An East Greenbush woman says her heart was a “ticking time bomb” and she never would have known had she not had a simple medical test.
She and her cardiac surgeon, Dr. Sulaiman Hasan of Albany Cardiothoracic Surgeons, spoke to WTEN/News10 about the calcium score test that helped discover the need for quintuple bypass surgery.
From the report:
“I was somebody who had no symptoms, no shortness of breath, no chest pain, nothing. I usually walk about 20,000 steps a day,” said Mickey Jenkins.
But after a close friend suffered a heart attack Mickey said she asked her doctor for a calcium score test to take a closer look at her own cardiac health.
“You lay in the machine. It goes in the first time they say, ‘Take a deep breath’, it comes out. You go a second time, take a deep breath, you’re done. It took me longer to walk down the hallway than it did to get in the machine to get the test,” explained Jenkins.
The results of the test are fast. Mickey’s doctor explained to NEWS10’s Reporter James De La Fuente the immediate danger that the test alerted him to. “That blockage in here, if you only have that we still call that a Widow Maker,” said St. Peter’s Health Partners Cardiac Surgeon Dr. Sulaiman Hasan.
“I was a ticking time bomb. They told me I couldn’t even leave the hospital. That’s how bad it was,” exclaimed Jenkins. “So, they did the surgery, and five days later, I was released.”
Click here to watch WTEN’s report and learn how Mickey’s story is inspiring local firefighters to get their hearts checked, too.
