Health – Experience Has Made Me Rich

We Didn’t Sign Up for This

The global COVID-19 pandemic has been a reality long enough now that the emails and texts that start off “in these extraordinary circumstances” or “considering the difficult times”, or “unfortunately, due to the unprecedented situation we find ourselves in” now feel like the opening sentiment is redundant. It has strangely become awkward to know what to say when sending out an email with yet another update on how someone or some institution has been impacted. We get it. And yet … we don’t get it. Because we didn’t sign up for this.

I have always admired and respected people in law enforcement, the armed forces, and perhaps especially firefighters and EMT’s. I remember 9/11, which drove home the point that hardly needed making that when everyone’s instincts are screaming at them to run away, these are people who run toward. And my respect for them stems from the fact that they signed up to do it. Something inside compelled them when they were younger to sign up for a career of running toward the danger. Of being in place when the shit is going down. Of being the person who was standing between the monster and the town, or being the first person the rest of us might see after getting mauled by the monster – doing their best to get us out of the danger and back into the loving arms of uneventfulness. My respect for them is unchanged.

But now we are finding out that some monsters don’t make a frontal assault. Some of them don’t take the path through the Hot Gates, so that Leonidas and his Spartans can know where to stand to get between the armies of Xerxes and the Greek civilians. Sometimes there is no bridge for Gandalf to block, because sometimes the Balrog descends like a toxic snowfall, on everyone at once.

And we didn’t sign up for that.

Grocery store clerks and cashiers, essential workers in office buildings, gas station attendants … they didn’t sign up to have to go out each day and do the exact opposite of what the rest of us have been told to do. Nurses and doctors signed up to treat sick and injured people – but they didn’t sign up to fight for 15+ hours a day, 7 days a week, against an unseen and not fully understood enemy, under-equipped and underfunded. They didn’t sign up to put themselves at risk caring for ICU patients with a highly contagious virus. They didn’t sign up to hold the phone as patients who might never go home FaceTime their families who just cry as they watch their loved one in an induced coma, breathing only thanks to a ventilator.

It is sadly ironic that some of the lowest-paid occupations in our society are now clearly the backbone of it. I find myself more and more troubled by this glaring imbalance. They didn’t sign up to be brave. The didn’t sign up to run toward the trouble. They didn’t sign up to be at the front. And yet.

What we are slowly discovering is that there are no rules for this. There are no precedents. Values and priorities we thought we understood only a month ago have undergone a seismic shift. And still, many people are operating on assumptions out of a lifetime of habit. As a high school teacher I am seeing this acutely through the lens of my colleagues and my students. Some colleagues are very concerned we will not be able to cover all the curriculum. Some students are very concerned about how this will impact their grades. But it seems to me that what this concern is missing is that the entire world is in the same boat. Every grade 12 student in the province of Ontario is not in school. Every graduating student that will attend university next year is going to have major gaps in their knowledge base as compared to previous years. Every single one of them. As for grades, the only time grades ever matter is when they are being compared to the grades of others. Entrance to university or college. Acceptance to a Masters program. Awards and scholarships. I can promise you that when committees are sitting looking at grade transcripts from this time, they will 100% not be wondering what the hell happened in 2020. Nobody knows yet how they will compensate for the complete inscrutability of the transcripts that we generate, but it is certain that there won’t be individual students who managed to live an alternate reality stream where they did not experience the pandemic and the effects it had on curriculum delivery and grading.

I also find it ironic as an educator that for years now we have been saying that we need to prepare our students for a future that we don’t understand, and yet now we find ourselves living a present that we have no frame of reference for. All the rules have changed. Societal norms are in flux. Responsible governments are scrambling to make the best decisions for the present and for the future. We’ve seen politicians completely shed their veneer, humbled into humanity by the pandemic. We’ve seen others double-down on the default political position of obfuscation, redirection, and selling the fantasy. They don’t have a rule book for this, so some are writing a new one, while others are desperately trying to make the old one work. Time will show either way that governments around the world are making many mistakes. But time will also show the wisdom of many of their decisions. It is too soon to be able to tell in each instance which is which. But as I wrote a few years ago, mistakes are just as valuable in the long term as getting things right, because time doesn’t stand still and we are only ever as good as the lessons we learn. Mistakes make excellent teachers for those willing to learn instead of criticize.

Because we didn’t sign up for this, we don’t have a playbook. There is nothing that is time-tested and proven effective. There is nothing you are “supposed” to be doing with your time. There is only what makes sense in the moment. And the biggest thing to understand is that everyone is in the exact same boat. Or to use another metaphor – we are all on the same ride, and the ride has stopped. So when things return to whatever normal will look like, we will all emerge into the same sunlit sky, rubbing our eyes and stretching our arms and legs. Standards and expectations that applied before the pandemic in many cases not be relevant.

Everyone will understand what you went through.

Thanks for reading,

Rich

Interesting Times

There is a saying that goes “May you live in interesting times” and depending on who you ask it is meant either as a blessing or as a curse. I have always considered it a blessing. After all, who wants to be bored? It is also “interesting” that although the saying has often been attributed to Chinese culture, there appears to be no solid evidence of this.[1]

The application to today’s situation – and the parallels of attribution – are worth noting for a moment, though not dwelling on. That COVID-19 originated in China seems to be effectively certain. That it has anything to do with Chinese culture is not (in a country with almost 1.4 billion people how can we designate any one practice as national culture?) That it has thrust us into interesting times is clear. How we behave is going to be something we learn from and talk about for the rest of our lives. I like breaking down my own experience into two categories: Fear and Opportunity. I’ll talk about both.

The fear. Well this is an obvious one, right? I am afraid the virus will overload our health care system. I am afraid of getting the virus. I am afraid that my loved ones will get the virus. I am afraid that myself or someone I love will need hospital care for some other reason and not be able to get it. This is first and foremost. Like almost everyone reading this, I have loved ones who are vulnerable. I cherish them. I want to protect them. But even for my loved ones who are not vulnerable, I don’t want them to get sick. The threat of COVID-19 is something we can’t see, and it travels on our network – the very network we turn to for much of what we consider a happy existence. Humans are a social species. We rely on our pack to survive and thrive. And the virus uses that exact connection to spread. So, we are in a time where we must go against our culture and our very human instincts and disrupt the network. This naturally creates more fear. We are programmed to find safety and security in our social connections, and these are the very connections we must sever in order to break up the network. There is no human alive who has lived through a time like quite this, though there are certainly those who have lived through arguably worse. In modern memory though, this kind of reaction to pandemic exists only in history books and in movies. So, it’s scary for sure. But the fear also creates the opportunity.

