse for more than 10 minutes, the pulse was gained back on the ambulance. The hospital did a surgery. Everything was fine, except that because he was ALONE, not one was there to give him CPR, it was too long without air for the brain. I had taken the CPR classes with my 2 sons, he knew we were ready to take care of him, however, he chose to be alone, he chose not to go to the hospital.

What I could notice was the sleep Apnea he had, he used to snore a lot, even though I had a family doctor come home and put the special machine for breathing, he refused to used it. He also had a lot of Chest pains and Left arm pain, many, very frequently since like 2010 he had been with those pains and he never told his doctor about it. He didn't take me to the doctor with him the few times he went, I only went once.

Last year, a few hours before getting the first stroke, I noticed that he was feeling sick and called 911, he refused to go to the hospital, he signed the paperwork that he was refusing medical help. Then, about 6:45 pm, he was vomiting and asking me not to dared to call 911 again. By the next day, at home, he was walking funny, and his lips were twisted. I called 911 again, met the ambulance outside, and demand them not to dare to leave him home, that something was wrong. It took the EMS about 25 minutes of talk to take him to the ER. At the ER, I had to stay to prevent him from signing himself out of the hospital.      

The only weird thing that did happen about three days before the second heart attack date, was that at night, before going to sleep, he told me he was feeling weird and sick, but he couldn't define or describe what he was feeling or tell me if anything hurt, he just said, I just feel sick and weird."

John was John. He was so strong,  one time, he had a bad tooth and he took pliers and extracted it himself because he didn't want to go to the dentist, who on earth does that?!!! His mental, personal,and smartness strength was one of the things that got me so attracted to him.


I had to sit down and see how John's health went down and got worse by the day. I was suffering inside of me, I just don't even know sometimes how, I coped with it.  I did called his mom a bunch of times and asked her to talk to him about his health, again, he reassured her that he was fine. He told me so many times that he felt great and I believed him.

"Let me tell you, I feel sooo good that I am gonna be here for a very Long time!" he told me, and I believed him. He was always busy working and fixing something, he would only relax at night watching TV.

One of the things that he did, as far as eating and I didn't like it was eating eggs, John loved eggs too much. He used to cook eggs himself almost everyday, I think like 4 days a week if not more. I didn't cook them for him, only sometimes, because I  don't believe in eggs, as much as any doctor or nurse tell me that eggs are healthy. He would eat 4 slices of pizza until I started to tell everyone, about it and he got embarrassed, and cut down on the pizza. After the first stroke, he started to buy the liquid fat free eggs on the box, still he was eating eggs too frequently. Then, to make matters worst, I found out that his mother and father have the heart disease , diabetes, and high blood pressure as well. So, he knew that genetics was not in his favor. His father had a total of 19 strokes and 8 heart attacks before passing one year ago. His father made it till 75, because his father did seek medical help all the time and his mother too.

After the first stroke on 4/18/14, for the first 3 months, his body and health was weak, he was limping a little bit from the left side of his body. He told a few people ( not to me), that if he didn't get better he would kill himself. Those people told me, so I really made sure, I didn't leave him alone at all. Me and my boys would signal and talk to each other, to make sure that one of us was always with him. That was the only way we could prevent his suicide. I know he would had done it, John hated to feel sick or to be weak, it was one of the worst thing that he experienced, he could not accept that his body was weak. When I told him about seeing a therapist, he would get very angry at me, and say that I was crazy. John didn't believe in therapy. I did provided as much love, understanding and support in order to make him feel loved, so much, that I stop doing many things, just to be there for John. For his last days, he did somethings that, when he was gone, I realized that he knew he was going to be gone.

My goal for this blog entry is that if you know someone who has this issues with Chest Pain and Left arm pains, please forward this entry, in the hope of creating awareness of this serious health problem that is nothing to joke of, or to be afraid of seeking help and going to the doctor. The thing is that, if John would had told his doctor, with only ONE pill, all of this could had been prevented.

There is a huge difference between going awake and aware to a hospital, where you can see and talk to the doctors, than to be unconscious and not get the medical help that is needed on time to make one feel better.