About five years ago I was at my annual physical when the Doc asked about my family history of heart disease. After hearing about my Dad's two bypasses she suggested that I get a scan of my coronary arteries done. I agreed and made the appointment. The scan only took a couple of minutes, but I knew something was up when the technician asked if I was here because of chest pains. The next day I got a call from my Doc who said I had one of the highest scores she had ever seen on that test. I had a lot of crap on my arteries.

I get referred to a Cardiologist who does a nuclear stress test. No problems showed up, but he put me on a bunch of cholesterol lowering meds. He advised me to repeat that nuclear stress test every year. In January of 2006 I experienced some severe pain at the top of my stomach. I was pretty sure it was just acid reflux, but I decided to go to the ER. The Doc there heard about my history and kept me in there for six hours doing blood work etc. At the end the ER Doc was sure I was not having a heart attack, but said it would be a good idea for me to followup with the Cardiologist.

I see my cardiologist who also doesn't believe the pain is heart related, but he asks me if I wanted to have an angiogram done just to see how blocked up I was. I said no to that, but he got me to agree to another nuclear stress test. I had my annual one just five months prior and everything was fine. So I was sure this one would be too. I show up for the test, but the Doc gets called out before he could read my results. The next morning I am at work, having just run six miles, when the Doc calls and says my EKG looked great, my tolerance for excercise was over the top, but, I had a blocked artery.
They fixed me up with a stent two weeks later.

If you got a history of heart disease in your family don't mess around. Talk about it with your Doctor. I am fairly certain that if I had not been checked five years ago and followed through with everything as the Doc had suggested I would have had a major heart attack.