Amina greeted me at 6:35 AM inside the Cardiac Care ward of the CK Hui Heart Centre where she’s worked for over five years as a nurse. She was the first of what would be over a dozen nurses, RNs, specialists, and doctors doing what they do every day to give people like me better odds at a healthy, longer life.
Chest Pain
In November 2025 I started experiencing low level chest pain which spread out into my arms during activity. I arranged an appointment to see what my doctor would make of this. He prescribed some medication. Two months later we met again because the pain had increased. He referred me for a stress test to the same clinic that I visited two years previous. This time they said my work on the treadmill indicated there had been a change.
“Looks like you have a blocked artery. We’ll send you for an angiogram.”
On April 20th, six months after my initial experience of chest pain, Jocelyn and I were awake at 4:50am so she could drive me to the Robbins Pavillion at the Royal Alexandra Hospital.
Since 2011, the CK Hui Heart Centre has provided excellence in cardiac treatment to patients in northern Alberta and the Northern Territories, as well as northern Saskatchewan and British Columbia—an area equal to one-third of Canada’s land mass.
Best of the Best
Dr. Neil S. Brass is a prominent interventional cardiologist and the Chief of Cardiology. He has been a staff member in interventional and general cardiology at the Royal Alexandra Hospital since 1993. He introduced himself to me in the surgery room.
I hold a deep appreciation for the technology and procedures developed since my father had a heart attack in the early 60s. He later suffered years of multiple ministrokes which affected his hearing and temperament. He was less than four years older than I am now when he passed away.
I carried a lot of baggage when I entered the surgical ward on April 20th. The Joneses have a history of multiple close family members dying suddenly from heart attacks. Multiple staff members repeated the stat that there is less than 1% odds of a fatality in the type of procedure I would undergo. I’m not sure what other people think when they hear stats like that, but I immediately wondered if I might be that rare statistic.
7:25AM
A nurse came to get me, I said see you soon to Jocelyn, and I was wheeled off to the surgical unit. The clock overhead showed 7:25 AM. Could my life now be measured in minutes rather than decades? I dismissed that thought immediately. The nurse inquired if I could walk into the operating room and I was happy to cooperate. Once on the table they placed a warm blanket over me which fought off the coldness in the room. A foot to my left was a monitor that would show the interior of my heart and a few inches above me was an X-ray machine.
Dr Barss explained that they would do an angiogram to explore the condition of my arteries and if they found blockages they would insert the required number of stents to open them up. After numbing my right wrist, he inserted a tube through which they would do the angiogram. I could feel the process going up my right arm and then into my heart. It didn’t take too long for them to assess there was a severely blocked artery into which they would insert a stent. Once more I could feel the catheter going up my arm. In a few minutes the doctor explained the procedure was successful. They opened the anterior artery and were quite happy with the result.
Crash Cart
The next thing I knew they placed a plastic clamp on my wrist over the incision; I scooched over and off the table onto a bed and they wheeled me out of the operating room. The clock overhead showed 8:10 AM.
I felt great. They gave me some peanut butter and jam toast along with apple juice and water which I heartily enjoyed. Jocelyn was relieved. She sat and read her book while I recovered, as numerous attendants visited my cubicle to take my blood pressure and check my vitals. All was good enough for a nurse to take the clamp off my wrist. The next step was to go home. However, the incision had not clotted, and we had a bit of a gusher and so the clamp had to be reapplied.
And then I started to feel clammy and woozy, and woke up with a crowd of people standing around my bed. Jocelyn later explained that I had passed out and the nurse yelled, “Crash cart! Crash cart!” as the alarms sounded.
Informed Family Support
Poor Jocelyn. She suffered more than I did. Fortunately, we have two wonderful and highly experienced nurses for daughters-in-law. They kept up a constant stream of texts with Jocelyn calming her through the experience. When the crisis occurred, Lynsey, who is a Cardiac care nurse, texted Jocelyn that this kind of reaction was common and that she had been through this hundreds of times in her ward. Dad will be OK.
And she was right. An hour later a nurse unclamped my wrist and this time the incision had clotted. They patched me up, had me try walking around for 10 minutes, and when all was good, I dressed and was given a wheelchair ride to the hospital exit. From entrance to exit was a total of seven hours.
New Lease On Life
I’m left with a regime of new pills, a gratitude for the whole team at the CK Hui Heart Centre, my family, the mercy of God, and a new lease on life. Now I can get back to walking and hopefully running again.
What’s clear to me this week is that getting older isn’t about age. It’s about the total number of parts that are taken out of your body and those added into your body. So far, I have 20+cm less bowel, vision loss in one eye, plus a few indentations resulting from the removal of precancerous growths, but I’ve gained new retinal lenses, hearing aids, and now a stent.
I’m ahead in the game.
Have you had a medical treatment recently? Please join the conversation and post a comment below.
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