Convenient Time for a Heart Attack

By Leonard Wibberley

First published in 1973

9/15/2018

About a year ago I suffered a heart attack. It came at a most convenient time, for I had just finished one book and was not quite ready to start another.

The heart attack came as a surprise, for I am not overweight, do not smoke, take a reasonable amount of exercise and rarely lose my temper with anyone bigger than myself. It was as if, sitting in a cabin in the depth of a forest, miles from anywhere, Some One had knocked on the door.

Like many others who have suffered similarly, I did not recognize the symptoms but thought I was suffering from arthritis. The pain was a heavy leaden thing that extended across my back and shoulders.

I awoke with this pain and endured it all day, grumbling about damp sheets—for it is a great comfort, in pain, to grumble a bit.

I did a little gardening, went to Mass (it was Sunday) and barbecued dinner for a family of eight. After dinner, the pain became intense.

I then did the only sensible thing in the circumstances. I lay down on the floor of my living room and cursed the pain with the greatest feeling. I stopped long enough to blame my wife again for putting damp sheets on the bed—and I told her to call the doctor.

The doctor said I should go to the hospital, and I said the doctor should come to me (I am old enough to recall the days when the doctor came to the patient instead of vice versa). I have an excellent doctor to whom I undoubtedly owe my life, and he agreed to come. The pain had now extended up into my jaw and down my arms, and I had a coppery taste in my mouth.

At this point I vaguely suspected I was having a heart attack, though the idea seemed laughable because, among other things, I was but 57 years of age—a mere lamb, as you will readily agree. However, my old-fashioned upbringing, which insisted that doctors should come to houses, also told me that patients are supposed to be in bed when the doctor arrives.

So I did something very dangerous. I went to bed, which involved climbing a flight of stairs—but I rested first. Then I went up very slowly. (Please note that you are not supposed to climb stairs when you are having a heart attack.)

After I made it to bed, the doctor came in and gave me an injection for the pain. He also ordered an ambulance. The ambulance men carried me in my pajamas out of my bedroom, downstairs and out under the starry skies. I had hoped for concerned neighbors standing about—I love the dramatic touch—but there was nobody there. I think it was the hour of Bonanza on TV.

I had always thought that ambulances went straight through traffic lights as cars pulled reverently to the side to let them pass. This one didn’t. It rushed up to traffic lights at about 140mph and then slammed on the brakes. The most dangerous part of my heart attack, I think, was the ambulance ride to the hospital. There was a man in the back of the ambulance whose job was seemingly to put me in and take me out—whether alive or dead seemed to be no concern of his.

After I got to the hospital, everything went well enough. The nice thing about having a heart attack is that everybody else has to do all the worrying.

I was put in the constant-care room of the Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance. Nurses watched me all the time. For a while I was hooked up to one of those monitors you see on all the good TV medical shows where a little dot hops about. The nurses wouldn’t let me see my little dot, lest it make me nervous, but after a while I stole a look. It was about allegro con brio in 4/4 time, the conductor being a trifle inexperienced.

I was quite happy in the hospital. The doctor came to see me frequently and assured me that I had had a “coronary occlusion.” This diagnosis was confirmed by many things, including enzymes in my bloodstream. I listened to him with courtesy, and told him that, on the contrary, I had had an attack of arthritis.

My main complaint about being in the hospital was the lack of music. My wife brought a tape deck and some Beethoven quartets, but the batteries were run down. There were batteries in a unit attached to me that made the dot go up and down, so I removed them, thinking they might fit in the tape recorder. That was when a nurse came rushing into the room with such a look of concern on her face that I feel sorry to this day for giving her such a fright. She thought I’d died.

Back home I had to stay in a bed in a room on the ground floor for three weeks. Everybody should do that at least once a year. It was wonderful.

I took a bath in books. I read for hours and hours and hours. I finally read the whole of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, Carlyle’s vast diatribe on the French Revolution, and a three-volume History of Europe, as well as Tacitus, Suetonius (in translation, of course), the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of Paul (surely the most curious Christian of them all), Trevelyan’s American Revolution in five volumes and many other works. No novels, you’ll notice. I write novels, but I do not read them.

When at last I was able to get up, a subtle change had come over me. I became for a time a gentle, mild, patient man, unconcerned about the time and unpaid bills and uncompleted manuscripts. I had ha a little glimpse of my inevitable end and, instead of frightening me, it somehow consoled me. Nothing was really worth worrying about, I came to feel, and, the future being mildly uncertain, I learned to enjoy the present, the lovely Now of life.

I will always remember the sun shining through a tall blue glass vase in the corridor of my house. I could see it from my bed—it glowed in beauty like the mantle of the Madonna. I had never noticed it before.

One time, looking carefully at my dog, I found that he had a wise and loving face. It was cruel of me, I realized in one of those blinding flashes, to allow so much wisdom and love to be constantly beset by fleas. He is bathed more often now.

There were several other revelations resulting from my heart attack. Among them was the discovery that I had had several before and hadn't paid them much attention. One of them had occurred while I was at the wheel of my boat on a scowling night 800 miles off the Island of Maul in the Hawaiian group. I pointed out to the Lord at the time that, since I had my two sons on board and neither could navigate, no gentleman would call me away on such an occasion. The heart attack departed, and I forgot about it.

I also discovered that there are some people in the world who, to my surprise, are quite fond of me. The story went around that I had died, and my wife received one or two letters of condolence in the gentlest terms that spoke of me quite pleasantly. Book reviews I am inured to, but here was a sort of life review—and all in all, the critics approved.

I also got a letter from a mortuary pointing to the wisdom of making preparations while still able to do so. That letter brought me right back to life.

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