May 26th, 2016 - Amiram Porath

Before driving to work that day, I was a god. I’d just turned fifty on March 8th and was feeling young, active, and actually not believing I was that old. While celebrating my birthday, after fifty days of small gifts, my wife organized a celebration for me in a forest outside Jerusalem. We celebrated there and planted trees in my name. Family and friends celebrated together. It was wonderful. The new trees symbolized the hope of seeing them grow, and the celebration was a surprise.

I was feeling great. I had a good job doing something I loved: establishing new high-tech companies. The children, by now, were at an age when they had become a little more independent, so I could find some time for myself.

On the 26th, my mother’s birthday, it was hot and dry, and the AC in the car valiantly tried to outdo the exterior heat. I was not surprised by the pain in my chest. I was sure it was just my muscles cramping again due to the blast of cold air. But then the pain spread to my back and left arm, and I realized I had read about these symptoms while doing some of my technology updates. I felt bile rise up, but knew what to do. I started to cough, having read it might keep the heart beating in case it was more than a cold. When I reached the office, I asked the secretary for some pills because I was in pain, and I lay down on the relatively clean carpet.

The pain subsided, and I convinced myself that it was just a cold. I could not be sick.

I managed to get through meetings, with others commenting that I did not look well, and I automatically retorted that I never looked all that well. They laughed and assumed I was okay. I had one meeting outside the office. Following that, I left on foot, the pain returning as I walked to meet my parents, wife, and children, who had come downtown to celebrate my mother’s birthday at a nearby restaurant. It was the longest mile I’d ever walked, and sure enough, when my family saw me, they remarked at how unwell I must be feeling because I looked terrible.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said. “That is very helpful. I was thinking of leaving you and going home, taking some pills, and going to bed.”

“Well, you don’t look good. Looks like you might fall over any minute. Why don’t you go and see a doctor?”

“Just let me go home and take care of myself.”

I kissed her and my wife goodbye, waved at them, and left. The walk was torture in the heat and pain. I had to focus on each step, feeling like I was on fire. I do not recall how I got home or taking the pills. I slept until the next morning.

The next morning, I was awakened by my wife asking me how I felt. When she heard I was still in pain and saw how pale I was, she rushed me to the hospital.

In the cardiac emergency room at Belinson Hospital in Tel Aviv, undergoing tests, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. The emergency room was an underground, windowless space. Someone had painted a large rectangular window on the ceiling with a view of flowering branches and blue sky in an effort to give patients optimism. While talking to the doctor, I asked if he realized that it was probably the same view from inside a grave. He was surprised and said I was the first to make that comment.

But our discussion was cut short when my test results came back. I was having a heart attack.

I was rushed to the operating room, where surgeons inserted five heart stents, each costing $7,000. I spent five days in the hospital slowly recovering.

I left the hospital with an increased value of $35,000. But with that price tag, I realized I was no longer, if ever, invincible. In the decade since my heart attack, I’ve also learned not to postpone things. I had planned to study after retirement; instead, I have been studying since. Why wait? We travel with the family whenever we can. Again, why wait?

While I was home recovering, a friend came to visit, one of the friends who had helped organize the birthday celebration in the forest. When I told him the date of my heart attack, his face registered shock.

The forest, he told me, had burned down on the very same day as my heart attack. The trees were all gone.

Why wait, when nothing is invincible?

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Dr. Amiram Porath, a business development expert with over 25 years of experience in innovation and technology transfer, holds a PhD in Business Strategy. He has been honored with the title of Cavaliere from the Republic of Italy (2008) and the Knight's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit (2024). In addition to three authored books and several edited books and articles, his creative writing has also been published in Arc 31.