got good medical attention, had a stent placed in a heart artery through a catheter, and am now recuperating at home.

I am looking for some DU feedback from members here who have also had heart attacks, and maybe situations like mine.

Up to now I thought I was in great health. I am a 57 year-old male, in good shape, very active, and have none of the major risk factors involved in heart disease. No one else in my extended family has any history of heart problems. My parent's generation, on both sides, are in their mid-to-late '80s and every last one of them is alive and well. I have longevity on both sides. My diet is 95% very healthy, and I am neither overweight or a smoker. I also had a major cardiac work-up 18 months that said I was in great shape. I do have slightly elevated cholesterol levels, but have been taking a statin for 3 years and had dropped those numbers.

So, that is Mystery #1. Why do I have this?

Mystery #2, the symptoms.

This all started as a pain under my left shoulder blade. I have had problems with muscle spasms in that area for 25 years, and had remedied them through light weight training. I hadn't been doing that lately, and blamed myself. Still, it was very painful. I had a series of attacks over five days, most only in the morning at breakfast time. In the more severe ones I felt other pains, some slight pain in the chest muscles and a sharp pain in the back of my throat. I called my doctor on the third day, he couldn't see me, but called in prescriptions for a muscle relaxer and an anti-inflammatory to my local pharmacy. That was Friday morning. These didn't work, but I didn't have a really severe attack until Sunday breakfast, when it was time to peel me off the ceiling. I had my wife take me to the ER of the local hospital, where after some tests they told me that I had a myocardial infarction, and took care of me.

So, my questions. I am now doing extensive research on these issues, and everything about my situation seems atypical.

Is it? Has anyone here had a similar situation or symptoms?

What type of therapy did you do to recover from this?

Do you know of any good web sites with particularly good information about heart attack recovery?

and any other advice you could offer on this subject would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

kwassa

This is pretty much what you've been arguing

http://www.ziztur.com/2009/08/fallacious-n...

Your test ignores history.

Historically, in racist cartoons and depictions, black people have been compared to monkeys. It is a sore point among African-Americans who are very aware of that use of this derogatory symbol. Calling a white person a monkey carries no such historical meaning or personal impact, because there is no real history of such depictions.

The meaning of this cartoon is DIFFERENT to you and to a black person, because you don't have the same history. To you there is no racism, because the symbol of the monkey is not indicative of anything to you. You simply judge it from your personal vantage point, which is fine, for you.

But it isn't political correctness, it is real offense. Whether the cartoonist intended this, or is just ignorant of the meaning of a chimp as a symbol, I don't know, I suspect the latter. But from his other work, he doesn't shy away from being offensive, particularly in his depiction of Muslims, as shown in the other cartoons posted in this thread.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/us/polit...



This has been standard procedure forever in federal dealing with religious charities.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/opinion/...

Good taste is my taste, and the sooner you understand that, the happier you will be.

Basically, people are arguing over the inarguable; what makes a good-looking dress. Nobody will agree, but everyone will insist their taste is correct. She gets good reviews from the fashion press, just not here on DU.

and it is, at it's most basic level, unwarranted criticism of Michelle Obama over each individuals subjective taste.

I'm fully in favor of gay marriage, but it is a historically new social concept that really hasn't existed in western society before. Like it or not, it is a new social paradigm for many people to grasp, that marriage is something different than what it has been considered for at least the past thousand years or so. The gay community has embraced and understood this concept, but the majority of the American public has not, at least judging by public opinion polls. I think most people that are not gay or have close contact with gay people even think about it at all, and when it is presented to them as an abstract question out of context reflexively respond in the negative. To them, the definition of marriage is what it has been for so long, and why should it be anything else?
I really think that most who voted for Prop 8 never thought of it as the civil rights issue that it is. This simply demonstrates the need for education on the subject.

Prop 8 was one type of poll, but the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life does the best national polls that I know of on the subject.

http://pewforum.org/docs/index.php?DocID=2...

This does not mean that they necessarily have any knowledge or sensitivity to the oppression of others. Although I think many gays are sympathetic and supportive of black civil rights, I find that many do so in the abstract, as most gays and most blacks are socially segregated from one another. Because of that segregation, each group reflects the viewpoint of it's community and culture, and each group doesn't particularly know the other. Of course there are exceptions to this, I'm speaking in broad generalities.

I think the cause of gay marriage can be sold to at least a majority of African-Americans if presented that separate is not equal, a principle they fully understand. I don't think there has been any attempt to do that yet, and I hope to see that, soon.

"I view everyone - no matter their color or orientation bigoted if they vote to take away rights from anyone... "

This is a common saying here on DU, but it is not an accurate discription of bigotry, because the vote itself tells nothing about the mindset of the individual voters.

First, this is what bigotry is:



The problem is this: To know if any single voter is bigoted, you must know the beliefs of each voter in regards to other groups. The vote alone does not reveal that, and to call someone bigoted without knowing that is a form of prejudice in and of itself. The word "prejudice" literally means to pre-judge.

There could be different reasons for black voters to vote in favor of Prop 8, which I stated multiple times over in the threads in the other forum. One reason is a socially conservative attitude about marriage, as many African-Americans are socially conservative. Another could be that they didn't know or realize that they were taking away rights from others, as the argument had never been made to them, due to little contact between the gay communities and the black communities. I think there is little interaction between the two communities, by and large, and there is a lot of cultural myopia on both sides. Some voters may have thought that they were voting in favor of their traditional concept of marriage of being one man and one woman, a concept that has been around many hundreds of years. This is compared to the relatively new phenomenon of same sex marriage, which the black voters probably haven't even thought about much yet because they've had little reason to, unless they are gay.

