I AM HE-MAN! (And Apparently Spider-Man Too) Another Perfectly Normal Day in My Life*

I suppose most people have a heart attack and consider it a rather unpleasant experience. They panic, call an ambulance, get rushed into the hospital, and spend the next several days thanking God they're alive. Well, I never claimed to be most people. In fact, I've spent a considerable portion of my life demonstrating that I'm not. So naturally, when it came time for me to have a heart attack, I managed to turn the entire thing into something between a medical documentary, a superhero movie, and a comedy routine. And before anybody starts telling me what an idiot I was, save your breath. I already know. That doesn't make it any less funny.

The interesting part is that I knew the heart attack was coming long before it actually happened. I knew something was wrong, and I had a pretty good idea what it was. Now, any reasonably intelligent person would have gone to the hospital immediately. Instead, I decided to send my wife, Deniz, to Disney so I could have my heart attack in peace. Yes, you read that correctly. I actually arranged for my wife to be away while I dealt with a potentially fatal cardiac event. I figured there was no sense in having her worried and hovering over me while I was trying to get something done. Besides, I had everything under control. Or so I thought. As it turned out, my heart had a somewhat different opinion of the situation.

I waited. And waited. And probably waited quite a bit longer than I should have. Then one day, the pain hit like somebody had fired an arrow straight through my chest. Not a little discomfort, not indigestion, not one of those things where you wonder whether you should take an antacid. This was the real thing. So naturally, I got into my car and drove myself to the emergency room. Another brilliant decision, I know. I was lucky I didn't get stuck in traffic, because by the time I arrived, I could barely make it into the building. Two