During my annual physical on March 1, my doctor, Thomas Nash, suggested that I get a CT angiography test. Not for any urgent reason, he said, but because I hadn’t had one in about five years. He figured it would be the wise thing for a 62-year-old like me to do.
I agreed—like John Fetterman, who is a decade younger, I can’t take anything for granted anymore—though, having experienced no heart-related symptoms, I expected the CT test to come out clean. I’ve run five marathons, climbed to the base camp of Mount Everest, and, one day last October, hiked 25 miles across Nantucket. That, on top of a regular diet of baby aspirin and prescribed cholesterol and blood-pressure medications, left me feeling as unsuspicious of my health as I was five years earlier.