If forced to select a time in my life where this was going to happen, well this is the time I would select. There is no human alive who has lived through a time like this – a time where connectivity is so easily established without physical presence, where we have successfully created a new network on which a biological virus can not travel. A time where respect and understanding has been pushing itself more and more to the forefront of our considerations in how to deal with each other. A time where mental health issues like anxiety and depression have become something we are no longer expected to conceal and endure in isolation, but rather to share and explore so that we can help each other grow and be better. And while much has been discussed about the dangers of this non-physical connectivity, we are now faced with the opportunity to show how we can overcome those dangers and use it for immeasurable good.

We are feeling isolated – we can connect. We are feeling anxious – we can share. We have been feeling exploited and tainted by social media – we can exploit it right back and use it in ways we always wanted to but instead allowed it to deteriorate into a morass of rage and AI marketing.

Most importantly, we can connect with those who we are still face-to-face with. Our families.

As a teacher, my plan is to use what I know and what I am learning about connectivity to continue this year’s delivery of curriculum. It won’t feel exactly like being in class. I have done some experimenting already and I can tell you this – while inferior in ways, it is also superior in other ways, and we will allow ourselves to see it, to embrace it, and to grow. Patience is key, but so is enthusiasm. And I am happy to tell you that swirling around with the feelings of uncertainty and anxiety that I’m having about this pandemic and the measures we are taking, is a maelstrom of enthusiasm that is unyielding. We’ll make it work.

As a human, my plan is to continue to exercise proper caution, in the hopes that months from now there will be a whole slew of people who will be able to criticize what we have been doing as overreaction, using evidence of a less severe outcome to back their claims. I will wait as we all settle into this temporary new normal, and as our politicians perhaps speed up the recognition and acknowledgment of what experts have been saying since the outbreak started. We will have food. We will have our prescriptions. And with care and some healthy paranoia, we will have access to health care when and if we need it. None of us signed up for this, but we can handle it. Humans have weathered worse, under much less optimal conditions!

[1] From Wikipedia, citing Garson O-Toole: “Despite being so common in English as to be known as the “Chinese curse”, the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced. The most likely connection to Chinese culture may be deduced from analysis of the late-19th-century speeches of Joseph Chamberlain, probably erroneously transmitted and revised through his son Austen Chamberlain.”

Heroes

Lately I have been thinking a lot about my heroes. In order to help clarify my thoughts, I thought a blog post might be useful. I’ll start with some clarification about the way I am applying the word “hero”, because I think it can have many meanings.

For me, a person who rushes into a burning building to save a baby is heroic, and I stand in awe of that kind of bravery, but I am not talking about that kind of hero. Then there are the people we see repeatedly doing amazing things in some specific context. For example Michael Jordan often did heroic things on the basketball court, most notably for me was game 5 of the 1997 finals when Jordan, sick with either flu or food-poisoning, still managed to lead the Bulls to victory. But I’m not talking about that kind of heroism.

What I am talking about is when I encounter someone who has amplified some trait or combination of traits I sense in myself, and that I would like to amplify as well. I could probably use the term “role model” here more aptly, but I also find that this term is not as charged with the energy I am trying to convey. The word hero works better.

When I was younger I didn’t realize this – I thought my heroes were demonstrating something I didn’t have, and that drew me to them. As I got older I started to discover that in reality what was happening was they were showing the trees that my seeds could grow into. They were showing that it works, and that it can stand you well. They were showing me that I was right to want to nurture those aspects of my character. So who are my heroes? It’s an interesting list. In many cases there is overlap, but not all. And sometimes the heroism is derived from a very narrow slice of what is undoubtedly a complicated synthesis of things I either don’t know about, or else don’t value in this sense. So I guess my list is kind of like a Frankensteinian conglomeration of pieces, each amplified, that make up the parts of me I like the best, and want to amplify.

Maybe one day I will write out the list, and do my best to identify how each person comes to be there. But today I want to talk about one hero specifically. Because she left us today, and I am feeling the loss intensely. And she is a most unlikely hero.

I’m talking about my dog, Tryxi.

We said goodbye to her this morning. It was hell. The whole family was there, along with our wonderful vet, who loved Tryxi almost as much as we did. There’s no surprise here for any dog owner. Dog owners all understand how much we love them. And any dog owner who has lost a pet knows there are no words for the pain of that day and that moment. But she was suffering terribly, poor girl. Cancer was eating away at her from the inside out and she had lost her muscle mass, her appetite, and much of her enthusiasm. Although she was happy about people right until the last moment. She loved her people.

So let me tell you why Tryxi was my hero.

Tryxi spent most of her days in my wife’s home office, guarding my wife and the house from her doggy bed. When the four of us (my wife, myself and our two kids) would gather in the kitchen or family room for family time Tryxi always made sure she was there too, the proximity being important to her and to us. Whenever my daughter was sad, she would hug Tryxi and it would be better. Ever since my heart attack about 3.5 years ago I have had bouts of anxiety that cruelly give me chest pain. Hugging Tryxi took the pain away.

Tryxi never tried to make anyone feel better, or better about themselves. It just happened because she accepted everything as true. If she sensed sadness she never tried to tell the person to make the sad go away. She just absorbed it. When she sensed happiness she ran with it. Tryxi never lied – to herself or to anyone. If she found something to be irritating she said so (as experienced often by our other, younger dog, Moose the pug). When she was in pain Tryxi never thought about whether it was fair or not. She never felt sorry for herself. She also never congratulated herself for anything.

Tryxi was naturally strong. She destroyed many a Kong in her time – even the “Extreme Kong”, designed for the toughest chewers, was no match for her and lasted less than 20 minutes. Her thighs rippled with muscle even when she wasn’t moving. And yet Tryxi never, ever, used her strength to hurt anyone or anything. She would use it readily to establish her presence, or to solve a problem, but never in aggression. Tryxi knew exactly who she was without anyone having to tell her, and certainly without having to have conversations with herself about it. If she liked something she loved it. If she didn’t like something she ignored it. Her default position was love and calm. Anything that happened that took her away from that place was always viewed as a temporary distraction, and she would deal with it then patiently wait the return to baseline. Without judgement or remorse. Even as she was deteriorating, her attitude stayed like that. She was waiting for her peace.

This morning she found it. She knew it was coming and she wasn’t afraid. It was what she was waiting for.

