Well, I should soon be eligible for membership of the illustrious Stented CC.
Update: I'm withdrawing my application for membership, on the grounds of not meeting the requirements
There's been a load of faffing in the meantime, including turning up at the hospital in Blackpool to be stented and the consultant saying, "Nah, I don't think you have enough symptoms to justify it", me being unable to decide whether to be pleased or disappointed - I hadn't had any more symptoms, true, but I'd backed off from full 100% balls out effort to avoid 'em - and him referring me for further tests.
So I had a stress echocardiogram yesterday. A wee dose of dobutamine and I got a full cardio workout, heartrate pushed up to 150 bpm (as high as they felt they needed, but I've seen it a damn sight higher than that at body pump and on t'bike. Anyway...), and ultrasound imaging showing how much of my heart was or wasn't working.
And it turns out that, even though one of my main coronary arteries is 70% blocked, my heart was still banging away like a good'un and unaffected by any drop in blood supply due to the blockage. Doc conjectures that as the blockage has built up gradually, and as I've done a fair bit of heart-stimulating exercise in that time, other blood vessels have enlarged to compensate for the blocked one. A kind of natural bypass, if you like - and I do.
I liked the doc, a fine chap with an admirable scientific bent: his explanation above is obviously a pet response to the prevalent(?) stent-any-obstructed-artery orthodoxy, part of his campaign to get functional response taken into account as well as simple structural measurements. He even threatened to publish me as a prime example. I'm gonna be a poster boy for healthy hearts