Real Heroes

I stand out a little in my cardiac rehab class. The class is currently made up of six men and five women. I suspect I might be the youngest man in the class but at least one of the ladies is younger than me.

I come to the 9:30 AM class dressed for action. I wear running shoes, running shorts and an Under Armor t-shirt. I have my iPod strapped to my arm.

The dress for most of the other class members is best described as suburban casual. None of the other guys are wearing shorts. The only other iPod user is one of the gals.

In short order I have usually worked up a sweat. Right now I’m running two miles in twenty minutes on the treadmill.

Around me, on the other treadmills, the pace is somewhat less aggressive.

All in all I was feeling pretty good about myself in comparison to my classmates until I noticed the scar. I can’t recall the first guy I saw with one. People are always coming and going over the 36 session period so at first you don’t catch all the names but I remember the scar. These are the open heart guys and gals. I kid them that they had major plumbing work compared to what I had.

I began to be humbled by these cardiac classmates. Take Joel for instance. I talked with Joel today as we waited for our blood pressure to be taken before our session. I had taken note of Joel’s chest scar a couple of sessions earlier.

“It looks like you’ve had some major plumbing work done.”

“Yeah, I had a quintuple bypass.”

“No shit.”

“They really didn’t think I’d make it. I was in a comma for nine days.”

“How did it happen?”

“I was home. It just came on me.”

I’m going to guess that Joel is in his mid to late fifties. He told me that he doesn’t smoke or drink and that he always ate pretty healthy. He wasn’t overweight either.

“Is there a family history?”

“Not really.”

Just bad luck I suppose. Then again, he is alive today so his luck can’t be all that bad. Joel told me that he is a computer programmer by trade but he also has another job. Joel plays the piano in the local Nordstrom on weekends.

It is interesting that he has returned to his piano playing gig but I don’t believe he has gone back to his programmer job yet. As you can see in the picture, Joel is doing fine considering that his surgery was just this past November.

That makes him a real hero in my book.