The Orish in me..? 14 4 6 (13) 25 1 22

A celebration 12 years on...14 4 6

As I reminded my wife yesterday I am accustomed to telling people it was one of the best things that ever happened to me 12 years ago when I suffered a heart attack which, waking up in the Intensive Care Ward of our local hospital next day, the doctor I consulted described as not as a "small one", my suggestion, but as a "big one", his correction!

And I was grateful to come through the experience because during the attack there was no seeing one’s whole life flash before one I could only dwell on the pain which caused me to reflect later that if indeed it had been “a small one” I would not have changed my life style so radically… And reading all the get-well cards focused my mind still further on what the alternative to my outcome might so nearly have been but for my good fortune.

You see the men in my family are not renowned for their longevity. What I like to think of today as the unfortunate Irish famine contingent who, beginning with Irishman Great Great Grandad Patrick who died in 1863 was survived by Irishman Great Grandad James P who lived 1832 -1884, that is his father dying when he was only 31, say in his fifties. In turn James P had a son, James P junior, who was born in England in his grandfather's death year of 1863 and who survived until 1914*, aged 51. His children my own father James ES 1906 - 1945 and his sister Lucy L 1908 - 1959 both also dying young but my father a WW ll war hero whilst his sister my aunt died aged 51 from a myocardial infarction, as her third son cousin Bob, 1958 - 2008, did in the month he would have reached the age of 60. His oldest brother Dave my senior by 2 years also suffering a mild heart attack and like me needed bypass surgery: his requiring 4 grafts whilst mine was a simpler triple..! But then my brother James also 2 years my senior and sister Marion 4 years my junior, and Dave’s two younger brothers Noel and James so far have miraculously escaped the same fate!!!!

But the reason I like to celebrate it so much is because in some ways it was like a re-birth when I got the chance to do some things right..! As a scientist no-one could have seriously told me to change my life style before the event because I erroneously believed I already possessed a good life-style. A long look in the mirror told me the awful truth, together with three weeks spent in rehabilitation, and I began to change my habits of a life-time: no more smoking, no more obesity, a change of diet, avoiding stress, etc etc etc.

In the 5 months before it happened I had either been away from home a full week either on business or on vacation and I used to boast it was double egg and bacon all the way..! 

But 3 weeks before it struck 2002 3 15 I climbed my last hills in the company of two nephews Nick and Gregg when we scaled Fairfield and St. Sunday Crag in the English Lake District, and I like today to think just maybe climbing all those hills from being a school boy up may well have been the only thing I did right in my earlier life..? 

Have a good day everyone I must dash my wife and I are shortly to leave the house it is the first Sunday of a new month and we have a date with our local walking club!   

* It has to be said however that upon his death the cause was given as cerebral haemorrhage and his wife my grandmother's death 35 years later was given as a heart attack but her grandfather was also Orish...!