I was at the Duke Medical Center today and I saw a poster entitled “10 things to do while having a heart attack.” Something like that definitely catches your eye. Didn’t have a camera on me, but I managed to copy down the text. I think most of it is only mediocre, but #2 definitely stands out to me.
10 things to do while having a heart attack:
- Relax. (Panic depletes your oxygen supply.)
- Remember life or its lack cannot be taken personally or too seriously.
- Think how surprised all the people who accused you of not having one are going to be.
- Call up your happiest memory, whether a desert sunset of shimmering turquoise skies shot with flickers of scorched gold, or how much you gypped the IRS out of.
- Tell the rescue squad how angelic they look even without wings.
- Be glad you have on clean underwear.
- Congratulate yourself on convincing the Life Flight helicopter pilot not to cut your Nikita Koloff tee-shirt off.
- Wish you had paid closer attention when the American Heart Association began preaching the cholesterol gospel.
- Arrange for a sibling to feed your Siamese cats and to call your supervisor at work conveying profound regrets for unavoidable nonattendence.
- Pray.
— Virginia Love Long, DUMC patient
Poetry in the Halls project, Cultural Services Program, DUMC
Life is simply a natural creation that has a beginning and an end. So like nature, it is impartial — generous, yet unforgiving. How, then, can we take it personally? “Life or its lack cannot be taken personally or too seriously.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.
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