For the Over-50 crowd:
I'm curious as to medical (or other) tests people have done from time to time. I'll share my own:
When I was 16 years old, my father, who was 46, had a heart attack. (It was a pretty frightening time in our house - I became the "man of the house" in some senses, e.g., I wrote the checks to pay the bills and other, similar things my mother simply had never done and didn't want to learn how to do. My Dad was in the hospital for a month, and at home for another month before he went back to work.)
When I turned 46, the age at which my father had a heart attack, I asked my doctor if there was test or procedure I could have done to know if I was following in my father's footsteps or, I hoped, doing better. The procedure my doctor recommended was a Cardiac CT for Coronary Calcium. Apparently, the plaque that can build up in your coronary arteries and cause a heart attack is composed largely of calcium, so by detecting that, doctors can have a fair idea if your coronary arteries are partially block. The results are given as a score - under 100 and you're in good shape, and over 400 and you have significant blockage.
I got a zero.
Recently, I turned 64, so perhaps it was the appearance of the same two digits in my age that caused me to have the procedure done again. I got a zero again, so I'm pretty happy about that.
It's a relatively inexpensive - about $150 - procedure. When I had it done 18 years ago, insurance covered the charge. Now, I'm apparently too healthy otherwise so I paid the $150 out of my pocket to have it done.
Anyone else have a similar thing, a "just to be on the safe side" test they have done periodically, perhaps related to family history, occupational hazards, or similar?
-S-
I'm curious as to medical (or other) tests people have done from time to time. I'll share my own:
When I was 16 years old, my father, who was 46, had a heart attack. (It was a pretty frightening time in our house - I became the "man of the house" in some senses, e.g., I wrote the checks to pay the bills and other, similar things my mother simply had never done and didn't want to learn how to do. My Dad was in the hospital for a month, and at home for another month before he went back to work.)
When I turned 46, the age at which my father had a heart attack, I asked my doctor if there was test or procedure I could have done to know if I was following in my father's footsteps or, I hoped, doing better. The procedure my doctor recommended was a Cardiac CT for Coronary Calcium. Apparently, the plaque that can build up in your coronary arteries and cause a heart attack is composed largely of calcium, so by detecting that, doctors can have a fair idea if your coronary arteries are partially block. The results are given as a score - under 100 and you're in good shape, and over 400 and you have significant blockage.
I got a zero.
Recently, I turned 64, so perhaps it was the appearance of the same two digits in my age that caused me to have the procedure done again. I got a zero again, so I'm pretty happy about that.
It's a relatively inexpensive - about $150 - procedure. When I had it done 18 years ago, insurance covered the charge. Now, I'm apparently too healthy otherwise so I paid the $150 out of my pocket to have it done.
Anyone else have a similar thing, a "just to be on the safe side" test they have done periodically, perhaps related to family history, occupational hazards, or similar?
-S-