Tryxi has been my hero for years. I am changed because of her – because she showed me that I could amplify those traits that I saw in myself. I do my best to calmly accept the moment. To live now. To enjoy the love that is always there. To bring peace to others. To not judge. To not waste energy fretting over what is “fair” and instead to use my energy to live fully.

She was a good girl. She is my hero.

Thanks for reading,

Rich

Phone Addiction is NOT Okay

Hi. My name is Rich and I am an addict.

Ok. I know that’s been borrowed from AA protocol countless times. Often in jest when not in the context of an actual meeting. But I’m not joking – I am an addict. I have had a few addictions in my life, thankfully not any of the big nasty ones like alcohol or drugs, but some of the ones I’ve had have had negative impact, for certain. The two most prominent are food and smartphones.

I am going to talk a little about the food addiction later in this article. But I mainly want to talk about the subtle and not-so-subtle evils that my phone addiction has wrought. The first is an obvious one, and it has been discussed to death. Still, it needs addressing:

Phone Addiction Steals You From The World

There are way too many times I have belatedly realized that my son, daughter, wife or close friend made an attempt to communicate with me while I was using my phone. And after they realize it’s like talking to a projection, they give up. The worst part is they seem to just accept it – that they are not going to win my attention over whatever clever post I am reading or writing, or whatever video about people hurting themselves doing stupid things I am watching, or whatever likes I am counting. What’s worse is that so many of those times they were the ones who had my attention first, but during a brief lull in our interaction I pulled out my phone to investigate a notification and was subsequently checked out. Most heart-wrenching is that it is out of respect for me that they give up and don’t try to interrupt my phone time. Clearly I don’t need to go further on the evil of this aspect. The next few are a little more subtle, but insidious.

Smartphone Addiction Erodes Your Ability to Focus

Humility aside, my concentration and focus used to be legendary. I could get lost in a process, with intense focus for hours on end. So much so that I would forget to eat or even go to the washroom, until the need for one or both of those became impossible to ignore and I would look at the clock and be shocked at the time. And the things I could do during that time were amazing. It’s how I got through my Masters degree with a GPA of 97%, for example (that and major support from my awesome wife and kids). Lately, my concentration sucks. I find myself looking for distraction only minutes after beginning something. At first, when I noticed this, I blamed my age. It’s no secret that aging can have an impact on brain function. But the truth is I am 48, and there are plenty of people older – even much older – than me who can concentrate on a task for a long period of time with no trouble. On a smartphone, nothing needs concentration, and everything is provided in quick bites. You flit from item to item like a politician moving through a political rally, shaking hands with everyone and meeting nobody. And you can tell yourself that this is behaviour limited to your phone time, but what you miss is that your brain is a learning machine, and it’s learning a behaviour. Your brain wires itself to adapt to your environment, even if that environment is the manufactured barrage of inanity you kill time with on your phone.

Possibly worse, is that we tell ourselves that the phone is a harmless distraction, and we use it at the weirdest times. I’ve used it while watching TV, thinking that surely the TV doesn’t care so no harm done. But while the TV doesn’t care, my brain does. Watching a television show requires focus. Not the same level as calculus mind you – but focus nonetheless. There’s a story unfolding and if you miss something the subsequent bits make less sense. So you are missing an opportunity to focus. To practice what I tell my students is the single most lacking skill in the computer generation: uni-tasking. I have heard many a person brag about their ability to multi-task, which is great, I guess. But smartphones have stolen our ability to focus on one thing for a long time. We can no longer effectively uni-task.

Smartphone Addiction Encourages Mistakes

Yeah, this one took me a while to clue into. I’ve noticed over the past couple of years that I am making more mistakes at things that I should be able to do automatically. Frighteningly, I don’t even notice them when I make them – only once they are pointed out, or long after, do I notice. And when I do notice I have no memory of making the mistake.

Now I hear you say Wait! That’s just a symptom of aging!

Well, yes. It could be. But the thing is, there is a thought groove I find myself in when these things happen – like a road I know I’ve been on because the landmarks are familiar but I can’t quite place it. Then it hit me. Autocorrect. Autocorrect and predictive text. Both of these so-called innovations have made it so that we don’t even have to concentrate on the simple act of typing a text, email, or post. Just type close to what you want and autocorrect will fix it for you. Not always correctly, mind you, but often. So much so that when it gets it wrong we don’t even notice until later, making for some humorous/embarrassing messages getting sent. I actually hated this feature, and turned off autocorrect some time ago, but I kept the predictive text on. And it works so well that I often only have to type the first 1-3 letters of what I want and an entire phrase is suggested to me – correctly. So I select it and don’t check it. And sometimes, my iPhone does the old bait-and-switch on me so that the thing I think I’m selecting changes to something else just before I select it, and I don’t even notice and the wrong thing gets sent.

Like I said before, the brain is a learning machine. And my smartphone addiction has taught my brain that you only have to start a thought to have it completed automatically. And that is what has manifested into these increasingly frequent mistakes. It is NOT age. I can feel it when it happens. It is the same thought groove as typing on my phone.

At Least I Remember When It Wasn’t So

The scariest thought to me is that these things I describe are changes. As in, it wasn’t always so for me. I am actually frightened about the generations that don’t have a comparison to make to a different time. A generation that believes that being able to concentrate on one thing for a long time is an unusual, maybe even useless skill. Or that being able catch every joke in a sitcom is a freakish ability. Or that being able to spell a word correctly on purpose is a worthwhile ability. With respect to the issues I have outlined, I want to go back to the way I was. But for many younger people, this is the way they have always been. There is nothing to go back to.

Quitting May Not Be the Answer

So the fix would seem obvious, wouldn’t it? Just stop. But that’s not realistic, or even really desirable. Many good things come from my smartphone. I have made friends – good friends – who live in different countries from me, and I stay in touch with them using my phone. There are legitimately useful apps, like the medication reminder, the shared grocery list. Or the math puzzle game Euclidea that actually reverses some of the deleterious concentration effects I described above. I use GPS apps all the time and get lost much less often (though sadly, I still manage to get lost sometimes). I listen to so much more music variety than I did in the days when you had to buy records, tapes or CD’s, and it is so much more easy to discover new music now than then. I take a lot of photos with my phone, and some of those are real treasures that I wouldn’t otherwise have. I read some great articles, and have learned a ton of cool things. Chances are super-high you are reading this on a smartphone. I believe these are good things. So I don’t want to quit. And I don’t think anyone has to. We live in a pretty plugged in world, and more and more there are things that are designed to be done on our devices that are actually difficult if not impossible to do otherwise. So modified usage is the key.

