Today, Twenty Years Ago, A Near Fatal Heart Attack Saved My Life

Twenty years ago, I was forty-one, eagerly chasing neoliberalism's diminishing pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in the spirits industry. I didn't have time for death, and I was convinced death didn't have time for me.

I was certain my Best Before Date was far off. After all, I believe my health was excellent which gave me an arrogant sense of invincibility. At the start of the 21st century I was convinced, I still had a lot of living to do. It made me less considerate to the fragility of the human spirit—my own, and that of others.

I expected to age like my dad, who was then 82. He still fixed his roof, shoveled snow, cut an acre of grass with a push mower, chopped wood, traveled the world, and smoked cigarettes. I assumed I’d be just as active for decades to come.

It never occurred to me that I might take after my mother, who had died six years earlier, overwhelmed by cancer, heart disease, and rheumatoid arthritis. She lived to 71, but the last ten years were an endurance race against her failing body.

At 41, I was in denial about my mortality. I’d never broken a bone, never spent a night in hospital, and never been diagnosed with a chronic condition. I walked off colds and limped through sports injuries—because that's what you do when your parents survived the Great Depression and World War Two. Minor complaints were not tolerated. The unspoken motto in our house was "Keep buggering on."

That belief system collapsed on July 21, 2005—a day that began like any other. I was hungover and visiting my father and brother Pete, who both lived in the family home. That afternoon, my GP called. My bloodwork had come back, and the elevated cholesterol found in an earlier test had returned to normal. I'd reversed it through exercise and diet, avoiding the statin he’d recommended.

I celebrated with a cigarette and an espresso, followed by a brisk walk through the countryside near my dad’s house.

Three hours later, I was in an ambulance, being rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack. In the emergency department, blood was drawn, and every thirty minutes, a nurse sprayed nitroglycerin into my mouth, which gave me a pounding headache.

Several hours later, a doctor confirmed it: I’d had a heart attack. She told me I'd be transferred to an ICU bed for the night before being flown by helicopter to a hospital with a cardiac care unit.

When she left, I wasn’t afraid. I was ashamed. Ashamed that at 41, I had ended up here, in hospital, possibly dying before my time.

The next morning, I was put onto a helicopter that flew low over Lake Ontario. At the hospital, I was rushed into surgery. A catheter was threaded through my groin so the doctors could inspect the damage. I watched my heart beat erratically on the monitor and wondered if that would be the last thing I saw. It wasn’t.

The clot that had caused my heart attack dissolved on its own. A stent wasn’t necessary.

I spent two days in CCU recovery while the cardiologists built a medication plan to keep my heart beating. My father came to pick me up and take me to his house to recover. I felt both relief and shame—that I, a 41-year-old, needed my 82-year-old father to care for me.

In the year that followed, my physical strength slowly returned. But I developed depression, a common side effect after a heart attack. It was a black dog that followed me quietly. It was a sadness that came and went like morning rain.

There’s a strange elation when you survive a brush with death, followed by a greater understanding of the Peggy Lee song, "Is That All There Is?" I wasn’t angry about the heart attack. I never indulged in self-pity—not then, and not when I was diagnosed with cancer fifteen years later. Instead, both events gave me a deeper awareness of how fleeting this marvellous gift of life really is.

Four years after my heart attack, my brother Peter in 2009, became gravely ill with pulmonary fibrosis. I remember him saying to me one humid July afternoon on his porch, "You almost died."

"I know," I said. "But I didn’t."

Then he whispered, almost to himself, "But I am going to die."

I should have answered him. I should have said, "No, you won’t." But I didn’t. I pretended not to hear him.

Peter died two and a half months later in an ICU bed, after life support was turned off at his request.

It’s been twenty years since my heart attack. To keep my heart healthy, I walk ten kilometres a day, rain or shine. The last two decades have been a struggle—but I wouldn’t have missed them for the world. Mum, Peter, and Dad are now gone. Friends have died. Others are estranged because of politics. But some are still close.

In these twenty years, I’ve survived cancer, cancer treatment, and the pandemic. Now I live with poverty and a lung disease not unlike Peter’s. I know I don’t have another two decades ahead of me. But there is still enough time to squeeze in both joy and laughter—and to finish the work of living a life that has some measure of purpose.

I’m grateful for the grace or the luck that let me survive my heart attack and cancer because it gave me the chance to become a better version of me.

Your support keeps me housed and keeps the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive. It’s coming to the end of the month and new paid subscribers or tips are very helpful to keeping the lights on.

Like so many I am living on the edge of a cost of living crisis that can drown me at a moments notice. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other comorbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these times of global economic collapse.

Over the last 18 months, I've worked to complete my Dad's Green and Pleasant Land, the unfinished history of his generation’s youth, Harry left behind. It's done apart for some minor adjustments that are required. It traces his life from 1923 to July 1945 concluding with Labour winning the General election. For those who have asked a copy of this book will be sent to them in the next few weeks. After some minor tweaking of the manuscript I will begin to send off the manuscript to publishers and hope they see the importance of this work.