BIL in hospital!

I phoned my parents last night and was told my BIL went into hospital on Monday with an angina attack!!!! His cholesterol is through the roof!
He drove the new ute up here last Wednesday and flew home to Chch on Saturday and is now awaiting tests on Friday.!!!! They are going to do an angiogram and Sents? I know one involves putting a dye into the arteries and seeing where it goes but I have no idea what stents is, or is that the dye injection?

He's doing ok, in fact Dad said he was sitting up in bed having a ball. I texted my sister this morning and she said he was good. He's a big fella, around 6'2 and no twig but Dad did pass a comment to him that maybe he should be in the maternity ward. :rolleyes:

In fact, BIL was saying when he was up here he was having pains and that a trip to the doctor was probablyon the cards in the near future and that he just knew the doctor was going to tell him to lose 20 kgs.... hmmmmm......

Kim feels guilty cos he had two cooked breakfasts while he was here, one at home and one at the local cafe across the road. Welllll... there was a choice you know, he didn't HAVE to order the fry up on the menu, he could have gone for a healthier alternative.

He's head supervisor and cook at a Chch hospital. Before the powers that be decided to start supplying all hospital meals from one hospital, both he and my sister were at Chch Womens, the PTB decided the kitchen staff would have to buy their own food so they both started taking their own lunches to work. They both lost weight. Now he works in the kitchen that supplies all the other hospitals and my sister has moved out of the cook business, he has started eating the meals at work again and has put on all he lost plus a bit more probably.

Mum said she'll have to stop with the lavish suppers on a Sunday night. Piklets with cream and raspberry jam, chocolate cake, biscuits etc. I told her she'd being doing herself a favour as well. Both her and now my BIL have high cholesterol so no harm can come from a cup of tea and a cracker instead of Bessie Bunters midnight snacks.
'Struth! My cousin Kerry told mum years ago her cholesterol was a ticking time bomb and did she do anything about it? NO! Apart from going to the doctor to get all this information and dietary awareness which she promptly ingored from one day to the next. (Just like her eldest sister, her diet starts tomorrow... after morning tea, after lunch, after afternoon tea, after dinner, after supper....... after the last cream cake on the plate)

A couple of weeks ago she ended up in hospital after a routine trip to the doctors, they suspect she'd had a clot on her lung. She miserable as hell now cos she's been put back of Wolfrin or as mum puts it, Rat Poison!

Apparently my sister could do with loosing a few kilos too. She is 6'1 so she doesn't really look overweight but she does need to watch it. Here's me. 5'4 or something and built like a twig, I'm dwarfed in my own family!!!!
I do know that cholestrol has nothing to do with ones size though, erk!

One can be whatever height and built like a matchstick and have a high cholestrol problem.

These things can happen so fast!!!!

Yakut

The dye in the arteries will highlight where the blockage in the heart arteries are on the angiogram which is a moving Xray. The stents are little gizzmos that they push into the artery which is blocked, via the hole they make in the groin to access the artery from the heart and they push into place and it springs open to keep the walls apart so the blood can flow unimpeded by the fatty deposits.

My OH had 3 stents put in about four years ago and was 100% better almost straight away.
He watches his diet like a hawk now-down to being almost pedantic about not touching all the saturated fat things, eating fruit and nuts like he was a monkey and maddenlingly reading all the fine print before he will eat anything out of a packet!

Heres hoping your BIL is ok Yakut. Angina isn't nice. I have had abit in the last couple of years, thankfully not too bad though. My cholestrol is also very high. My GP told me that cholestrol can be hereditary and its on my mums side of the family along with heart troubles. I have cut out sugar in drinks and try to watch what I eat, but in saying that if i feel like a treat, Ill have it. lifes too short to forgo absolutely everything that is bad for you. Moderation is the key and trying to get abit of excercise.
I have a great niece who was borm prem and had a stent put in to her aorta when she was about a month old, she has just had another MRI and is waiting to hear wether they need to do another stent. she is just 5 and has really high BP and such a sweety.

I hope BIL recovers fast and leaves those big breckies alone sometimes a little warning is all you need change your habits and i think everything in moderation too...you cant give up everything you have eaten all your life...treats are fine...she says sat here with her cuppa and a chocy biscuit needeing to loose about 10 kg herslef

Like I said, I'm built like a twig but I can still park myself in front of the TV and demolish a family sized block of Whitakers roast almond chocolate all by myself.

