Issues of the Heart

So, I’ve got an enlarged aorta. I may have had this condition for several years, though perhaps it has grown more severe lately. I don’t know. And neither do they. I have been in good health almost continuously for my six decades, and though I have suffered some illness in the past two years, I have continued to run, to work, to eat well, and to function in a vital manner. My new book was published last week! Yesterday’s run was wonderful and strong.

But today I’ve got an enlarged aorta. It was discovered in a CT scan ordered for an issue wholly unrelated to my heart. Indeed, was it not for this unrelated issue (having to do with lungs, actually) and the resultant CT scan, I wouldn’t know I had an enlarged aorta. I would have remained innocent of imminent mortality. And yet, today, knowing I have an enlarged aorta, I feel vulnerably mortal. I feel substantively different. I am the same, but I feel different. And were it not for the fortuitousness of the CT scan, I would never have known.

What is it about knowledge that makes it so dangerous? Of course, that is the first Biblical story, isn’t it? Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge. For years I have thought that leaving the Garden actually started their lives: outside the Garden was where the work had to be done; outside the Garden life was hardly perfect and the world (young as it was) was in need of repair. But this knowledge of an enlarged aorta is not where life begins. Or is it? Doesn’t this knowledge begin a new perspective on my life in which my mortality will play a greater part and have more substantial influence.

This aortic enlargement is in a stage right now that is hardly life threatening, and may not require addressing for another several years, or even another decade. But somewhere down the line, when I want to live longer, they will have to open up my chest and fix my heart! Ironically, it is a repair I have sought for years.