Statin not-so quo …

Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Meters: 5,232
Time: 25:00
Strokes per minute: 19-20
Total Meters Rowed: 116,364

Did you see yesterday where a huge comprehensivve study has determined that for many people who DON’T have symptoms or a history of heart disease they would probably do well to be on a statin drug regardless. This is huge news, and surely seems worth mentioning here.

I’m on a statin. I have been since Aril 2005, when I found out I have heart disease. Indeed, it was the finding-out that set in motion the wheels that eventually produced “My Father’s Heart.” I have long felt that from a narrative standpoint MFH needed to two elements to become a reality: 1) the very fact that I watched my father die of a heart attack when I was 16 in 1969; and 2) the more recent fact that all those years later I discovered I have heart disease as well. Books need compelling reasons to get written; these became my reasons.

About statins I will say this: They work. They sure do. The one I’m on dropped the floor out from underneath my cholesterol. Who knows where I might be without it, with only my rowing machine to do battle? But I must say this, too: The first statin I went on had me feeling like I’d been beaten with a baseball bat inside of a week of first taking it. The side effects were that severe, that immediate.  And speaking of very facts: I hate the very fact that I must take one. I just do. But take it I do. And then climb back on that rowing machine.