funny or just grim?

When I came back to work in the office last week, in the lull between my brother David's departure and my buddy Mike's arrival, my Korean coworker remarked half-jokingly that my survival of both a stroke and a heart attack might mean I'm somehow invincible. This led to a discussion of English idiomatic expressions like bulletproof, unkillable, etc.

I think that, if I really considered myself somehow bulletproof, I'd simply go back to my previous lifestyle, eating whatever I want, lazing around, etc. It's true that, after my stroke, I did start to backslide once again, partly because the fear of death (and/or the radical damage of a second, worse stroke) had faded. I imagine that's going to be a danger in the year or years ahead, too, however long I last.

Right now, though, I'm wrestling with the idea of how much my own conduct is to blame for my predicament. I don't doubt that years of bad habits have definitely played a role in both the stroke and the cardiac blockage that got surgically unblocked (and I'm thankful I don't remember anything about the CPR, the defib, the surgery, the catheterization, and the intubation: I simply woke up with tubes down my throat), but as I've written before, I can't shake the feeling that I also happen to be genetically unlucky. The heart attack almost creepily followed the pattern of my father's heart attack in 2006: he, too, ended up getting a stent, and although I don't talk to him anymore, I've heard no news that he's had any heart trouble since then (he was born in 1942 like Joe Biden—just earlier in the year). And the thing about Dad is that, when he was younger, he was a distance runner, naturally slim. Even as he got older and gained middle-age weight, he never really got fat. And despite the lack of obesity, he ended up having a heart attack. Both of his parents had a history of heart problems, and my mother's father also died of a heart attack, so I've got bad karma coming down to me from both major branches of my family tree. 

I can only worry about what I can control, but at this point, assuming the earlier diagnosis of heart failure still stands, there's little I can do to stave off the inevitable which, statistically speaking, will come earlier for me than for the average, un-diseased American man. So what justification do I have to think of myself as bulletproof?

Aside: I do still ponder the question of why the diabetes doc took me off all my heart meds earlier this year. Was it just because I'd complained about diarrhea? More and more, her decision to take me off all of those meds feels more like an active attempt to kill me. Sure, that might be a paranoid thought, but try to see the situation from my perspective. I really have to wonder how the removal of so many meds might have contributed to my blockage and heart attack. I also wonder about the explanation I'd been given (the one I'd recorded and had translated by my boss), i.e., that some blood-vessel blockages happen slowly while others happen faster. How much of that explanation was truth (I'm sure at least some of it was), and how much was cover your ass? Once again, I'm not reassured by the state of Korean health care. At the same time, I do appreciate that my life has been saved twice by Samsung Hospital, but it feels as if there are pieces of this puzzle that don't quite match up. This leaves me with a lot of questions. I'll try to pose some of them to the doc when I see her.

And another aside: I've treated this latest incident with an attitude of matter-of-factness. I woke up in the hospital already intubated, and I simply accepted that that was my situation. My boss (I think) gently explained what had happened, and I simply nodded and accepted that information. I also simply took the fact that I was alive in stride, almost as if this were the expected outcome. And that attitude didn't leave me even after one doc came in and told me that, 19 times out of 20, people in my situation normally die. People around me have used terms like miracle (the Korean word is gijeok/기적) to describe my having survived, but I've seen my survival merely as a brute fact. Maybe it's simply taking longer for the extremity of the situation to sink into my thick skull. Maybe one day, I'll lie paralyzed in my studio's bed as the shock of the situation finally overwhelms me. I don't know. Even pragmatic people can be wowed by special circumstances: seeing the Grand Canyon, witnessing an awesome storm up close, having a close encounter with a massive sea creature... the real world is full of wonders that even the most down-to-earth people can't help but appreciate. Maybe my current take-it-for-granted, blasé state will go away, and I'll finally have that aha moment, that shift in perspective that will prompt me to utterly change my life and set me on a new path until I die. Maybe. I'm kind of envious of people who go through that sort of thing, the existential jolt that leads to a revolutionary satori. Why hasn't that happened to me yet? Am I that closed off from miracles? Maybe someone needs to give me a good, hard slap. I don't know.

But bulletproof? Hardly. Just lucky.