I Hope You Have a Heart Attack

by Karl Steiner

Just in case you think I’m a total jerk, I’ll start this post by saying that I don’t literally wish for you to keel over this instant with a coronary event. Why I would write such callous headline is best explained by telling a story that I’ve already told many friends and family.

A few months ago, shortly after the start of my fifty-second year, I was working in my garden on a pleasant still day. Spring was yielding to summer. It was chilly kneeling in the shade as the ground released the last of winter’s freeze. Standing up and moving to retrieve a nearby tool in the sun was like dipping headfirst into a warm pool. Gardening is not my favorite activity, but I can usually find some enjoyment, or at least a sense of accomplishment, in it. That day, as I worked to revive our sprinkler system from winter hibernation, my spirit was lifted each time I focused on the smell of the soil or the surrounding bird chorus.

Winter is hard on plastic and metal buried in the ground. Pipes break, sprinkler heads seize or inexplicably disappear, connections collapse, and so on. I had just repaired a pipe in our soon-again herb garden, where volunteer oregano had already emerged. I had moved on to replacing a sprinkler head in the aspen grove just uphill, when I noticed a persistent pressure in my upper stomach. Perhaps you’ve never had this particular feeling, but I’ve had it many times before, and it can always be relieved by a few healthy belches. In the past, the feeling has sometimes shaded beyond pressure and into pain, until the air can be expelled. But this time my stomach remained locked tight. The pressure slowly but resolutely crossed the threshold into pain. I asked Marie to bring me a glass of soda water. I thought perhaps the carbonation would force the issue. We don’t have a bring-me-a-beer type of marriage, but Marie likes to facilitate any free labor in the garden and brought me the water. Rather than the crescendo I’d hoped for, gulping the soda water caused a few meagre burps. The pressure was still there.

I walked inside and started chewing a few antacid tablets, another remedy of the past. Becoming alarmed by my discomfort, Marie asked me if I had any pain in my left arm.

There’s a moment in meditation after your thoughts have drifted, where you become re-aware of the object of the meditation, such as your breath. Marie’s question made me realize that I’d been drifting down a single path of thought this entire time. Up to that moment, everything was subtly muffled and confused. If you don’t practice mindfulness, it’s hard to fully comprehend what happened next. Like mediation, I was catapulted into awareness, but unlike meditating, the acceleration continued to a seemingly impossible level of clarity, if only for a moment. I fully perceived the familiar yet unique smell of our house, the sounds of the neighborhood coming through the open window, the buzz of a fly somewhere behind me, my wife’s concerned expression, and yes, the now obvious moderate pain in my upper left arm. I feel it now again as I remember that moment.

The rest of what happened that day, and the next few days, you’ve likely seen dramatized in movies or television. Within an hour, a stent was placed in one of my coronary arteries, which had been 95% blocked. Two hours after that, I felt nearly normal again. Two days after that, I was discharged from the hospital with a pile of new pills to swallow each day, and no limitations on my activities.

Some of you are probably thinking that you know where this story is going. Some guy has a near death experience and waxes poetic about how sweet life is. You’re probably expecting some platitudes that can sound obvious or even trite: without good health it’s hard to enjoy just about anything else; cherish your loved ones and family; live for today, you never know what will happen tomorrow; appreciate what you have. It can easily slip away.

I could write a page of truisms like this, but you’ve probably already read something like that elsewhere. When I come across observations like these, I always want to stop and consider them more fully. But then the phone rings, the youngest asks for a ride to soccer, the dog needs de-worming, and they find dry rot in the house foundation. What was I supposed to be talking about? Oh yes, it’s hard to keep these truisms in the forefront of our minds. And let’s face it, it’s hard to give them any thought at all on a busy day. But as someone who just danced on the precipice of death, I’m here to tell that you need to give it some thought. Perhaps I can nudge you beyond everyday distractions to ponder life and death for a few moments.

My first nudge is: have you considered that you could be just like me?

You are healthy, right? Me too. Prior to my little garden party, I was completely unaware I had a health problem and so was my doctor. I got regular check-ups and blood tests. My cholesterol count was good, my blood pressure was within the normal range, and my heart sounded great. I exercise an hour every day, almost without exception. I watch what I eat and track my weight. A few months before my heart attack, I’d completed a 55-mile hike across the Olympic Mountains carrying a 45-pound pack, and I had no problem. My doctor said, “It just looks like you’re a ‘clogger’”, and medical science can’t say exactly why.

Maybe you have similar artery clogging genes, or some other hidden health issue, and you have no idea. Every person reading this knows some family member, friend or acquaintance who was unexpectedly diagnosed with a life-threatening ailment. I don’t care how many push-ups you do, how many miles you run a day, or how many wheat-grass smoothies you choke down. You could easily have a health surprise tomorrow.

My second nudge is: did you ever stop and ponder how lucky you are to simply be alive?

In the U.S. where I live, the chances of your dying due to any cause in your first adult decade (ages 15-24) is about 1 in 1000. By your fourth adult decade (my age group), it rises to 1 in 250. In other words, when you go to your 30th high school reunion and there are 250 former classmates in the room, one of you is going to be dead soon, statistically speaking. People go crazy buying lottery tickets when the jackpot gets big, even though the odds of winning are around 1 in 175,000,000. But they never pause to think that it’s several hundred thousand times more likely they’ll drop dead before they can spend those Lotto winnings.

Given that the odds of our own existence are a lot slimmer than we often appreciate, it’s amazing that people don’t spend all their time kissing the ground and hugging trees because they are so overwhelmed with their incredible good luck at being alive. Instead we spend our time complaining about trivialities. It’s hard not to hate that two second delay before a cat video starts on your smart phone—a phone that’s carrying out a billion calculations per second and talking to GPS satellites whizzing around the world at 9,000 miles per hour. It sometimes seems like everything is amazing but nobody is happy.

Maybe by now your totally depressed by all this talk about death and myopic thinking. But my point is that you should feel exactly the opposite. If you are reading this, that means you are alive right now. And being alive is the most amazing piece of good fortune that can be practically contemplated. That one thought is a source of infinite joy, and it’s available to you any time you care to think about it.

Today, I feel better than before this all happened. The doctor says there was no measurable damage to my heart tissue, and the artery remains clear thanks to the stent. When I go on a hike now, I top the same peaks as before but with a lot less huffing and puffing. My heart attack actually improved my health by any objective measure.

Most people in our society would say a heart attack is a “terrible thing”. But in my case, it was an incredible gift. It reminded me to appreciate life, and it simultaneously improved my health. What more could someone ask for?

So it’s really true. I wish that you have the exact same heart attack that I did, with the exact same outcome. You can thank me after the pain subsides.

For more of Karl’s writing: http://www.mindfullyinvesting.com/articles/