The DU Lounge

...I've had a heart attack. (I haven't.)

I couldn't imagine I had a heart problem. I don't eat meat; and at the time I'd advanced to an angiogram to rule a heart attack out, my wife and I were running about an hour a day on Torrey Pines beach in San Diego.

The doctor who did the angiogram said my heart was more than ten years younger than my chronological age, which made sense.

To this day I warn people giving me an EKG that they will see the unusual feature and it means nothing.

The current mild condition I have is not related to coronary heart disease but apparently, as I discovered in the literature, from an interesting autoimmune syndrome that is rare and situational, active if one has suffered from untreated strep throat or strep throat treated after a delay.

I'm an old guy and overall my health is pretty good. I'm rather enjoying a sense of mortality. It makes living all that much more precious.

I'm not at a Kubler-Ross negotiating stage, since I know where my health stands and nothing's serious, but I do hope to live long enough to go to my son's thesis defense next year and needle him a bit for fun during Q&A.

I love it when my sons give academic talks. It makes me feel like we did OK raising them.