A true story. Happened to my very own brother.

Because of snoring so that the house loosened upon its foundation, his wife finally got him to the doctor. Yup, sleep apnea (and my doctor slammed me into a sleep clinic and I came out clean, but that's another story). So he was evaluated and put in line for three surgeries, the last of which was for a deviated septum (due to a fight in Vietnam). As the last surgery was scalpel and not laser, he had an EKG which turned up a faint, imprecise, anomaly. The surgeon said, "No problem, I'll do the surgery and afterwards have your own doctor evaluate this problem."

Well, he'd had rheumatic heart disease as a child, and everyone thought that this was just a manifestation of that old thing. And since he'd served 21 years in the National Guard, had traipsed all over west central Illinois hunting and fishing, sky-dived, and so on, that he was in pretty good shape. Overweight, yeah, but in pretty good shape otherwise.

Six weeks after the surgery he had an echocardiogram. He didn't go home from the hospital. Nope, not dead -- the next morning he was in surgery and had nine (9) bypasses.

He's okay, although now Agent Orange-related diabetes has been added to his list. The apnea surgeries helped a little, but he sleeps with a CPAP (which he's modified to run off house current or off a battery, so that he can use it when he goes to camp as a Scoutmaster). He's run as much as five miles per day, his heart and lungs are in wonderful shape, but it looks likes his overweight problem is genetic (so says his doctor, not me) and unless his genes are altered nothing much can be done about it.

Yes, he's on a diabetic diet. Yes, he still exercises regularily and far more intensively than I do. And yes, he can still lift 300 pounds if he has to -- but we won't let him, since we'd rather have him around than not, even though he says we're turning him into a wimp.