So, my first attack felt like a knife cutting through your whole heart like, you know, in the markets you see how they slice the pork, the liver. That's how the pain was. It was so terrible and it didn't go away, so I felt very shivery. You can literally feel ants crawling up, just biting you. It started from below the feet. It started going up, and it was so painful at that moment, I thought I was going to die. It didn't feel like a heart attack at all it just felt like some sort of muscle ache. In terms of pain, it didn't feel very painful some numbness in the hands, some discomfort in the chest. Halfway through walking, I felt I was getting a bit breathless. So, I found a place to sit down. Then, I slowly felt that my jaws were becoming numb as if I was losing strength in my jaws. It was one hour later when I realised that something was very wrong. One to one and a half hours later. At that point I felt like I was just going to pass on. My mum was just sitting beside me so I was just telling her, "Eh, call an ambulance". Because I stay opposite Sengkang hospital my mum was telling me, "Just walk there, you can walk there." I was like, "No mum, I cannot (take it) already please just call an ambulance." I was feeling some discomfort on my arm. Like, it didn't feel very normal so I just stopped my car at a carpark and sat outside the car to rest. By some chance or luck my ex-colleague just happened to be at the carpark it was a random carpark opposite Maxwell market. Then I told him what was going on and that was when he insisted that I go to the hospital. If I was a passer-by looking at me I probably wouldn't have recommended going to the hospital. I was still thinking I was okay and that there shouldn't be anything because I already went for stent procedure (tube inserted in clogged artery) twice. I just carried on with whatever I was doing. So, I was just taking it easy until the pain kept on coming very often then I said, "I'd better talk to my cardiologist about it". When I was going though my therapy I met some other patients as well. When they first got their heart attacks all the reactions were very different. To me, the impression of having a heart attack was like your heart experiences a severe pain and you maybe just fall on the floor and squirm around. Like, "Ah, I'm in pain!", that kind of feeling. But no, it's not like that. No, I didn't expect it to happen to me. Never in my dreams would I have thought that it would happen to me. My father had this, my grandfather had this so I always knew that somehow I was at risk. But, I felt like I had 20 years to go. I'll be very frank, my lifestyle was pretty bad. I drink a lot, I smoke, and I sleep very little. But of course there are people, who I hang out with they are far worse than me. Those hardcore smokers who smoke one pack a day but I'm only a social smoker, maybe two to three sticks a week. The first thought that came to my head was, "Why not them? Why is it me?" So, I didn't smoke, I didn't drink. I would say I would probably attribute it to the last two which is, I'm a little bit of a workaholic and I also have really bad eating habits. My diet five to six years ago would be like a heavy zi char meal at night, nasi lemak for breakfast and maybe briyani for lunch. It sounds a bit far fetched like, this idea that a young person can get a heart disease. It's an alien idea to me. I was a Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) in the army I considered myself super fit I played badminton seven times a week. When it came, it was because of my diet and a change of lifestyle because I got married so I had no time for exercises. My wife didn't work, and I had three kids at that point in time. All (of my time became) family time. Once you have a family, most of it is family time. At 8 a.m, I would start work, right until 5:45 p.m. Often, I would reach home at about 8:30 p.m. By the time you go home, you just want to unwind. And besides that, during the weekends you have to find time to bring them out. Usually when we go shopping, they will go and shop and I will sit at McDonald's. I'll read my newspaper and order food. So, the many hours that they shop are the many hours that I eat. And my other indulgence is that I love gassy drinks. I can drink a 1.5 litre bottle of coke just like that. That's a downside, you see. If you open up my insides, I think it will be filled with gas. So, that's my way of exercising, or destressing. Honestly speaking, I don't know if I will die earlier but I hope I don't. The changes of getting another heart attack is a lot higher as compared to normal people. During the very first instance of having my heart attack all these thoughts came to my mind "What's gonna happen if I die?" When I heard the doctor say that I have to go for bypass surgery Oh my god, I teared up. Especially when I went for the angiogram procedures I really teared up until the doctor patted me and said "Don't worry, everything will be okay." Before I went for my bypass surgery I told my husband, "Maybe I won't be coming back". And then my husband and children cried. When I was on the operating table they actually did angioplasty (procedure to widen arteries) for me. The nurse was telling me he said that he hoped it was a muscle spasm so that I don't have to put any stent or do any ballooning. Halfway through the operation, he said "Boy, you need to do the ballooning you need to put the stent inside, it's 95% clogged. If you don't do it I don't know if anything (bad) will happen to you" He didn't give me an option, to be honest he just immediately inserted the stent. I could feel that I was going into shock I was like, "Ugh, this is so painful" I was just lying down there. So, when he was telling me a lot of things, I was like "Ugh, please just do whatever you need to do" and "I just want to get out of this operating table as quickly as possible". They don't have a bigger table for me so I had difficulty balancing myself. Because my size was so huge at 130kg and my arteries were not branched out nicely like trees. So, one of my veins was intertwined in that sense. So, when he inserted the wire for angioplasty it could not hook (onto the vein). I still remember people could go in there and come out after 20 minutes. Mine was 40 minutes you know, I couldn't tahan (take it). And that was a wake up call. I don't know whether I will die earlier it's not up to me to decide. But I will say that psychologically, I think the biggest effect on me was being much closer to the idea of like, death. I felt a little bit less invincible and a little bit more vulnerable. My favourite food is actually mutton briyani but normally I only take it once a month. Even when I eat mutton once every three to four months my children will tell me "Mummy, you better not eat so