How on Earth didn’t I notice a silent heart attack?
The short answer, which ironically Gareth-esque is my body just compensated and got on with it, until it couldn’t.
The longer answer is that in between whenever my silent heart attack took place and when I went to Emergency, I later learned that some of the symptoms I’d experienced could have been my body’s way of warning me this had happened.
Picking up directly from last week’s post, had I not experienced a couple of episodes of feeling crappy the month prior, the appointment with my doctor and the blood test that led to being admitted to hospital wouldn’t have happened. In that scenario, it is very likely I wouldn’t be alive today to write my story.
"Heart Failure."
As I came to learn, these two words are an umbrella term for many different ailments that impact the heart’s ability to function properly. Now, these words are just as much part of my identity as others that make me, me.
Hearing those words for the first time took place early in the day on September 8, 2023, after a night in the emergency room.
Once upon a time in the autumn of 2005, I was in Toronto presenting at my first conference and decided that while I was out East a weekend trip to New York City was in order. A new musical had recently opened on Broadway that told the story of the friendship between Glinda The Good Witch and the Wicked Witch of the West, and I was so excited to see it I could have melted.
Let’s talk Hogwarts Legacy, officially one week in from its release date. No, not about the internet discourse around the problematic background to the video game (although some fascinating conversations by very smart people are happening online!), but of the deeper forced reckoning that Harry Potter’s continued pop culture relevance may have sparked in other young adults like myself.