And some voters may simply be bigots. Whatever their reasons, without knowing those reasons one can not call them bigoted as a group without exhibiting bigotry oneself, in my opinion, as their motivations and beliefs cannot be ASSUMED. You have to ask them to find out why they voted the way they voted, and no one has done that, as far as I can tell. The mad angry rush to judge these voters was quite frightening and revealing, unfortunately.

"gay is the new black" is not a good analogy.

The types of oppression that both groups have suffered are quite different, from a historical point of view. The very valid arguments for gay marriage do not need to rest on this comparison, other than the basic recognition that separate is not equal, a lesson well learned from 100 years of Jim Crow separation of blacks and whites. There is no way that separate can be equal, and we now have the history to prove it.

I think this argument needs to be presented over and over again, that separate is not equal, in the reasoning for rejecting civil unions in favor of full marriage rights, before the entire American public. This argument has traction.

"Gay is the new black" suggests that the black struggle for equality and equity is over, and I don't think that most black people would agree with that, despite Obama's victory. The use of this as a slogan will have the net effect of alienating potential black supporters, I think, as if the unique history of their struggle has become co-opted. The gay struggle for rights is also unique and compelling, but it is a different story and needs to rest within it's own uniqueness, and not rest on other struggles that have great dissimilarities.

Each side has it's irrational extreme, and many of them seem to participate on DU.

Just kidding. But, not too much.

These Hillary supporters going to McCain represent a tiny segment of the electorate. They do this out of deep anger, but they are not a significant force.

I don't think there is a claim that Clinton represents all women, but Clinton being treated in a sexist fashion DOES represent all women, regardless of her candidacy. Working women relate to the abuse she has received, as they have received it themselves.

There have been some really sexist treatment of Hillary, and it comes directly from a media that would never dream of doing the same thing racially. The consciousness is much higher in the media with race than it is with gender issues. This campaign really has revealed this point.

Dislike Hillary individually all you want. No woman should be required to receive the sexual insults, though, be it Hillary or ANY other women in politics, regardless of politics. I get angry at the treatment of Condi Rice on DU, as much as I disagree with her about everything politically. Criticize them in the correct areas; policy and leadership.

Why is Booker's statement powerful? Because you agree with it?

"Slavery was one of the worst mass crimes ever perpetrated on a people, but black people in America are better off than black people anywhere else in the world. And that's a fact."

How do you know that? How do you know that black Americans have it better than black people anywhere else in the world? I like to see you substantiate this bizarre assertion. What proof?

and if slavery is a great crime, what is it's blessing to those slaves???????

and this topper:

"Reparations would involve taking money from people who didn't own slaves and paying it to people who weren't slaves. That crime would be as egregious as the one that was taken against any member of the black race."

I see. Taking money from someone is as big a crime as whipping, beating, kidnapping, selling, working to death, raping, murdering.

You have both a sense of proportion and a great grasp of logic.

or much else about slavery. Jim Crow refers to the repressive laws and practices that disenfranchised blacks from their newly-won rights in the period directly after the Civil War and kept them disenfranchised right up to the 1960s civil rights marches.

These laws kept blacks from voting, enforced segregation in jobs and housing, prevented blacks from getting mortgage assistance from the US government, excluded blacks from colleges and universities, thereby preventing blacks from both getting good educations and from acquiring personal wealth.

We still have the effects of that legacy today.

The IMPACT of four hundred years of slavery and discrimination are STILL WITH US. Anyone who thinks it ended with the end of slavery, or that the descendants were also not affected by discriminatory practices that followed need to study the history of their own country. It wasn't only the slaves who were robbed of their futures; their descendants were, too.

edit to add:
There are many LIVING African-Americans who personally suffered the lack of opportunity presented under segregation. They were also prevented from passing on any inherited wealth or opportunity to their own children, like middle-class and higher income whites can, because they never had the opportunity to join the middle-class.

I hate that expression. Unless we are blind, we see color, and anyone who says otherwise is LYING.

Now, seeing color does not mean that we judge by color. That is something else.

Most churches in this country are still segregated, though, because that is also a legacy of hundreds of years of segregation. Blacks had to often create whole new denominations in order to worship at all.

And an inner-city Chicago church will reflect it's local demographic, which is a black neighborhood. So sit on your high diverse horse, the reality is that you are parochial in your church knowledge. Going to church with people of color doesn't mean you know anything about them in any serious way.

Law #1.

There is no bottom limit to how low someone will crawl to be on television. Some will do absolutely anything just to be on t.v.

Law # 2.

No show is too stupid for people to watch. The lower the show panders, the more likely many will watch.

I am reminded once again of why I ignore you so much.

"So you disagree with the site whose link you provided as a way to show me you're right."

I don't disagree with the site. That is your blatant misrepresentation. How surprising.

They offer their own definition of Christianity within their recognition that a huge variety of defintions of Christianity exist. That is the central point that has sailed right by you, that many different definitions exist for the term Christianity. I put that point in bold type so that you might be able to get it. Do you get it?

I happen to agree with a different definition within their list than the one that the site owners accept as their best definition of Christianity.

and the day you can win an argument with me will see major snow drifts in Miami.