A COLLEAGUE, A HEART BYPASS SURGERY, AND A LESSON LEARNT FOR LIFE

And he fell down off the chair!

He was young, optimistic, and the most helpful colleague one can ever expect. A designer by profession, Aditya was just 23 years old when we had to rush him to the hospital as one day he almost collapsed on to the floor while working. He was working on his computer and suddenly felt uncomfortable. Before he or others around him could understand the situation, he fell off the chair. And we all had to rush him to the nearby heart hospital.

Doctors examined him and said a heart bypass surgery is inevitable.

But he was just 23 years old.

His arteries were blocked. And to help the heart function the ideal way, doctors have to perform a heart bypass surgery.

The good thing is the surgery has been done and he is recuperating very well.

The bad thing is more and more youngsters in India are getting trapped by heart diseases and disorders. Surgeries which were once supposed to be exclusively for people well over 60 or 70 years are now being required for the young population. And heart bypass surgery in India is one of those surgeries.

What makes a heart bypass surgery essential?

A bypass surgery is required when the arteries that supply blood to your heart get chocked with cholesterol. In this surgical procedure, doctors take an artery from a different part of your body such as thigh and use it as a bypass to supply blood to your heart.

What you can do to lessen your chances for a heart bypass surgery in India?

Most of us work in offices where we spend most of our working hours, in-front-of computers. Now this is something we cannot help with, right?

But what we can certainly do is adopt a healthy lifestyle. For example, we can go for a 30-minute brisk walk that doesn’t cost a single penny. We can also lower our sugar or sweet intake. We can go to a nearby heart hospital or clinic once in a while or at least once or twice in a year and get ourselves totally examined. Regular screening is one of the most effective and cost-effective ways to detect a disease – be it a heart disease or cancerous tumour – at its very first sign and get the treatment at the most appropriate time.

My colleague will join office in a couple of months. And we all are eagerly waiting for him. But this incident has made us all think about our own health and lives. A little change in life and we can get better prepared.

For more on heart bypass surgery in India and hospitals that are regarded as the best destinations for heart surgeries, watch out for my upcoming posts.