Ira,
You are SO RIGHT. I have several friends who died from cancer and suffered for years before passing. Most of my older relatives have passed after cardiac issues. They did not suffer for a long time and some went in their sleep.
If we have to choose the way we want to go out, having a heart attack and dying is probably one of the better options.
Having had balloon angioplasty at 42, quad bypass at 54 and ICD at 47, I am in better health than when I was in my 30's and 40's. I am always trying to lose weight and eat healthier. But I am positive and living life like it was my last year.
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Hi Bill,
My father had a mild heart attack and balloon angioplasty back in 1990. He died in 2016, at the age of 92, from Alzheimer's. During those 26 years, he never again had a heart issue and the balloon angioplasty apparently held up just fine.
None of us has any guarantees, but worrying about things that may or may not happen in the future because of events that happened in a past that you can't change is just an exercise of your imagination rather than reality. I used to worry about dying from cancer, and then I had a mild heart attack, just like Dad, followed by emergency quintuple bypass surgery (definitely not like Dad), followed by a two week medically induced coma for inhalation pneumonia.
I still don't want to get cancer, but I don't worry about it anymore. I also don't want to get Alzheimer's like Dad (who was diagnosed in his late 80's), but I figure I won't live long enough for that to happen. Look at the bright side. As Jack Nicholson said, while vomiting in a hospital bathroom from his cancer treatment, "Somewhere right now some lucky bastard is having a heart attack."
Best of health,
Ira
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Ira Reid
Hoboken NJ
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