Mortality

Nothing like mortality to bring you down to Earth. I see life and death situations most days at work, but you work through it because if you don't someone dies. It's different when something happens to family.

Yesterday my dad called me and told me had a positive stress test. That means that there is a high likelyhood that he has some blockage in some of the arteries of his heart. Tomorrow he's going in for a heart catheterization. They will place catheters in his groin, fish them up to the heart and then shoot dye into the arteries of the heart. If there is are blockages they may stent them open, or maybe he will need heart surgery, or maybe none of the above if the blockages are minor. All of these procedures carry their own risks. Likely tomorrow everything will be fine... but I've seen with my eyes bad things happen. Maybe I know too much. I rarely see the results at work of "normal" tests.

This brings somethings into perspective. Here I am. 29 years old. A physician. single. overweight. i don't exercise, i eat poorly. I think I need to make some changes. I've always known better. I just never had a reason to change.