Not So Fast With That Lipitor Johnny!
Filed under: Medical Device, Prescription Drugs, preventive care
Score of Baude Cordier's chanson "Belle, bonne, sage," from The Chantilly Manuscript, Musée Condé 564. The manuscript is one of the classic examples of ars subtilior, which requires red notes, or "coloration" to indicate changes in note lengths from their normally written values. This chanson, a dedicatory piece on the love of a lady and a lord written in the shape of a heart, opens the corpus. Note the heart of notes within the larger heart. Date, ca. 1350-1400
Having previously described my diet, proclivities, and the thoroughly reasonable fear I had regarding the battery of tests I would have to undergo this week at the Cardiologist’s, I am pleased to say that I did so well that my doctor no longer thinks I will need to take Lipitor. My valves seem to all flap when they’re supposed to (echocardiogram), and the nuclear stress test showed no obstructions whatsoever. But the clincher was that the calcium scan showed zero calcium. Yes, zero.
Given the high correlation between the presence of arterial calcium and propensity for heart disease in a country where heart disease is the number one killer (about every 25 seconds an American will have a coronary event) and a major medical expense, I wrote previously how it seemed penny wise and pound foolish for health insurers to not pay for calcium deposit screening. This test can offer actionable insight years prior to the onset of ultimately costly symptoms. There is, reasonably speaking, savings of more than one kind to be had in this kind of knowledge: if one knows, one can act in accord. I paid the $318 out of pocket. Now, it seems, despite the ostensible risk factors which may have counseled otherwise, I have spared my insurer the cost of a lifetime’s worth of Lipitor. And myself the burden of a lifetime’s worth of pharmaceutical dependence.
There’s a J.D. at the end of my name, not an MD, so I do not give medical advice. But I will say that the whole battery of tests was painless, congenial, and took about 4 1/2 hours spread over two visits– which is not a lot of time to invest in dispensing with the ominous unknown. Of those one every 25 seconds in America who have a coronary event, one every minute will die. Testing will help tell you where you stand, and you never know, you just might get some peace of mind.
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