Some few of you readers of THINKING ALLOWED have read far enough into my essays and found bits and pieces of personal history and have kept up to date about our health.

Carol and I have been traveling the routes between hospitals and professional buildings. We are seeing new doctors because we lost to retirement our best, most discerning and most comforting doctor.  In the process, old diagnoses have given way to new tests and the discovery of disturbing illnesses or conditions which are life threatening.

In an old Mel Brooks routine he has the 2,000 year old man make the statement that he prays fervently on his knees that “my heart should not attack me!” I also remember his tossing off a remark about the passing of an individual of advanced years due to “A stroke”.  My father’s heart attacked him too many times and my heart silently caused part of it to lose its full function.  I have had a triple by-pass and have been asymptomatic throughout.  The same can be said for the carotid arteries in my neck that increasingly have been stuffed with plaque over the years.

Because I do not wish to be “stroked” I will enter the hospital next Wednesday afternoon and my left carotid artery will be operated on Thursday morning.  A couple of weeks later, the right carotid artery will be likewise opened and scraped out.  I met the surgeon who will do the operation briefly yesterday and all is scheduled to go off as detailed above.

I trust that I will continue to be able to be allowed to think in my essays despite “discomfort” from the surgeon’s knife.  In any event, like most of the indignities that age brings with it, there are always opportunities to look at life in different ways and I shall make the most of them.