sheer heart attack

It's been an interesting couple of months, a particular day in May especially. I get private health care with my job and one of the perks is a full medical, which I took advantage of (actually I pay extra for that but it turned out to be worth it...). To cut a long story short, the doctor found a suspected heart murmur, referred me to a cardiologist and after ECGs, an MRI and various other unpleasant three letter acronyms he sat me down and said "you've had a heart attack". It's a reasonably common phenomenon it turns out, what you think is a bout of indigestion turns out months, even years, later to have been part of your heart muscle dying. I was sent a copy of the letter to my GP, ran it through an AI to understand it then promptly wished I hadn't. My attack happened in a small branch of an artery euphemistically known as 'the widow maker' and my initial feelings of having dodged a bullet multiplied considerably.

I'm still mulling over the implications, a month and a half later. It's not melodramatic to say that if whatever blocked that artery had been a bit bigger I wouldn't be sitting here writing this. It's made me more determined to enjoy what's left of my life, and to stop wasting precious time on people and situations that don't serve me - this hasn't been entirely successful but it's early days yet. In short, a wake-up call, and a reminder of my inevitable mortality. I've always been kind of cautious, that's a hard habit to get out of, but I'd like to think that in the next few years I'll shrug that off and embrace a new, more carefree existence. For as long as it lasts...