Heart Attack vs. the California Stem Cell Program: Disease-a-week Challenge No. 20

"Hearts will never be practical, until they can be made unbreakable"--L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz It was nine-twenty on a recent Sunday morning, time to pick up Gloria. On Sundays she walks to Church, (she is Catholic; I am not) and after the service we hold hands and take a walk together. So I turned off the computer, trotted downstairs, out the door, up the street, turned right--and there was Gloria. She was too early. I usually had to wait outside the church ten or fifteen minutes, shifting foot to foot, reading my notes or-- was something wrong? The color was gone from her face. Midway through the service, she said, pain had struck in the middle of her back, and chest. One arm felt heavy. She broke out into a cold sweat. Heart attack, must be. All those symptoms, plus that is how her family usually dies. Gloria is high-strung, close to my age of 70, and a little on the chubby side... So of course we rushed to emergency, right? Well, not exactly. Gloria's brother Marty (just beginning his cancer radiation treatments) and sister Brenda (recovering from hers) were coming to the Bay Area, and Gloria had promised to take them to an Oakland A's baseball game... Not until next day could I could persuade her to go to the hospital. But at last there she was, safe and snug on a bed in the Emergency Room. There was a needle in the back of her hand, wires taped to her chest, an oxygen clip in her nose, not to mention monitors beeping, the squeak of nurses' rubb...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news