Healthy Habits

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Friends having heart attacks will make a man kind of lose his mind thinking about it.

I ran into another guy on another site and he told me the wild story of his heart attack at the age of 55.

“I was driving to work, early. Real early. Sipping a coffee and thinking about the job. A usual morning, and bam! I knew it immediately, but I was on the 90 near Angola and in my mind I was thinking that I needed to get to at least Hamburg so they could take me to Buffalo General.”

“You drove ten miles while having a heart attack?” I asked.

“Well, almost. I pulled the car over a couple of miles from the exit and ripped off my shirt and laid in the snow because I felt like I was on fire. The cars were going by me, probably wondering why I was doing snow angels at 7:00 in the morning.”

“No one stopped?”

“No. Wasn’t expecting anyone too. I called 911 and told them that I would be at the gas station just off the exit. Got back in my car and drove there shirtless. When I arrived the cops were waiting for me. Long story short, 4 bypasses.”

“Good Lord,” I said. “Has it changed your way of living?”

He shrugged.

“I try to eat less sodium and I’m definitely working on less sugar, but I wasn’t a smoker and I stopped drinking the year before I had the heart attack. I tell everyone that giving up booze is what did it.”

We were both spooked by our mutual friends being stricken.

“You’re in decent shape,” he said. “You have healthy habits?”

It was my turn to shrug.

“Pasta and porterhouses and salami sandwiches considered healthy,” I asked.

“Eh,” he responded. “I’m a guy who could’ve died that day and I swore that it would be beans and greens from that day forward, but I had a porterhouse last night. When it’s time to go, it’s time to go.”

Then we swapped stories about people with horrible living habits who eased into their 80’s as well as some who ran marathons and collapsed in their 40’s.

Still.

I’ve spent a few days now, a tad spooked about what I’m ordering for lunch.

I think that most people aren’t fanatic about their diets. The junk food is always right there.

I guess the moral of the story is:

If you see a guy laying in the snow, stop by and see if he needs help.

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