I’m glad your father did recover well. It’s very frightening the moment it happens. And the recovery can be very hard.
However for me, the heart attack is just the latest side effect of a far bigger problem. I have a rather severe form of an immunity disease, called Guillain Barrée Syndrome. I have had this already for 13 years but the last 5 years the disease is attacking every part of my internal body; veins that keep narrowing, failing organs, muscle tissue breaking down and now the heart attack. I’m just waiting for the next problem. The main arteries in my belly have been causing big problems, I had two operations already in the last year and it’s starting again. So, the next surgery will be a bypass of those arteries. Because if not, I could get a Intestinal infarction, which is as deadly as a heart attack.
And those are only a few of the internal problems. There are other that I have even neverbmentioned here on the forum.
Externally, I have nerve pains all day long, at night I get tremors in my legs, my arms are partly numb, parts of my limbs can get paralyzed out of the blue, etc
I haven’t slept more than 2-3 hrs at one time in all those years because of the pains. A normal day for me, exists out of max 4 hrs sleep throughout the day. And every day I stay inside because my body can’t handle being active for a long time.
Even when on holiday, I spend more time inside than outside. If it was only me I wouldn’t go on holidays at all but I got to take my wife in account. All this time she has put her life on hold because of me. So, I find it my duty to give her at least that.
Planning things has become quasi impossible. I planned to go to 7 concerts this year. I ended up being able to do 1 (Shinoda, with a lot of problems the week after), The rest I had to cancel at the ultimate moment. The last one was last weekend. (buying tickets and not using them is becoming very expensive 
)
Please don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to minimalize what happened to your father, far from. My father had 3 heart attacks, my mother 2, (luckily(?) both of them died of “old age”.) So I know how it can be. But I just wanted to react on the “temporary” part.
The disease I have is irreversible, I’ll have these problems for the rest of my life. Some can be controlled by medication (which give their own side effects, such as memory loss) but there will always be something failing. After 13 years of seeing a whole lot of different specialists the conclusion was simple… I have to find a way to live with it because it’s here to stay.
I’ve been told multiple times that I won’t have a long life. My father was 89 when he died, I will be lucky if I make it to 70… I’m 52, but I’ve been told by several doctors that my inner body has already now all the signs of an 80 year old.
Every day is becoming more and more a burden, one that wiil be there until the very end.
Also, I’m not romantisicing death, I’m just being realistic. Death has become a daily companion. I know that rather sooner than later, it will happen. Of course, at times I’m afraid but ever since I was a child I’ve seen death as a part of life. So I don’t really have a problem with death itself.
Excuse me for throwing this all at you but honestly, I’m done with hiding everything. If you should see me while passing by, you’d say that there doesn’t seem anything wrong. But that is just 1 moment in time. Those who spend more time with me know how it’s really like to be this way. And I’m a bit tired of people saying everything will be allright. It won’t and never will be again. It’s just very exhausting to have to explain it all over and over again. Because people can react weird. You can’t imagine what some have called me (even in my face). And when I try to explain it, they find me a liar, a winer, an attention seeker, etc) Just because at first sight they don’t see anything wrong. If I should say that I have cancer, people would be compassionate and would “find it so terrible”. But I don’t have a well known disease so “it can’t be that bad” (their words). Even the fact that I’m not really afraid to die, is confusing for them, because most people are afraid of death and can’t imagine it otherwise.
So, I’ve started to over-explain everything, like I do now. And even then it’s not good, I’m still nothing more than a poser or an attention seeker in their eyes.
But I definitly don’t want people to have pity with me also. Cause those are the 2 most often heard reactions for me. Or they criticize me or they have pity with me… And I don’t want both. I just want people to understand what it is and how it is to live like this and to accept me the way I am now. But most can’t cope with it, even if they are friends or family (I lost a lot of them because of this disease, friends can’t handle it and some of my family have simply rejected me as being their family). I guess most people choose to react that way because they are confronted with their own mortality. And apparently most have trouble with understanding that I’m not positive nor negative but just realistic.
Even now I’m doubting if what I say will be understood in the way intended.
At times I’m mentally exhausted and in such times I can get a little dramatic and melancholic. I’m not perfect after all. I can get depressed, I have times that I do flirt with death. But that’s just my way to be mentally able to cope with it all
If you’re confronted with the fact that each day could be the last, you tend to forget that others don’t find it so normal to talk about death this way. That’s something I’ll have to be keeping in mind.
But I’ll stop now.
I’m sorry for my (long) reaction, again, I really do understand what your father went through.
But I saw this as an opportunity to try to explain myself. I hope I made any sense…
This disease, it is as it is and it won’t go away anymore. I’ve accepted it, so I just want others to accept it also.
Oh, also this… Some here have called me brave. I’m definitly not brave. I’m scared shitless for the years to come. I can react as a real asshole for the tiniest obstacle in my daily life. At times I burst out in tears out of the blue and I’m ready to give up and just end it all. The brave one is my wife for holding on, for keeping up with my outbursts, for the never ending support, for still being here with me… That’s being brave
)
Unfortunatelly…