BIL is getting tests done today so we'll know just how the cheese melts when they get the test results. He may have to limit his beer intake.... !!!!
He may also have to stick to a snack for lunch instead of a full meal and then another full meal for dinner....

He has a fairly hefty appetite. Years ago we went out for a family meal at a pub and he ordered the roast of the day.. a fairly sizeable meal! While everyone else ate dessert, he had a steak sandwich with fries (it filled the plate). I guess it's not really how much you eat but what you eat. A salad equaling the same proportions wouldn't give you half the grief later on in life.

Once again, hindsight is always too late.

Yakut

Wow thats alot of food lol. Let us know how he gets on.

Aww Yakut, always a bit scary that sort of stuff.

Hubbie's Aunt just had a heart attack recently and had stents put in. She said it's like she had been given a 2nd chance at life. She had rheumatic fever or something or other as a child. She said she would struggle just to walk down her hall way. Now she is bouncing everywhere.

Hope your BIL recovers and makes the lifestyle changes he needs to.

I phoned my sister tonight. She is exhausted and was heading off to bed too tired to bother eating anything because she said she didn't want to go to bed just after eating. She's up at sparrows and off to do the horses, then to work, lunch time she goes into visit Paul in hospital, back to work then off to the paddock to see to the horses, home to feed the dogs and back up to the hospital.

Paul has been given the tests and a stent isn't an option. They suggested a couple of options. A trial period of a few days on the new drugs and then a bit of a gentle workout to see if he has any problems, if he doesn't, he should be ok for up to five years before needing a triple bypass. If he has the bypass now, it will give him 10 years and then another will need to be done which will go for another ten years but they can't do any more after that. His lungs are good so that's a positive. If he goes home now, he'll be put on the never never waiting list but if he stays in hospital, it can be done now. If he has it done now, there is a three + month recovery time and he has a trip to Aussie planned which won't happen.

Just like Mum, Nick gave me the gory details of main arteries used to transmit the medical things from his groin into the heart area. I was slowly climbing backwards up the couch at the thought. Hopefully the entry site won't give him too much gyp and he can walk up a few steps and back to see how he copes. Nick is worried they will send him home as a ticking time bomb. Kim has suggested a second opinion, just to get a good overall picture.

She was worrying about the back lawn not being mown and getting too long to be able to poop scoop for the dogs. It's times like these I wish I didn't live so far away. I told her not to worry about the effing lawn, it's small stuff compared to everything else but she doesn't want the dogs running around in their own poop and arguing with her over it won't help.

Dad would probably do it for her but I'm betting she won't ask him, he's 83 and although the spirit is more than willing, he has problems with his ankle and she doesn't want to ask him to do too much. I know if he went around to mow the lawn, a hell of a lot more would get done and possibly with mum getting involved.

Ha! she was talking to Paul on the phone about his vegetable garden the other week. "Have you got runner beans in?" "no", "oh well you need to grow beans!" Nicky doesn't like beans much and they're not high on Pauls list either but never-the-less, an hour after the phone call Mum is knocking on their door with 18 runner bean plants in hand.

The next Sunday Nick and Paul head off around to Mum and Dads for supper and Dad gives Paul a packet of runner bean seeds. "What do I need these for?" he says. "Plant 'em" says Dad. "Why? your wife delivered 18 plants to us last week!" Paul tells him. "Oh well chuck 'em out" says Dad. "they're fairly old anyway".

Ooh I can just see Nicks face if she stepped out the back door into a forest of runner beans. Mum used to boil them up, young beans and old huckery ones with strings and Nick had the devil of a job trying to hide them under her knife and fork at the end of the meal. Same with Broad Beans. Old huckery things that smelled like Mums well worn slippers.. why would anyone want to eat something that smelled that bad?! Never mind the fact they had skins like a baby elephants bum, soft, tough and wrinkled belch!

Yakut

Hopefully if anything needs to be done, that it gets done while he is still in hospitol. Let us know. Its a shame a stent couldn't be done, kind of a easier option than a bypass, but these days recovery from a bypass is much better. My Mum had a hole in the heart op when she was 40, in those days it was a very new operation and scarey with a long recovery. In 1990 she had a quadriple bypass done.