HOW TO GO:
WHAT: Butler County Heart Walk
WHEN: 10 a.m. Sept. 12
WHERE: Fitton Center for the Creative Arts, 101 S. Monument Ave., Hamilton
INFO: Call 513-281-4048 or visit www.heartwalkkintera.org/hamiltonfairfieldoh
GLANCE BOX 2
Heredity as a risk factor
Heart and blood vessel disease can be inherited. A tendency toward heart disease or fatty buildups in arteries seems to be hereditary. That means children of parents with heart and blood vessel diseases may be more likely to develop them.
A number of genes have been reported to be associated with heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure in large population-based studies.
A person with a congenital heart defect is slightly more likely than the general public to have a baby with a congenital heart defect. Researchers are now identifying genes responsible for causing some of these defects.
Even though you can’t change your genetic makeup, you can reduce your risk by adopting a healthier lifestyle that includes physical activity, a healthy diet, and avoiding tobacco.
You can learn more about your family history by asking questions, talking at family gatherings, and looking at family medical records, if possible. Try to learn about the medical history of your grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, siblings, and children. You should try to find out the following:
•Major medical conditions and causes of death.
•Age of disease onset and age at death, and
•Ethnic background.
Please share your family history information with your doctor. Your doctor will:
•Assess your disease risk.
•Recommend lifestyle changes to help prevent disease, and
•Prescribe laboratory or clinical tests to detect disease early.
SOURCE: American Heart Association
Editor’s note: This is the first of four stories that will appear each Sunday focusing on how heart disease is impacting local residents. These stories are lead-ins to the American Heart Associations annual Heart Walk.
HAMILTON — No one could have blamed Craig Jacobs if he added a candle to his 46th birthday cake.
It would have made sense for him to skip No. 46, and go directly from 45 to 47.
Forty-six has been a deadly year in his family.
His grandfather died of a heart attack, and his father, while playing racquetball, died of a heart attack.
Both were 46.
When asked about turning 46, Jacobs said with a smile: “Maybe I should have slept through that one.”
Anything would have been easier than the year he experienced. He spent more nights in hospitals than a medical student, and he was stuck with needles more than a diabetic.
Consider, that five years ago, Jacobs, then 42 — and in better shape than men half his age — had a stent implanted, a wire metal mesh tube used to prop open an artery during angioplasty, after a stress test revealed blockage, or as he said, “something was up.”
Then, just one year later, Jacobs, feeling “worn out,” had an angiocardiogram that showed more blockage. Two more stents followed.
Last fall, again feeling tired, Jacobs visited his cardiologist, who scheduled another angiocardiogram. He could tell the results by the look on the tech’s face.
“You got to be kidding me,” he told them.
No one was laughing.
During a 6 1/2-hour surgery at Christ Hospital on Oct. 23, 2008, Jacobs — the same age as his grandfather and father when they died of heart disease — had five bypass surgery.
Was he nervous?
“Not until they wheeled me into surgery and I saw the bright lights and thought, ‘This may be the last time I see lights again,’” he said.
Jacobs, a researcher at Procter & Gamble, survived the surgery, but since, has been hospitalized three times — Christmas, New Year’s Eve and in February — for various cardiac conditions.
As one medical person told Jacobs when he asked about his prognosis: “They don’t have this chapter in the book.”
This for a man who coached his two sons’ athletic teams, follows a healthy diet, exercises daily, hunts and fishes and tends to a small garden on his five-acre property.
Obviously, he can’t hide from his heredity.
There was a time, Jacobs said, when he questioned his medical condition. He asked, “Why me?”
But not now.
“That’d only make you depressed,” Jacobs said recently while sitting on his porch, surrounded by his two golden retrievers. “You can’t think that way. What happens is going to happen. You can’t dwell on that. It could be far worse, you know. I could have cancer or something like that.”
Instead, Jacobs stresses the importance of preventative medicine, especially to his two sons, Joe, 23, an electrician apprentice, and Kyle, 20, a junior at the University of Toledo.
His suggestions include: Don’t ignore chest pains; seek medical attention immediately, and be persistent; and, if possibly, be under the care of a heart specialist.
His heart condition weighs heavily on his family, he said. For instance, every time he scratches his chest, his wife of 26 years, Terry, asks, “Are you going to be OK?”
He’ll probably feel a lot better when he blows out those 47 candles at his next birthday.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.
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