TWO STENTS– AND EVERYONE���S A PHILOSOPHER!

Observations on being (pretty) young, (pretty) fit, and having a damaged heart.

A few weeks back I went from being a fit, pretty active guy, who didn���t have a medical care in the world to someone with serious heart disease!

I was being treated for what I thought was an extended bout of acid reflux– and the farthest thing from my mind or worries was what it turned out I actually had: a 99% blockage of my LAD, the largest artery in the heart, ominously called ���The Widow Maker,��� and that the pains I felt were actually my heart crying out, deprived of half its blood.

One day after spectacularly failing an echo-stress test– a test I went off to grumbling to my wife, ���You realize that there���s zero… ZERO chance that this is heart related, don���t you…!��� and then trudged back to an hour later, completely stunned, ���Honey, I think you should sit down…���– I was sent up to Yale University Hospital where they inserted not one, but two drug-coated stents to reopen my bloodflow. It���s a remarkably quick and non-invasive procedure, the catheter amazingly conducted through my wrist; one that requires virtually no recovery time, and seems hardly worthy of all the expressions of concern and sympathy that flooded in.

In fact, I was weirdly conscious for most of the time. I remember waking up from the light anesthesia I was administered and hearing the doctors discussing the size of the obstruction: an inch and a half in length and at the very beginning of the artery, even more dangerous. I watched them thread the stents from my wrist to my heart, tears forming in my eyes. When the nurse came around to wipe them, she asked if I was in pain. ���No,��� I answered, staring at the screen. ���I���m just thinking I���m watching you guys saving my life.���

Just five weeks later, I���m back to a completely normal routine: working out, playing tennis, eating smarter, appreciating life. Just with a prodigious line-up of meds to take each day. And the only, non-white-haired member of my local stent club! It all happened so fast, there was no time to even get scared, worry about the consequences; to hug your kids. To remember that chapter idea I didn���t write down. It went by with the speed of TV coming attractions. It was literally forty eight hours from diagnosis to cure.

So I���ve been waiting for that singular moment of profundity; that ���a-ha��� epiphany of what it���s all about, that always comes to me when I need a plot idea, but fails me now when it���s about my life.

Yet what I do think about is this: the many times I had to put up a hand, doubled over during a workout or on the tennis court with my pro– grabbing at the fence, trying to catch my breath, in pain. I see myself crumbling to the ground, realizing something far more serious is happening; thinking how my grandfather died this way, just off the golf course, and seeing myself, a virtual kid compared to him, looking up at the my helpless pro, tears glazing in my eyes, my mind going on about my kids, something trivial like whether I put the steaks in the freezer; stories I meant to write.

The only NYT bestselling author to ever die from acid reflux….

I would never have even known.

Except in this story I get up. Finish out the set. The coming attractions come on, and thank God, there���s another episode next week! I get to wonder who���s cheated who, death or me? I think about the two doctors I may never ever see again who gave me a new downpayment on life. Who let me pretend I���ve got it by the balls again.

But this time I know– I���m only renting.