much mutton you've already suffered enough." I think I can live, maybe close to 70% of how I lived previously. I used to love KFC a lot. Now, whenever I see fast food to me, it's like, "Ugh you're the cause of my heart attack." Things like that. "No. No more fast food for me." Now it becomes more like a gym kind of diet where you can only have a cheat day once a week. Sometimes, it's very frustrating. You cannot live a normal life per se. You cannot go for buffets anymore. If you just take vegetables and all that it's not worth the money, so now I cut down on that. No buffets. When I went to the dietitian surprisingly, one of the first things they got me to cut out of my diet is fruit juice. I found that to be quite ridiculous. She said, "It's okay for you to take briyani once in a while but I want you to cut out all fruit juice from your diet". And I apologise to the fruit juice sellers' association for saying that. They always tell me to keep my heart rate within a certain figure which is around 127 BPM. I guess I cannot do too many vigourous exercises which until now, I still don't dare to do. In the past, I used to do Muay Thai I used to dance, I used to go jogging. I have been carrying the gas tank (used in cooking stoves). All that I used to fix it myself. (Nowadays) I feel tired very easily after doing my usual housework. I don't think I'm 100% perfect like before. I want to live a normal life but it was a process where I had to be disciplined and determined to do it. After that, I went to Singapore Heart Foundation (SHF). That was a turning point, when I went there there were good physiotherapists there. Everything was good because it's a collective area where you can learn. So, from there I exercise almost five days a week at SHF. If we have any questions, we can go up to them. For certain problems you have, like sometimes for my shoulder pain and other issues I go to them for help and ask them for guidance. Currently, I'm going to the SHF branch at Fortune Centre. My physiotherapy regime is always twice every week. I do all the old man exercises. (The ones) you see the aunties doing at the playground downstairs That’s the kind of exercise I do. If I don't follow through the physiotherapy regime right I might not even go out to exercise at all because I don't know how much I can push my body. I mean, I might want to go back and run some day but I'm not sure if I can do it. I don't want to end up running, falling on the floor and suffering another heart attack. When I first suffered my heart attack when the doctor told me that I couldn't run and everything to me, my world came crashing down I felt like I couldn't do anything. But when the physiotherapist told me that I could slowly build everything back up, right so you can see that there's a glimmer of hope. Like, suddenly you look at her and you go "Ding!" It’s like she gave you hope, that kind of feeling. I really treasure and appreciate their staff. Their staff is very family oriented. It's part of a community where you engage people. From acquaintances, we became friends. And from there, sometimes we go out together same group of people, but when we go out we cannot eat anyhow we like. My group also started to be more health conscious. They started to go cycling with me. It's quite funny how what happened to me made some small little changes in my group of friends. I need to be more conscious about saying "I need to take a break" or, "Okay, I'll pass this on to someone else." I'll say that I'm not a perfectionist but I expect high standards when it comes to work. I also feel like how I work or how I eat makes me who I am also. I'd like to think that the best way forward is to find some kind of balance. Nobody can take care of you. You have to take ownership of your own life. That's how I feel. We can go back to our old life provided we follow that regime. Difficult, but possible. I'm thankful for my doctor, Doctor Naik and his team of doctors and nurses who take care of me. (Also) My physiotherapist from the Singapore Heart Foundation. I would like to thank them for helping me and guiding me on the exercises. Even if you go back and give me a choice to not have problems with my heart I think I would still, strangely, choose to have it. Without heart problems I think I would not see finding balance between my family and my work as a priority. My wife has always been very supportive. She's always watching my health or if she thinks that I need to take a breather from work she will always remind me. When I had my heart attack my girlfriend actually flew down to visit me from where she was staying, which was overseas. She flew all the way down to see me for a day and then after that she went back again. She kind of fully accepted my condition and she told me that she wanted to take care of me more. Then I'm like, "Wow, okay." That one is also an etched memory because I was very touched by what she did for me. The one thing I am thankful for in this situation is that God gave me a second chance to live life again and to live well. After all this, I just want to share with people who are unaware of healthy lifestyles. Like how to eat well and exercise well that's why I set myself to volunteer at SHF. I can talk to people about this anywhere, anytime. Sometimes, they look at my keloid scar and that is how we can start a conversation. It's so easy for people to preach but unless you go through and walk through the journey then you are able to tell people "Hey, I am telling you this because I have been through it. And not because I Google'd it the information“. So, we have to look at life positively. It's not the end but perhaps it's a process that you have to go through. So, I just hope that every day will be a challenging day where I can meet somebody to share. Producer: Thank you for watching. This episode is supported by Singapore Heart Foundation. Did you know that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death globally? In Singapore, almost one out of three deaths is caused by cardiovascular diseases like heart disease or stroke. Singapore Heart Foundation is a social service agency at the forefront of the battle against heart disease in Singapore. They have educational programmes for schools and the community to raise awareness of heart health. They also conduct cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillator (AED) courses to better equip Singaporeans to respond to incidents of cardiac arrest as well as rehabilitative and preventive care for recovering heart patients and at risk individuals outside of their hospital treatments. Can Ask Meh? Season 4 will be aired every alternate Thursdays from 2 April to 28 May. If you enjoyed this series you can watch more 'Can Ask Meh?' episodes on our playlist here. Take care of your hearts!