Modification Requires Discipline

Or does it? I mean, yeah, it does. Almost always. If you want to modify a behaviour it means breaking a habit, and that is not trivial. You need to be disciplined. And you need to believe that you can do it. Which I think, for many people, is the main obstacle to success. That belief that you can do it. Which leads me to my food addiction:

How I Modified My Eating Behaviour

The first addiction in my life I had to acknowledge was food. Maybe I was genetically doomed to that, or maybe it was my upbringing, but my addiction to food is real either way. It resulted in a max weight of 250 lbs, and an adulthood of gaining-losing-gaining, until my heart attack 3 years ago. The heart attack was actually not caused by my eating, or so the cardiologist says, but rather genetics. My arteries are shaped in a more clog-worthy way than you’d set out to do if you were designing a human from scratch. However there’s no argument that my food addiction wasn’t helping. The heart attack added a new tool to my psyche though – something that’s simultaneously heard and easy to describe: a hard stop. Before the heart attack meals were a negotiation in my head. And I often didn’t come out the winner in the bargain. Now there is no negotiation. I eat clean, all the time. I don’t overeat. I actually can have just one french fry. Truly! French fries are a food I will not allow myself to order or prepare anymore, but on occasion I have had just one from someone else’s meal – even though they were finished and offered me the rest. Just one, for the taste, and I have no desire to eat another. Cardio is now a non-negotiable habit as well. I don’t negotiate whether or not I will do it. I just do.

I am as fit as I’ve ever been and certainly as healthy as I’ve ever been. People often ask me how I did it and I sadly tell them that I wish I could give them the secret, but the secret is I had a heart attack and I don’t want another one.

October, 2011

July, 2017

The picture on the left features my beautiful niece at her first birthday. You may be distracted by her cuteness – I understand. Take your time. But when you are ready, the place to look is my belly protruding under my forearm. The picture on the right is a fun shot I took after a workout a couple of weeks ago. Oh, and by the way – both those photos were taken with my phone.

So. I have managed to find a way to live a healthy life despite a food addiction, even if the way I found was not something I’d wish on anyone. But after all, isn’t it all in my head? This new tool I called the hard stop?

Of course it is. And because it is I believe I can apply that rationale to my phone addiction. I have started to, and will continue to do so.

What I Am Doing to Fix it

I turned off all the features of my phone that try to think for me. Any typos or wrong words I send now are all mine. And there are so much fewer of them now! It takes me longer to compose a message. But it’s worth it.

I will not look at my phone while watching TV. Not even during commercials. Because you can’t force yourself to stop the moment the commercial is over.

If I am in the middle of a legitimate text conversation with someone, I make sure the people in the room with me know it, so they know why I am checked out. And when it is done, I tell them explicitly that I am done and I put my phone away so that they can have my distraction-free attention.

When I sit down to do focus-heavy tasks, like work or drawing, I put my brain in do-not-disturb mode, meaning I don’t check notifications at all, and my phone becomes a music player exclusively. When I do this, I let anyone know who would normally feel like they have 24/7 access to me that I have gone dark. This way if they need to communicate with me they know they need to either do it in person or call. Because as we all know, nobody ever uses their smartphone as a telephone, so when there is an actual call I know I should check to see who it is and probably answer.

It Can Be Done

As they say, no need to throw the baby out with the bath water. You don’t have to quit if you can properly modify. And you can. I believe you don’t need a critical moment to be the catalyst. Just the knowledge that you can do it. And I really, really believe we need to.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences on smartphone addiction, and how it can be addressed. Feel free to share in the comments section.

Thanks for reading,

Rich

The Arts – Polish For the Soul

First off, a quick apology to anyone who follows me for my lack of blog posts. I have been writing them – but they are all sitting in my draft folder. However this one is special.

So this past weekend I went to New York City with my son for a quick trip. We had tickets to see the Sunday matinee show of Hamilton, and at the last minute when we were there we also decided to get tickets to see Fiddler on the Roof. I could probably write a small novel on how awesome it was to spend a weekend in NYC with my almost 19-year old son, but that’s not what this is about.

This is about Art.

In my 47 years on this planet I have learned one thing about humans – we tarnish. Or more specifically, our souls tarnish. It’s not a bad thing – in sterling silver, tarnish is just a natural result of exposure to air. It does nothing to diminish the silver underneath, nor does it change the essence of the silver in any way. What it does is make the shining core progressively less visible to the world. With tarnished silver there are two ways to reveal the shine – you can score the surface where the tarnish is and reveal shining silver underneath, or you can gently polish the tarnish for the same result. Scoring the surface leaves scars, but does not affect the shine. Polishing leaves no scars.

When it comes to humans, we are all born shiny. Like new silver, our souls gleam and light the world around us. You don’t have to be a philosopher to know this – just watch the faces of all the adults the next time you see a little girl on the subway singing made up lyrics about the ads on the walls. Her soul is bright and shiny and we love it. But as we get older our exposure to life adds layers of tarnish. I get that this sounds negative but it really is not. It’s natural. Our light does not dim – it just becomes more hidden. Personally, I’ve seen three things that can bring it out again.

The first is grief. Live long enough and you will get scored by grief – it’s inevitable. It hurts like hell. But something miraculous also occurs. Grief cuts through the tarnish. In the terrible grasp of grief, people return to that vulnerable state of openness and childlike trust. It doesn’t make it hurt less, but it does remind us how beautiful our soul is. It leaves us scarred, but not less wonderful. It also leaves a memory of that vulnerability that was our souls shining where the tarnish was removed. It’s not a scary vulnerability but a precious one. However the tarnish returns, and nobody should ever be subjected to grief as a means of therapy.

The second is celebration. Weddings in particular are where I have seen peoples’ souls shine. Listen to wedding speeches from people who are truly in love – and even the speeches from their families and friends, and you’ll know what I mean.

The third, and to me the most significant in that it can be called upon at will, is art. I really do mean art in all forms (and as an aside, check out my other website where I feature my own drawings: Studio Dlin), but my focus here will be on theatre, and specifically on the shows my son and I saw this past weekend.

