I was sitting in my hospital room trying to guess at the long term effects of my recent heart attack.

They’d performed a bunch of tests but they hadn’t announced whether or how much I was hurt. (SPOILER ALERT: I’m fine)

The attack was from 1:30 thru 3:00 Sunday morning. At 3:00, they put in a couple of stents to clear up blockages in my ticker. My chest and back hurt the rest of Sunday and the morning of Monday. By Monday afternoon, I was walking around the room with no sign that anything was wrong with me except for the hospital fashions and the wireless EKG monitors stuck to my chest.

The test results came back: I’d lost less than 5% of my heart’s pumping action.

In some ways, the heart attack feels like an insult. The cardiologist, Felix, told me to exercise daily.
“I already walk dogs for at least an hour every day.”
Felix also told me to watch what I eat.
“I’ve been on a low fat diet since 1990 and on a low carb diet for 3 years.”
Felix then blamed the diabetes.
OK. He had me on that one. 

Now Felix wanted me to exercise “more.” I can do that but I was concerned that I can’t tell when I’m exercising too little, enough, or too much.

“Too much is when your chest hurts and you have trouble breathing.”

“What?! I felt like that when I had the heart attack. How do I tell the difference?”

This is when Felix revealed that he’d already prescribed a visit to rehab to learn all of these things. They’ll be exercising me and weaning me off of my leisurely lifestyle without causing another heart attack. I could have used this information earlier.

And “rehab” sounds like I’m quitting heroin, not exercising “more”.

I go home later today and go back to work on Monday. 

This is a far better result than I was expecting back when I was fading in and out of consciousness in the emergency room. It’s hard to call this a “win” but I’ll probably call this “least loss” or something. 

Beats dying.