Not like in the movies

The great Herbert Marshall was playing Bette’s husband, in a story set in the late l880s. It seems that Herbert’s character had a bad heart, and Bette was eager for him to pass so she can get hold of his money. At any rate, Herbert suffered a major cinematic heart attack. He was trying to make it up the stairs, and he was begging her to give him his medicine. She was at the top of the steps looking down, and she refused. He gasped and clutched his heart. It was over.

Having grown up in the second row of movie houses all over America, I can remember dozens of films in which the hero, or the bad guy, died of a heart attack. It’s always dramatic. He clutches his heart, and his face, a mask of pain, goes white and he drops. The truth is that in real life, it’s not always like that. I can verify this.

In July, as I was emerging from a splendid annual doctor’s checkup, I walked happily out into the 100 degree/67 humidity morning, got into my car and had a heart attack.

It wasn’t like Herbert’s or any of the heart attacks we’ve seen in the movies and on television.

I sat there in the car, just outside the doctor’s office, gripping the wheel. I thought it was an acid reflex attack, bad gas from dinner the night before. It wasn’t like in the movies. There was no elephant on my chest, no radiating pain down my arm. It’s gas, I thought. I remembered the baked beans I had had the night before, the hot dogs. I ignored it and drove home. I wasn’t going to go back in and complain about gas.

That night, it got worse. I took swigs of Pepto Bismol and aspirin and the next morning, a Sunday, it got a bit better, but I had no appetite, no energy. It’s the heat, I thought, and dismissed it.

But come Monday morning, it was still there, so I checked in at the doctor’s. I had never in my life had acid reflex, but if it was going to start, I wanted to get a prescription for it. My very smart doctor gave me an EKG. I had had a heart attack.

Heart attack? I exercise, eat reasonably well. My doctor had long told me that I was not a candidate for heart trouble. But there it was. I had had a heart attack, not like Herbert’s. I had one like mine.

Each heart attack, I soon found out, is different. Many men and women have tiny heart attacks all the time, and because they’re not like what they’ve seen in the movies, they ignore them.

“It’s gas,” they say, “It’ll go away.” Sometimes it does. Often, it’s only a warning and the buildup in the artery continues, waiting for another day to make a return, this time with a higher Richter number.

Mine could be described as minor, but no heart attack is minor. I was lucky. I didn’t need an angioplasty or surgery of any kind, unlike a couple of friends my age who had open heart surgery and a painful recovery, I had beaten the odds.

So now, a recovering, aging boomer stands sober faced at the corner where the sidewalk of youth ends. Never having taken a pill of any kind in my entire life, save an aspirin for a headache, I’m on two heart pills and a baby aspirin a day. Three tiny pills. Not much. But each time I open the bottles, I’m reminded of that summer morning and that there are seasons to life, and I’m having an early autumn.

I don’t look any different. I still look young for my age. I have a full head of silver hair and still do my 3-mile walks a day. But now, it has to be uphill, no more strolling. Whereas the walk was once to stay thin and young, now it’s to stay alive.

Staying mentally and spiritually positive is an important part of recovery, no matter the intensity of the damage. I keep reminding myself that, yes, I had a heart attack, as frightening as that sounds, but that I’m on the other side of it now, and the game plan is not to have another. It’s true that no matter the severity, being told that that big red muscle in your chest is not Batman’s or Clark Kent’s, but yours, is sobering. It’s rather like removing cataracts, not from the eyes, but from the heart. Things do look sharper, brighter.

Still, I occasionally pause at the foot of long flights of stairs, or the bottom of that long, two blocks of hill facing me, and check my pulse. And even though I’ve sharpened and focused my daily diet, I still occasionally err on the side of longing for evil flavor, the bowl of chili, the diet cola. And then a real gas pain happens and I pause to touch my chest. No, there’s no elephant on my chest, no pain radiating down my arm. It’s just gas, isn’t it? Remember. It’s not like in the movies.