I had a heart attack in 1999. When I subsequently got my medical
records from the hospital, I discovered that one of the doctors had
been concerned by my "flat affect" -- in other words, he felt that I
was too calm, not worried enough. Once I had made it to the
hospital, I figured that I was in good hands, and went back to my
usual analytical personality, asking the doctors questions about my
condition and treatment. On another hospital visit, one of the
doctors asked me if I was an engineer. When I told him that I was a
computer programmer, he said that he had figured it was something
like that. Such people, who methodically analyze problems at work,
tend to do the same thing when faced with medical issues.

That's interesting. I found cardiologists to be clueless about anything except
cardiology. I went to the ER for jaw pain. I thought I had TMJ or something.
They decided because of an irregular EKG to run a heart cath. The arteries in
my heart were blocked so badly they didn't even bother waking me up to tell me
they were going to do a quadruple bypass. So I wake up and figure something
went terribly wrong. Long story short, I ended up with 11 incisions, a carotid
bypass, femoral bypass besides the heart bypasses. About the third day the
vascular surgeon walked in and said, "You seem depressed." Well, duh, Sherlock.

Sherry