Flip a valve

b1-66er: Datum of the moment:

2500 people die from heart related problems everyday in the US (includes heart attacks).

D4rw1n: This coming on the day my next door neighbor got diagnosed with an aneurysm of the aorta 

b1: There is that, and what... Several weeks after Johnny Cabinet decided to sleep through the dance too...

D4: Yes

b1: We never tended to hang around the

Lazy and Slothful Gang

I'm guessing we'll see fewer of our personal contemporaries check out that way than the average American.

Having said that, I bet we'll be right in line with -if not a little ahead of- The Dementia Wave.

D4...

... What were the symptoms that got your neighbor checked?

(And what will they do about it? Stent it?¹)

D4: I haven't talked to him yet in detail. I do not know what the treatment is, but I'm suspecting there's some kind of operation to protect that vessel. He had no symptoms. In for a different kind of appointment, and they offhandedly suggested they could use a chest scan for that thing (whatever it was), but it was optional. He basically tossed a coin in his mind and said yes.

b1: Bold. 

And I support that behavior

...One of the ways 67 and I have become divergent over time is in the way we think about medicine...

...I trend toward getting as much data as I can and, broadly speaking, trust the professionals.

67 is more automatically suspicious/questioning.

D4: My own cardiologist wasn't so lucky with his own cardiological health. 

I learned of his untimely death from a mutual acquaintance, my own primary care physician (PCP). The story is startling one. In a recent appointment with my PCP. I mentioned the medications I am taking on the orders of the cardiologist (whom I will call Dr. O.).

PCP says oh, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, but Dr. O. died suddenly in May.

The story is Dr. O was on rounds at the hospital one day when he started feeling very ill. He sat down. Looked ill enough that one of the nurses said, let's get you down to the ER.

They went to the ER and immediately strapped him onto the EEG. Dr. O personally tore off the readout strip, took one look at it, and said, "uh oh. This isn't good."

And died instantly.

66: Man oh man.

Hitting the statistical number.

Mom got a call one day, "we need to reschedule your appointment, The dentist died (heart attack) over the weekend."

b1-67er: Rescheduled to The Second Coming of Christ, I guess.

66: That is so fricken cold...

... So why am I laughing?

Special K: I have sometimes avoided dentist appointments, but not by dying, so far.

66: For you, I'd say the best strategy would be to treat it like Old Home Week.

K: Sounds right.

¹ there is an excellent PDF on the aorta aneurysm situation/procedure that I read from the Mayo Clinic website after seeing D4rw1n mention it in the TXT stream. Highly recommended if you wanna dig deeper.