Written one month after my heart attack, June 2008:
“It isn’t the moment you are struck when you need courage, but the long uphill battle back to sanity and faith and security.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh
.
The wisdom of this quote strikes me every day. In hindsight, the time I spent hospitalized in the Coronary Care Unit after my heart attack four weeks ago seems like the easiest part of this adventure.
Back then, I was surrounded every moment by round the clock state-of-the-art technology and highly-trained professionals whose only goal was to save my life and make me well enough to go home.
I didn’t appreciate this at the time, but later learned that my hospital has an outstanding cardiothoracic surgical, research and teaching reputation, enough that it attracts skilled cardiologists to come live in our beautiful seaside city. I was treated with compassion and respect from the moment I was admitted to Emergency after a terrifying cross-country flight from Ottawa rife with increasingly debilitating cardiac symptoms.
But it’s only been in the weeks spent recuperating here at home since I was discharged from CCU that the full impact of this uphill path to recovery has hit me. (more…)
the comments