12: Monday morning. I wake up feeling strong. I'm six months through a one year plan of no alcohol, lots of exercise and home-cooked whole food meals. Life is good. I gear up and get on the bike to return home from a night on the coast. Bike running, helmet on when I suddenly feel ill. Suspecting food poisoning I go back inside to asses. I guess that questionable Greek yogurt was bad after all. The pain intensifies and I get the feeling that something is deeply wrong. Pain and I have been friends for a long time. This was something new. I've avoided hospitals for the better part of a decade but it was time to go in.

10: In the ER waiting room and the pain somehow getting worse. I'm starting to hallucinate. I ask for priority and am told to be patient. I'm finally called in and they do a CT scan. As soon as I'm rolled back in, half a dozen staff flood the room and crowd the bed. One of them informes that I'll die soon without emergency open heart surgery, call your family, the helicopter is on its way. So... not food poisoning?

9: In the air. Heading to Stanford. This might be real.

1: after 8 hours of open heart surgery my heart and aorta have been repaired. I'm informed we used 11 of the 12 hours I had left.

Close

A few weeks later genetic testing shows that it was caused by a rare connective tissue disorder. Luckily I had unknowingly been training for the last six months to survive this genetic time-bomb. The majority of these diagnoses are made on the autopsy table. Life will never be the same after this, but it will be life. Even with medical bills piling up and having to shut down my home repair business, I'll happily take it over the alternative.