A Heartfelt Reminder of Life’s Fragility

How Health Scares Can Renew Our Love for Life

A Moment of Unexpected Vulnerability

‘Not sure why but I felt quite low yesterday,’ I journaled last Wednesday 9 October. ‘At Pilates, I wondered if I might cry. Lying awake in bed last night, I retraced seismic recent events.’

A serene Pilates studio with a person sitting on a mat, bathed in soft light, conveying calm and reflection.

The Heart of the Matter: A Health Scare Unfolds

‘Being phoned by my cardiologist while on holidays in England and told I needed to go on medication “immediately” and have an angiogram. Feeling anxious that I couldn’t go on the prescription until I got home eight days later. Not finding the prescription when we got home and two more days before I tracked it down and could start the medication.

‘My week-long attempt to get verification from the hospital that I met my health insurer’s requirements for payment for the angiogram, which cost over €3,000. I only received the verification on the eve of the angiogram.

A close-up of a heart monitor screen with a pulse line, representing the heart's fragility and importance.

My shock when I read the cardiologist’s second letter to my GP, on the eve of the angiogram, confirming my very high Agatston score, a measure of how likely I was to have a ‘heart event’; and reading about significant narrowing in two arteries.

Confronting Mortality: The Impact of a Diagnosis

I cried when I read that letter. We live most of our lives with, at best, a theoretical sense of our mortality. The facts it revealed about my beautiful heart was like a mule’s kick to my belly.

But I’m glad I read it.

Confronting mortality: a man with his hand on his head sits by a window thinking. Photo by Elimende Inagella on Unsplash

The angiogram was unpleasant, painful, and I nearly blacked out. Seems the veins were narrow in my right wrist, through which the catheter to my heart was pushed.

Uncertainty: The Waiting Game

While I got initial verbal feedback from a physician some hours after the angiogram, he told me they’d discuss my case the following day with the cardiac team and they would get back to me with the outcome of their deliberations.

A clock on a hospital wall, emphasizing the passage of time and the anxiety of waiting.

Due to a series of unfortunate events, I didn’t hear back from them for almost four weeks, during which time I went from patience, anxiety, frustration, incomprehension, exasperation, sleeplessness and fury.

Finding Closure and Moving Forward

On 4 October, they apologized sincerely and wholeheartedly; and I regained every confidence in the hospital. I received the outcome of the cardiac team’s deliberations, and more detailed findings of the angiogram, most notably that one artery is 70 per cent, and another is 50 to 70 per cent, narrowed.

A doctor and patient in conversation, sharing news in a respectful and empathetic environment, symbolizing resolution and trust restored.

The cardiac team decided to treat conservatively with aspirin and statins, a strict diet, regular monitoring, and the not inconsiderable target of reducing my cholesterol to less than 1.4.

The series of unfortunate events provided unnecessary distraction from the raw gut feeling of my mortality.

Mortality and Living Fully

As a naïve young man, I thought death was only for the old: until a fellow student at college died. His death shattered the illusion for me and many undergraduates.

We cannot live each moment of every day conscious of our mortality. Yet it is our only certainty in life—that every living being, including you and me, must die. You might dodge taxes. But you can’t fool death.

‘We are leaves, each of us leaves. By the time we realize it, it is already autumn, And comrades have fallen.’ From a poem by Joe Armstrong, ‘We Are Leaves’. Photo by Erik Witsoe on Unsplash

It need not be depressing. To live forevermore is a fate worse than death! It can inspire us to live this day well and to the full. It can remind us of the importance of friendship and love.

Besides, as Woody Allen said: ‘There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?’

The Gift of Life: What Now?

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

If, like me, you do not believe in any deity or afterlife, it is thrilling to realize that, in this moment, I am alive. I am conscious. I breathe. I exist. My existence and yours means that we’re winners. We were conceived and born. Billons of semen and eggs never made it! It is such a privilege to be alive, even though each life exists for just a heartbeat, a microsecond in time.

What meaningful action can you take, right now, to make the most of your one extraordinary life?

Happy days,

Joe

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Joe’s acclaimed first memoir In My Gut, I Don’t Believe is available on Amazon in Kindle, Paperback, Hardback and Audible editions. His second memoir Saved by a Woman is available on Amazon in Kindle, Paperback, and Hardback editions.