Saturday night was Fiddler on the Roof. This is a show I know very, very well. I actually have had the pleasure of performing the role of Tevye in it, and I love the show dearly. Anyone familiar with the show will know that Act 1 is loaded with warmth and humour, right up until the final scene. Act 2 is heavy, with not nearly as much laughter and with a lot of emotional, even painful moments. As you’d expect from Broadway, this cast and the production were outstanding. Because I know the play so well, and because I played Tevye, I was actually simultaneously performing the show in my head as it unfolded. I found myself in the story.

Tevye loves his daughters deeply and tenderly. I loved them too. Tevye loves his people and his town. I loved them too. Tevye suffers poverty with a smile and an honesty that is undeniably human, and I did too. In Matchmaker, his daughters discover how terrified they are of being committed for life to a marriage someone else chooses. I was terrified too. The townspeople suffer at the hands of an oppressive Tzar, and I suffered too. Tevye and his daughter Hodel say goodbye forever when she decides she must go live in Siberia when Perchik is arrested, and I was both father and daughter in that moment. Tevye then must say a much harsher goodbye to his daughter Chava when she decides to marry out of the faith, and his traditions force him (and to a slightly lesser extent his wife Golde) to treat Chava as dead. In that moment I was father, daughter, wife and husband. When all the Jews are forced to leave Anatevka at the end of Act 2, I was every one of them – even the Russian constable who had to inform them of the edict. I laughed, cried, danced in my seat and sang along (in my head!).

Sunday afternoon came and it was time for Hamilton. My son and I have both listened to the soundtrack many, many times. Being younger and possessed of both a greater quantity and quality of brain cells, my son knows the lyrics practically by heart. I also know them very well. Not by rote, like with Fiddler, but well enough to sing along and certainly well enough that I know the whole story as told in the play. From the moment the lights went down to the moment it was time to leave I was once again living the story. Just as it was with Fiddler, every scene placed me firmly in the hearts of the characters. When Hamilton’s mother died holding him I died with her, and I survived with him. When Hamilton, Laurens, Mulligan and Lafayette are planning their glory, so was I. When Eliza was anxiously watching Alexander as he is trying to win over her father, I was all three sisters, I was Hamilton and I was Philip Schuyler. When Angelica told the story of falling for Alexander right before introducing him to her sister Eliza, I was all three of them. When Burr presented himself to Washington just before Hamilton arrived in the office I was Burr doing what he needed to do to get ahead, Washington carrying the burden of leadership and Hamilton with his burning desire for glory, not recognizing the real power that set him apart. I was Burr dismissed by Washington and Hamilton not knowing what Washington really wanted him for, and I was Washington seeing it all from the lens of maturity and wisdom and also knowing there’s no way to explain it to either Hamilton or Burr, and knowing that only life would teach them. I could go on.

And I will.

I was Samuel Seabury trying to defend a way of life I didn’t understand was an illusion, getting bullied by someone with more clarity and intelligence but not understanding what I was wrong about. I was King George, unable to see or comprehend a world outside the carefully constructed and preserved cocoon of royal privilege. I was an American soldier fighting for independence. I was Hercules Mulligan and I got knocked down and got the fuck back up again. I was a redcoat in a war decreed by my king, fighting across the sea away from my home. Fighting against people who were fighting for their home. I was Charles Lee, in over his head and not comprehending the stakes – only the glory of my title. I was the British soldier finally given permission by a superior officer to wave the white flag, and doing so with a weariness that permeated to my core.

I was Philip Hamilton showing off nervously for his imposing father, while honouring the lessons of his caring mother, and at the same time I was the father and the mother. I was Jefferson coming home, and Madison celebrating the return and the support of his like-minded friend. I agreed with Jefferson AND Hamilton, and felt both their passion. I was Washington knowing I had to step down, even if I knew that what was coming was not what I would have done. I was Maria Reynolds, so beaten down by cruelty that my principles were skewed to a place where any momentary relief from the reality of my life justified any means to get it. I was the asshole James Reynolds, and it sucked. I was Eliza realizing she’d been betrayed, and that sucked more.

I was George Eaker, cocky and arrogant, and Phillip Hamilton, the child-man. I was the shooter and the victim. And then I was the mother and the father, when my heart was thrown into a wood chipper as we watched Phillip die. I somehow continued to live, as they did. I was Burr campaigning, I was Hamilton supporting an enemy with principles over a friend without. I was Burr driven by frustration and rage, and I was Hamilton ultimately admitting defeat to the price his family had paid for his drive. I was Eliza for 50 years after that.

I was all of this and more, and all in two doses of 2 hours and 45 minutes (Hamilton and Fiddler have the same running time). In those moments my soul was shining thanks to the gentle polish of the performances, and it still is. And as I looked around the theatre after Hamilton it struck me. Hundreds of people had experienced the same thing. The same tarnished souls that had entered the theatre were all shining brightly as they left. The building glowed with it.

Now of course, just as sterling silver does, we will all tarnish again. But here is the beauty of art, and the point of this blog – the polish is always there. You just need to use it. Celebrate the arts. Partake. They are the real expression of our souls.

Thanks for reading,

Rich

On the One Year Anniversary of my Heart Attack

So August 26th of this year marked the one year anniversary of my heart attack. I actually haven’t written a blog since the one I wrote about that day. That’s not as significant as it might sound – I have rough drafts for 3 different ones that I started but I’ve been busy with other things and haven’t devoted as much time to writing as I’d like (something I regret quite a bit). But for the anniversary of H-Day I thought it would be good to write an update on what has happened this past year. I don’t think a chronological narrative would make much sense, and besides, I don’t have that great a memory. So I’ll go with more of a stream of consciousness approach.

As you may know I am a high school math teacher. The heart attack happened exactly one week before the start of the 2014-2015 school year. Although many people couldn’t understand how or why I did it, I actually worked right from the first day of school. I certainly could have taken some more time to recover, but I didn’t feel I needed it that badly and the doctor said that if my job didn’t require heavy lifting and I felt okay there was no reason not to work. My reasoning for starting was that it was easier for everyone involved – students wouldn’t have to adjust to a new teacher twice, the school wouldn’t have to scramble to find someone to cover my classes and my colleagues wouldn’t have to worry about teaching more than their own course load. Now, almost a year later, I can say that the decision to start right away was neither good nor bad. If I had waited things would have been just as fine as if I had not. It’s funny how so many decisions in life seem important when they really are trivial. I took things easy at first and let my body tell me when I could ramp up, always erring on the side of caution. For example I took the elevator instead of the stairs for a couple of weeks, and kept my boardwork lower on the board (so as not to raise my right arm too high after the angio) for about a week.

