The Other Half
Wow, this is timely, I'm going to stay with my Dad while he goes in for heart surgery on Monday. It's kind of terrifying since he's had no heart problems his entire life until very recently, and unless he was taking his pulse for another issue wouldn't have even known it as he's had no other symptoms or any sort of discomfort.<p>I also used to work with an older guy who had known heart problems and a defibrillator. He worked on a piece of equipment that required him to lean over a big moving dangerous piece of mechanical moving death trap. One day we noticed him leaning in in a weird way, jolting and then getting back into the correct position as if nothing had happened, it happened three times during a week. We talked to him and he just insisted he was tired. But the shift boss took him off the equipment and told him to go see his doctor. They checked his defibrillator and it had gone off something like a half-dozen times in that week. His heart had stopped and he would have died a couple different ways if he hadn't had that thing in his chest. He never even knew anything was happening except feeling lethargic. But he wasn't passing out, he was dying.<p>Jason Scott on the other hand had lots of discomfort, but didn't realize it was his heart at all. The signs of heart trouble are so many and this just reminds me of how unclear they can be. We're a lot better off with a Jason Scott than without, so I'm delighted to hear that they caught the trouble and sorted it out with what sounds to be a miracle of modern science.