'True success' is as serious as a heart attack

Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes

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I had a heart attack the other day. Actually, I didn't have a real heart attack. I just thought I was having one.

The pain in my chest was so bad, I sat up in bed in the middle of the night. I took an aspirin, then sat on the sofa for three hours, clutching a pillow to my chest. I know, I was stupid.

But by morning, the pain was gone, and I felt so good we headed off to New Jersey for a wedding. All was fine. I dined, danced, even kissed the bride.

But back home Sunday night while walking the dog, the pain returned. I avoid doctors, hospitals and all things medical, but even I knew I couldn't ignore this any longer. I told my partner, Jack, that I thought we should go to the emergency room. He knew then that I wasn't fooling.

After playing out a scene from an I Love Lucy episode -- Jack sped past me as I stood on the street corner waiting to be picked up -- we arrived at the emergency room, where I was handed the obligatory form on a clipboard. I filled it out. To give the emergency room folks credit, I was talking to a doctor in less than five minutes.

To make a short story a bit longer, nothing was wrong. Subsequent tests have shown everything is fine. My heart, my gallbladder, my upper GI system. All clean as a whistle. So, who knows? Maybe something disagreed with me at that Hawaiian luau we went to the night before my first attack.

Doctors kept me in the hospital overnight, however. For observation, they said. Observation meant taking blood samples every few hours and my blood pressure every few minutes.

I hadn't been a patient in a hospital in 43 years, but I knew a hospital isn't the place to get any sleep.

Adding to the constant medical interruptions was my roommate, just on the other side of the curtain. I didn't realize a human being could make such a variety of noises, but he could, and did, all night long.

Lying awake in a hospital bed for 12 hours, you have plenty of time to think about plenty of things. Why hospital gowns are worn backward. (A mystery of life.) Will this overnight cost more than a suite at The Ritz-Carlton down the street? (Yes.)

Lying in a hospital bed also makes you appreciate your good health and the quality of your life, something we all take for granted until something goes wrong. Not a bad life lesson to be reminded of every now and then.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and novelist Anna Quindlen, a woman I wouldn't mind having as a next-door neighbor, touches on similar themes in her new novel, Rise and Shine. In a nutshell, it's about how people view their lives. Whether they think they're successful, and how they measure what success really is.

Quindlen was chatting with radio host Diane Rehm last week, another woman I wouldn't mind having as a neighbor, and something she said during the hour-long interview has stuck with me.

"True success is getting up in the morning and realizing you have a very good life," Quindlen said.

And I do.

Especially if it's only every 43 years that I find my fanny hanging out of a hospital gown.

E-mail cwilson@usatoday.com

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