June 20

Saturday Memory
June 20, 2026

Sometimes, things hang together with the thinnest of threads. I was at my annual physical and everything was checking out just fine. I had an intuition that I should have a cardiac stress test for a baseline. The doctor did not think it was necessary, but because of my intuition I pushed for it and it was scheduled. After I did the stress tests, I was called and told there were some anomalies that needed further investigation. I was scheduled for a nuclear stress test. The results of that indicated I needed a catheter study of my heart vessels (a coronary angiogram). That procedure revealed that all five of my heart vessels were almost completely blocked and I was immediately scheduled for a heart bypass operation. After I was out of recovery, the surgeon told me that without the bypass, I had no more than a month to live. That intuition was the thin thread that saved my life.