In 2007, at age 54, I had a heart attack and received 6 drug-eluding stents in one artery. Prior to that I had virtually no symptoms, and no risk factors except for stress, and the cause of the heart attack was a mystery to everyone. I stayed on plavix for 6 months (along with low-dose aspirin which I continue to take) and couldn't stand the side effect of severe bruising. My recovery was slow in that I continued to experience lots of chest pain with stress, and was eventually diagnosed with GERD, which I believe was caused either by the stents or the plavix. In 2010, at age 57, after continually being told that there was no cardiac reason for my chest pain, I had a coronary thrombosis at one of the stents during an exercise class, which led to another heart attack. I was very lucky. At this point, I am on prasugrel and it's been 1 1/2 years. I hate the bruising - the dose is way too high for me (10 mg) but we don't have the 5 mg dosage in Canada, which is the preferred dosage for lightweights like me. So I take my pill every 36 hours instead of every 24, which helps tremendously with the bruising and the GERD. It seems to me that those stents must be healed by now and I no longer experience any chest discomfort whatsoever. But my cardiologist seems content to keep me on this forever. Is my story familiar to anyone out there, and how long did you stay on platelet inhibitors?