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The beat goes on; the threat of a massive heart attack always haunts me, as a recent trip to Paris proved. But with the help of my doctors--and a nurse named Lisa--I won't go down without a fight.

Article Excerpt
I know heart attacks, and this wasn't a heart attack, even though a doctor back home Austin later speculated that it was. It happened a few days before last Thanksgiving, as my wife, Phyllis, and I were walking from our hotel in Paris to the Musee d'Orsay, having just been rudely rebuffed by a cabdriver who apparently had more important things to do than drive us a mere twelve blocks. The French have a term for the growing resentment that was welling up in my chest: l'esprit de l'escalier. Roughly translated, it means discovering on your way down the stairs what you should have said or done in reply to an insult in the drawing room. It would be easy--oh, so easy--you miserable Frog mutant, to crush your windpipe with my thumb and be halfway to Marseille before they find your body. It was at that moment that I sensed that something else was wrong. I felt dizzy and exhausted. A dull ache filled my right arm. I paused to catch my breath, walked another half-block, and stopped again, on the verge of collapse. I spotted a park bench and rested for maybe twenty minutes. After that I felt better. The problem didn't reoccur for the remainder of our vacation. But I knew that it would be back. [paragraph] Coronary artery disease is an old and much-hated enemy of mine. The beast attacked me without warning in 1988 as I strolled with my Airedales along Shoal Creek's hike-and-bike trail. Heart attacks, as I learned, are not necessarily sharp, stabbing pains: This one felt like a bear squatting on my chest. It was hard to breathe, and the pain...

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