One thing that I learned from my first follow-up with the cardiologist was that I have no “modifiable risk factors” for heart attack. Basically it’s good old genetics. I don’t drink or smoke. I have low cholesterol and low blood pressure. At the time of the heart attack I was overweight but by no means obese. I was keeping fit with heavy weights and regular though limited cardio. This was disturbing news – I mean it would be nice if I could just stop something I was doing and know I was preventing another heart attack, but as the cardiologist said, at least now I know. I had three partially and one fully blocked arteries, and except for one of the partials they were all stented. The one that was not stented is very small and doesn’t supply a large area, so that other arteries nearby can cover what it doesn’t manage. I am on a cholesterol medication that has been shown to prevent plaque buildup in arteries and even to slightly reduce existing plaque. I am hyper-aware of my heart so if anything does deteriorate I will be on it right away. In the meantime I decided to do everything I could do. As soon as I got the green light to resume exercising I began a cardio regimen of 45 minutes, 5 times per week. As of this moment, I have averaged exactly that. I say averaged because there were three weeks where I didn’t manage to get all 5 sessions in, but always compensated in succeeding weeks by adding sessions. Three different vacations didn’t keep me from my cardio. Some people tell me “Hey, you’re on vacation, give yourself a break.” My response is my heart doesn’t know I’m on vacation, there is no such thing as a break.

I also cleaned up my diet. Not that it was that terribly unclean to begin with. But I did eat a lot of red meat (3-4 times per week, sometimes more), and 2-3 times per week allowed myself cheat meals like KFC or Burger King, or just really decadent meals at restaurants. Now I eat only lean red meat, and only 1-2 times every month. I’d say over the past year I’ve probably had red meat about 15 times. My protein mainly comes from white meat chicken, fish, and some vegetarian sources like beans, quinoa, and nuts or nut butters. I eat very little fat, and almost no saturated fat. What fats I do eat come from the fish or chicken, or light salad dressing, which I use extremely sparingly. I don’t measure my food, but I never eat until I am stuffed. That’s also a change from before. For this entire year I have not felt stuffed even once. And I still eat a lot – probably 7-8 times each day. A lot of fruits, berries, vegetables and nuts fill out my diet.

So what the diet and cardio have done is resulted in fat loss. I spent my entire adult life struggling with fat loss – often successfully but not always. Each time the goal was fat loss. Now the goal is not that at all. The cardio and diet are to keep my heart healthy. The fat loss is a side effect, albeit a pleasant one. When I had the heart attack I weighed 225 lbs (down from an all time high of 245). Because I am a hobby bodybuilder that’s not as heavy as it sounds, but I was certainly carrying too much fat by an obvious margin. My weight this this morning was 189. I won’t lie and say that I’m ambivalent about that – I am overjoyed. But it wasn’t and isn’t the goal.

Speaking of exercise I also resumed lifting weights about 6 weeks after H-Day. This was with the doctor’s blessing. At first I kept things very light and let my body tell me when it was ok to go heavier, again always erring on the side of caution. I don’t remember the exact timeline but I’d say after about 3 months I was more or less back to pre-heart attack form. The weights and the fat loss are visually pleasing to me. Here are a few vanity photos of the impact this has had on my look.

I’d actually like to include a photo I took when I was 245 lbs but my computer is currently deciding I’m not allowed to look through old photos – thanks Windows 10.

The great news is that after the heart attack the cardiologist who saw me at the hospital said my heart was damaged (on a scale of 1 – 4 where 1 is the best, mine was a 2), but on my six-month follow up visit I had managed to return it to a level 1. The words of the cardiologist were “Except for the presence of the stents you have the heart of a healthy, athletic adult male with no sign of trauma.” And that, ladies and gentlemen, mattered profoundly more to me than how I look, although that is what people see.

Whenever you lose a lot of weight, or otherwise significantly change your look to something more aesthetic, people always want to know how you did it. The truth is I did it by having a heart attack. That flicked a switch in my mind that had never been flicked before. I no longer have a choice about eating well and exercising, which can read differently than I mean it. What I mean to say is that I know all to well what a struggle it is to have to make good decisions about healthy eating and exercise. To choose not to have a sundae and opt instead for the fruit salad. For me, now, the sundae is not a choice. Nobody is forcing me not to have it – it has been removed from the list of options by something outside my control. It’s actually pretty liberating. So my answer when people ask how I did it is to say “Well, step 1 is … you don’t want to do step 1.” Because Step 1 was have a heart attack. I didn’t decide to start looking better and then do something about it. I had a heart attack and this is how I am doing my best to prevent a repeat. I will say that I have had the odd dessert here and there. But each time I have done so it’s literally been a tiny forkful (as in just the tip of the fork) so I could taste it. The forkful concept would have seemed ridiculous to me a year ago. Now it is legitimately enough. I don’t have the forkful and then look longingly at the rest, wishing I could have more. The forkful does what I needed – it gives me the taste and that is enough. Once again this is not a choice I am making, or a philosophy I am forcing myself to embrace. It just is the way my brain works now – I didn’t deliberately activate it. If I did I would write a book about how. Another example is that there have been 4 times (no, I’m not counting I just remember them) when I have eaten one french fry at a meal. Because I wanted the taste.

Emotionally/psychologically it would be a lie to say I have not been affected. The day I had the heart attack one of the reasons I didn’t call an ambulance as soon as I should have is because I didn’t want to scare the kids. There’s no way around the fact that when your dad has a heart attack it’s scary. Same goes for my wife. The very last thing I want to do is scare them or have them worry. That said I am now hyper-aware of what is going on in my body, and especially my chest. And guess what? Chest pain happens, and it’s not generally a heart attack. Gas happens (especially because it is a side effect of some of the medication I am on). The pain can cause anxiety. Anxiety can cause chest pain. It’s a hilarity-filled ride. I can’t specifically recall how the heart attack itself felt – I just know it hurt but was not as intense as you’d think. I feel as though if it were happening again I would be sure. But I’m not sure if that’s true. So there are days when I find myself worrying. However with the cardio regimen I’m on I can always reassure myself that I wouldn’t be able to do 45 minutes of intense cardio without accompanying intense pain if I was actually having another heart attack.

On that note, when I started the cardio after the heart attack I was keeping my pulse rate in the 120’s, although my doctor did say I would be able to push it higher as I healed. As of today I usually use my elliptical machine (I have a gym in my basement although it has evolved since that blog about it), and the heart rate monitor I bought shows I’m keeping my heart rate in the 140-150 zone, which I made sure was ok with the cardiologist. Speaking of heart rate, I also take my blood pressure daily, and it stays in the 115/75 zone, with a resting heart rate of around 60 bpm.

