Why don't cardiologist explain heart attacks and aftermath, What do I do if my husband has irregular heart beats and can't take nitro?

[cheryljua]

In 2004 I had a cardiologist that saw whatever my heart is doing and decided to do an angiogram, he found that although I don't have any blockages that could be repaired I did have damage around my LAD and found during the cath lab procedure when I went into "heart spasms" as he called it, that my LAD collapses.  He explained like a weak place in a water hose.  So I needed to take nitro often everytime I felt any pain in my chest, he wanted to give me nitro patches.  He is chinese and I am hypertensive so he only explained to me in very basic words so as not to alarm me.  Although I need the exact opposite I need information to stay calm about what is happening.  He said my small vessels were probably going into spasms (and they can't fix those) causing the large one to collapse on occasion.  I have no medical insurance and have to go to E.R. for any tests and other E.R. docs don't take my limited explanation of what the cardiologist told me serious, I even had one say "oh your just having skipped beats, you need to stop drinking coffee.  I have found spells of angina, sometimes I need to take nitro daily for a week or a month and then not again for months.  It doesn't seem to correlate with my stress levels at all, I can be super stressed with no chest pain and watching a movie on the couch and have extreme pain requiring me to take nitro a few times to get it to stop.  In 2007 I had a heart attack due to a severe and unexplained anemia that took a 5 bag transfusion to fix (I was down to 6 units of rbc's when 12-14 is normal).  I had no insurance and so no followup for the heart afterwards.  I have the crazy heartbeats still but not as often or I've gotten more used to them.  I found this site and at least see a name for them now pvc's pac's etc.  My husband just had his second RCA heart attack in 9 years and the doctor just said he's having "skipped beats" now, he's always had a very regular heart beat.  I'm just so annoyed that each doctor has a different vocabulary for real conditions and a different way of handling the same things.  I'm also annoyed that they say often with women in particular "that it is just stress related".  I know for certain all my issues are stress related, hypertension, anxiety and the two different heart attacks,even the diabetes, but stress still ends up killing your heart over time. And if my doctor had explained to me what was happening and what to expect sooner it would have relieved my anxiety about the irregular heart beats and racing heart. My husband's second heart attack was 5 days ago where he got 2 more stents for a total of 7 now. He want back to the hospital yesterday not feeling right and not looking right, the cardiologist said this morning "I can tell by your EKG that you are not reblocked, his troponins are at 0.7 all night but they think it is still coming down from the heart attack a few days ago, it's not increasing.  And the pain he is feeling are "skipped beats" it's all ok."  Why do they lie to us, they cannot tell by an EKG he is not reblocked or that one of his stents might have collapsed right after surgery, I know this because it has already happened to him with his first cardiologist he had to have a new stent 2 weeks after the first 2 because one collapsed right after surgery and it was blocking. Why don't they just say we don't think your in danger, it is not likely your stent collapsed, you are having PVC's or PAC's or whatever real label it is, not "skipped beats".  I am anxious and I know we don't all get all the words they use, but dammit I'm tired of being treated like a complete idiot. Other doctors throw words at me for illnesses and conditions why do cardiologist in particular use words like "skipped beats".  My husband cannot take nitro due to the damaged part of his heart so what do I do at home if this keeps happening.  I'm trying to get my head around, well without any option to get health insurance I might as well prepare for "dying in America" as one of the politicians called us "the irresponsible uninsured", I'm 47 he's 52 and we are small business owners that are " pre-existed conditioned" out of buying private insurance.  It has been so long since I had medical insurance with a job outside our small business, I expect they'd have more time to explain to me if I had money to pay them the outrageous bills.  Yay for the American health system. And my question is -if my husband can't take nitro at home what do I do if he gets all irratic heart beats and hurts? go back to the hospital everytime I'm worried about him or just watch him die or what?