Save some lives?

I write my blog as a way to communicate with anyone who might want to know what it’s been like to undergo a huge life change as a result of a medical event. If anything, I’d like to see more people get an echocardiogram before the age of 40 because it would save a few thousand lives. I talk about the massive stroke that I had, but it was a side effect of the tumor that had been growing in the right atria of my heart for more than 20 years without my knowledge. It’s a rare condition, and I was one of the lucky people because the stroke saved my life. The biggest side effect of an atrial myxoma tumor is sudden death  before the age of 50,which is why I said, have the echocardiogram before the age of 40. I had no idea that my heart was a ticking time bomb. There are very few signs of the tumor, and by the time I noticed that I was getting short of  breath when I walked, I thought it was due to aging as I was about to be 50. Fifty is the life span of a person who has an atrial myxoma tumor. The stroke happened 5 weeks after my 50th birthday. Im not exaggerating when I tell you that I barely lived through it. Had I known about the heart tumor before I had a massive stroke, I wouldn’t be a wheelchair user today, 9 years later. If this blog can do anything to help someone else avoid paralysis or sudden death, it’s done its job.