Mainly because he doesn’t spend much time with me to discuss any of this stuff. He never even mentioned Apo B in our conversation, I first found out about it here in THIS discussion. Even the AI that I used didn’t mention it.
I’m also annoyed because he didn’t include Apo B in the most recent bloodwork. To be fair, the most recent one was ordered by my GP, not by my cardiologist, but they each have access to all the records, AND it was supposed to be a full lipid panel.
Like I said, if necessary, I would take the statin, but I want to know which items exactly they measure to determine success. A few years ago, I took losartin for 15 months and it seemed to me that it wasn’t doing anything. I mentioned that to the doctor and he said the only way to determine that is to stop taking it and compare BP from the month before to the month after. At the time, I took my BP 3x day and recorded it in my phone. Sure enough, the BP in the month after stopping the medication looked exactly like the month with the medication. My BP is higher in the morning, medium at midday, and lower in the evening. Now a few years later, my GP wants me to try a different BP medication. So maybe by summer I’ll be on TWO medications!
I’ve been waiting for a long time. My grandfather had a heart attack at age 45, then he finally stopped smoking. He was a character - he stopped mid-cigarette, and put the ashtray and the half box of cigarettes on the small kitchen shelf above the table where the sugar, salt, etc was placed when not in use. That half box of cigarettes sat there on the shelf for decades. I suppose it was there to remind him to never smoke again LOL.
And my father had a heart attack at age 47 and one month and 6 days. His attack happened at the gym (I had left the gym about 20 minutes earlier, and he planned on going home with a friend later). We received a call at home from the friend telling us about the attack, and my mom and I went to the hospital immediately, turns out we got to the hospital before the ambulance did. I don’t recall all the details, but apparently that MI wasn’t due to blockage but more due to “spasm” (or whatever they called it, really I don’t quite recall, but that was the gist of it). They treated him with a new revolutionary drug called TPA (one of the first genetically engineered drugs) to thin the blood, and later (after it was approved in the USA) he began taking lipitor, and still takes it today nearly 40 years later. I remember that the TPA required signing a special approval form acknowledging the risks (mainly brain issues because of how much and how rapidly it thins the blood and breaks clots). It was also godawful expensive at $20,000 a dose (in 1988 that was a heck of a lot of money, but insurance approved it or most of it).
So when I turned 47 and one month and 6 days, I happened to be at the gym at 7:20pm, I paused my workout and after a minute or two, I told my friends “3 … 2 … 1 … okay, I beat my dad, no heart attack yet” 