One thing I have found recently (as in, the last 5 weeks or so) is that drawing is great therapy. It is extremely calming and does a great job of centering my thoughts. I highly recommend it. Another thing I’d have said if you’d asked me a year ago was that I can’t draw for beans. I never really believed I had any talent in that regard. But I have watched hours of YouTube tutorials and have been drawing every day. The therapeutic aspect can’t be overstated. It turns out when you practice something you also improve. Here is one of my earliest attempts at a portrait and one of my most recent ones. I’m no pro and may never be one, but the improvement is real and that’s only about a month. Therapeutic, fun, and inexpensive – I highly recommend it.

Wow. Ok this really has been stream of consciousness style. My writing is usually more organized than that. Ah well. This one wasn’t about writing, more about an anniversary summary. I admit I didn’t proofread that carefully either – forgive the errors. I am always happy to answer questions or offer assistance if I can. Leave me a comment and I will respond.

Thanks for reading,

Rich

So This Guy Has a Heart Attack

On Tuesday, August 26, 2014 I had a heart attack. I’m not the type of guy you would expect that to happen to. Shortly after it happened I wrote a long description of the events to share with friends. Some have told me that it may actually prove helpful for other people, so I am reposting it here on my blog.

First, as soon as it happened and as people found out, I received so many emails, texts, phone calls, and visits that I can’t even begin to count them. It’s like the support system of family, friends and colleagues is a big inflatable cushion that kind of hovers underneath as I move through life, inflating like an airbag in a crash when they are needed to carry me through. It’s overwhelming. Thank you.

I’ve gotten a lot of the same reaction from people when they find out.

“WTF? You’re so young and you exercise and eat right. How could this happen?” is a basic summary. Trust me, it summarizes my reaction as well. People have also asked more specific questions like how did I know it was happening and what did it feel like. I will answer with a narrative of events.

On Saturday August 23 I was doing cardio on the elliptical. Lately I’d been doing 45 minute sessions, 3 times a week. Towards the end of that session, I felt some pain in my chest which I thought was odd, but I chalked it up to asthma aggravated by the dust in the basement because we’ve had contractors in to finish the other side of the basement (my gym is the left side) for a couple of weeks. Once I got off the elliptical the pain went away, confirming my suspicion. It was not intense pain. Sunday, August 24 we went to Gravenhurst to spend the day at the cottage with my dad. It was a relaxing day where I didn’t do much, although my dad did buy a new barbecue and I carried it in from the car by myself, with no discomfort or trouble at all. The drive home took a lot longer than we thought because of traffic and I went straight to a rehearsal for the show I was supposed to be in. Rehearsal was fine and I went home and went to sleep. Monday, August 25 was the day I planned to start getting ready for the new school year. I had some boxes of vases from old parties and we are donating them to the school where I teach so I loaded them into the trunk of the car, along with a plastic bin full of empty binders. Got to school and brought the bin in and upstairs to the staff room. I was struggling quite a bit with it but attributed it to the heat. On my way up the stairs with the bin I had chest pains again and was sweating quite a bit, which I found very odd because the bin was not that heavy. At that point I was a little scared, but I sat down and recovered quickly. I went home, told my wife Marla what happened, and had a nap. Apparently Marla checked on me a few times during that nap to make sure I was breathing. I thought she was overreacting. Monday night we had rehearsal again and I went, and felt fine. Went home and went to sleep around 11, with slight pain in my chest but it felt a lot like heartburn, which I do suffer from regularly.

Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:00 and the chest pain was still there, only more intense. It still felt like heartburn and I wasn’t sure what to do. I was up for an hour, and Marla woke up around 4:45 or so asking if I was ok. I really wasn’t sure. I googled symptoms of heart attack and it’s a pretty wide range of things it can feel like actually, although chest pain that lasts for more than 5 minutes is not to be ignored. I also read that driving (or being driven) to the ER is not recommended, since if you call an ambulance you will be treated sooner (by the EMT’s) and also because the EMT’s can assess your condition and potentially take you to a different facility. At 5:00 am I decided to call 911. I was very upset at the thought of the kids waking up and finding emergency vehicles and people in the house. If the kids were not home I probably would have called earlier. I desperately didn’t want to scare them. It was bad enough I had already scared Marla. When you call an ambulance for chest pain they will also dispatch firefighters, because they can respond more quickly and are trained for first aid. While waiting I got dressed, brushed my teeth and sat down on the couch. The pain didn’t go away. Firefighters arrived and asked me a lot of questions about where the pain was and how intense. Shortly after that the EMT’s arrived and the firefighters filled them in as they hooked me up to an EKG monitor. The first readout showed something that concerned them a little, but two more readouts showed as normal. They asked me to rate the pain on a scale of 1-10, which I’ve always found odd since if I say 6 what does that mean to them? For all they know I would call a papercut a 10 (and now that I think about it I’ve had some pretty painful papercuts – every get one from cardboard? The worst). I said it was around a 3. They decided based on the first concerning readout not to take me to the closest hospital, which is Mackenzie Health, but to go a bit farther to Southlake, which is in Newmarket, because they have a cath lab there which is needed for angiograms and angioplasty. Score one for calling an ambulance instead of driving to the ER. We stopped at some point between my house and the hospital to meet another ambulance and a different EMT came in to attend to me. He’s the one who put the IV in and they gave me morphine for the pain (which was fluctuating between a 2 and a 7) and baby aspirin to thin my blood. At this point I still didn’t know if I was having a heart attack or they were just taking precautions. They called ahead to Southlake to have a team ready at the cath lab. We arrived and they wheeled me straight to the lab – do not pass Go, do not collect $200 – but there was no team there. Turns out they had accidentally called Sunnybrook, where there was certainly a team waiting for me, so they wheeled me to the cardiac care unit (CCU). This was around 6:30 am or so. The nurse in the CCU at Southlake called the team, which is always 20 minutes out. Meanwhile the cardiologist on duty came to see me. He looked at the EKG readout and was the first person to tell me with certainty that I was having a heart attack. In the meantime Marla had woken the kids and followed the ambulance up to the hospital, so they were already there. The kids were a little freaked out for sure, but I think the calm way everyone was dealing with it helped them a lot.

