Heart Attack

I just got back from taking Harley to the park. We walked through a mile and a half trail that has some up and down. A few teenage runners came through, the boys one at a time, a couple panting and struggling, some lighter of foot. Two girls came through coming off each foot as if they weighed nothing at all. They were talking, of course, and I heard one of them asking if a boy the other one mentioned was Italian looking, which she said meant he had a dark complection.


Actually, this is the trail on which I first had my heart attack two years ago in November. The day I had the heart attack it was raining lightly, and I was walking Harley. It was like a blue-grey sheet pressing lightly on my chest. The pain was not extreme, but it did threaten to keep me from finishing the trail. I had to stop several times. I wondered what the heck was happening. I made it up the steepest little incline but I felt it stronger and then it let up a little. It went away and came back. I didn't know it was a heart attack. And I got pretty wet.


When I got home, I tried to put it behind me, but Lisa got home and brought a twenty-four pack of bottled water, so I pulled it out of the trunk and carried it up to our apartment. By the time I dropped it on the kitchen counter I was having the same pain times three--which still didn't feel like it ought to be debilitating--and had to go drop in my desk chair in the second bedroom. I put my head down on the desk and didn't want to talk although Lisa kept asking me what happened. She is really a caring person with a strong ability to empathize with others--an ability she can't quite stop because it is part of her make-up. I love this about her.


But I could not speak and I just wanted to have Lisa understand I couldn't speak right then, but of course she did right to be concerned, and she did right to have me take an aspirin, which thins the blood and allows it to flow more freely through the clogged artery.


I got to feeling better and went on to my evening class, but I never made it to class. I called Lisa and asked her to pick me up and take me to the hospital, where they gave me nitro--three pills under the tongue at five minute intervals. It tasted like red hots. The pain went away and they told me I had indeed had a heart attack, which still seemed amazing to me. I can't explain how mildly ecstatic I felt. I had Lisa beside me and I didn't have the pain anymore. I was going to have to have a couple of stents put in, but none of this was something that I objected to greatly. I felt God's presence all around me, and that was an incredible high.