Thursday, February 15, 2007

A documentary worth checking out

Hi everyone:

Patty and I just finished a two-hour documentary, aired on PBS, called Hidden Epidemic: Heart Disease. Although we felt a bit rattled at how much of the information we already knew, we also enjoyed a few "aha!" moments and found the program worth recommending. I was fascinated by the science (and the cool graphics), and at the same time felt strangely anxious. We paused the show every 10 minutes for 15 minutes of conversation, so it's taken us two nights to get through the show.

As we watched, I found myself reflecting again (would that be re-reflecting?) on how many risk factors I still have, and puzzling as to why I haven't taken real steps to protect myself. I suppose this is the same sort of question that should probably occur to cardiologists who are over 350 lbs; we've worked with one of those. It's just striking me as ironic that we can see concrete evidence that things like heart attacks, strokes and cancer can and do happen, and yet it's still so easy to settle into a "This could never happen to me" mentality. Weird. Sorry...I'm sounding like a reformed smoker here, although I'm really much more curious than condemning.

If you're interested, and can get to a DVR before you go to bed tonight, the show is on again on WTTW at 2:30 am Friday. There's also a web site, here.

Love,
Brian

P.S. Patty started her day feeling rough yet again, but as I write this is laughing heartily at an episode of Will & Grace (insert "bad sitcom" joke here.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's good that you guys are learning up on this so much. While it hurts me to hear that my favorite teacher and close mentor is having so much trouble, I am pleased (but not surprised) to hear that she is still finding humor in life. ^_^

Best wishes to you!
keep up that fighting spirit PattyOC!