So anyway the cardiologist decided not to have the team come in since the morning shift was starting at 7 and they could do the procedure. He explained it to me and I had to sign some forms, and they wheeled me back in to the cath lab. They said the procedure would take about an hour. Nurses had shaved and washed my wrist and groin since those are the sites where they may insert the catheter. Once in the cath lab they must have put some good stuff into my IV because although I was conscious throughout the procedure it seemed to me to last about 15 minutes. It was actually an hour. The doctor decided to go through the wrist, and he explained everything as he did it. There was some pain from the freezing, and I could feel the catheter going up my arm. That sounds worse than it is – it’s really just a kind of pushing feeling. At one point my whole chest got warm. I said “My whole chest just got warm – is that you guys?” he said it was the dye the use for the angiogram. There’s a huge bank of screens that he watches as he does the procedure, and an x-ray device that moves back and forth over your chest as he works – it’s very cool. Kinda robotic. Anway I heard him asking the nurse for stents and I swear I could tell the moment he put them in because the chest pain went from about 5 to zero in an instant.

Once the procedure was done they wheeled me back to my room in CCU where Marla and the kids were waiting. There was a blue clamp bracelet on my wrist that was pretty damn tight (still bruised a month later) but otherwise I felt fine. My brother came and stayed for a while, then left and took the kids home. Marla stayed with me every second. The nurse came in often and was slowly releasing the clamp until he felt he could apply a pressure bandage instead, which he did. At that point I was overcome with nausea from the anesthetic and I vomited, which turned out to be bad for my wrist, which immediately swelled up and started bleeding (which it turns out is the reason I am still bruised). After applying pressure with his fingers for a while the nurse reapplied the blue clamp, leaving it on for much longer this time until he felt he could replace it with a pressure bandage.

In the meatime I was visitied by the cardiologist who performed the procedure. He told me I had one fully blocked artery and 3 partially blocked. He had stented the big one and two smaller ones but left one very small artery partially blocked and unstented, because it is very small and because it is not fully blocked and because too many stents at once is not the best thing for the body in any case. Additionally with a small artery like that one the body will create new arteries to replace it. I have before and after pictures of my arteries from the angiogram. They are spooky. That cardiologist also said that “most guys take at least a month of work” which shocked me as I felt ready to rock right then! I was also informed that I couldn’t stay at Southlake because I live closer to Mackenzie, and that as soon as there was a bed at Mackenzie I would be “repatriated”. Yes that is the word they used. I would have preferred extradited but it turns out there is no extradition treaty between Newmarket and Vaughan. A few hours later and they did have a bed at Mackenzie, so they called an ambulance to transport me there. I was sad to leave Southlake. It’s beautiful there, the nurses were superb, and I had a private room, but alas I am not a citizen of Newmarket.

At Mackenzie they wheeled me into a quad ward staffed with two dedicated nurses. The nurses there weren’t quite as attentive as the ones at Southlake, but then again I was somewhat out of the woods. They were very knowledgeable and answered all my questions patiently and thoroughly. Marla had followed the ambulance from Southlake to Mackenzie so she came right into the ward with me, and immediately got kicked out so that the nurses could apply about 763 new electrode pads to me (in addition to the 451 I already had), hook me up to a blood pressure cuff that automatically inflated every hour on the hour, and in general affix me to my bed with wires. Once that was done Marla came back in. She didn’t leave until long after visiting hours were over, and then only reluctantly. At Mackenzie I had a lot of visitors including my dad and his girlfriend, my two sisters, and my brother who came back.

Once everyone left and the night nurses settled in I tried to sleep but I had slept so much during the day that I could only drift in and out. Instead I answered texts and emails throughout the night. In the morning I saw the cardiologist at Mackenzie, who explained more specifically what had happened. I asked him what caused it. He said genetics – would have happened no matter what. He ordered some more tests, and left. The nurses told me that once he saw the results from the ECG I could most likely go home if I wanted to. ECG is an ultrasound on steroids, and shows the extent of damage caused by the heart attack. They wheeled me down to “nucular medicine” (I always laugh when people pronounce nuclear that way) and the lady there did the ECG. Marla was there too and got to watch. Said I might be pregnant. After that it was a short time before the cardiologist came back. He said that they rate hearts on a scale of 1-4, where 1 is a perfectly healthy heart and 4 is, well, not. Apparently there was damage done to the underside of my heart and I am at a 2. That’s good. He said that with a good rehab program getting to a 1 is possible, either by improving the damaged section or, if that’s not possible, by improving the parts that are not damaged to compensate. He put me on about 19 different drugs, gave me the prescription and sent me home. I didn’t have any clothes so Marla’s sister, who had driven in from out of town and was with the kids at our house, raided my wardrobe and brought some stuff for me. I was also visited by a good friend of ours who is a doctor – not my doctor but does rounds at Mackenzie – who was so nice to stop by and answer my stream of questions. Again the support from the community was overwhelming. I can’t even wrap my head around it.

When I saw the cardiologist again I asked him (I also our friend) if there was anything I did to bring this on. He said no. My blood cholesterol is normal, I have a low blood pressure, my heart rate is around 60 bpm, I am not diabetic, I exercise regularly, I don’t drink and I don’t smoke. He said it was hereditary. The good news to me is that arteries don’t block overnight so I imagine I’ll be feeling better than I have in a long time pretty soon. I am also on a drug regimen now that is designed to keep this from happening again. I certainly hope so! In retrospect it wasn’t that much fun.

If there’s a moral to this story, it is this:

DON’T IGNORE CHEST PAIN.

Follow up:

I have since been to a cardiac rehab orientation session that was chock full of information I already knew, have seen my family doctor and been to the cardiologist for follow-up. I’ve asked a lot of questions about why this happened. The answer is fully genetic. My arteries are bent a little too much in places. The bends cause turbulence as the blood flows awkwardly around them. The turbulence causes cholesterol to gather, which blocks the arteries. The stents prevent this from happening again, as does the regimen of drugs I am on now. The cardiologist did a cardiac stress test, which is basically a session on a treadmill where you are wired to machines that monitor your heart, and they slowly make the exercise more difficult. Since then I got the go ahead to resume exercise, so I have been lifting weights and doing cardio on the elliptical. I wasn’t significantly overweight before, but now that I am much more conscious of eating only heart-healthy meals I have lost about 12 lbs and am still losing fat. I am naturally concerned about a repeat episode, but the doctors assure me that with healthy living and the drugs, there is no reason to walk around worrying I might have another heart attack. So I do not.

Thanks for reading,

Rich