���Mr.
Asman, could you come down to
the gym? Your wife appears to be having a small problem.���
In typical British understatement, this was the first word I received of my wife���s stroke.
We had arrived in London the night before for a two-week
vacation. We spent the day sightseeing and were planning to
go to the theater. I decided to take a nap, but my wife wanted
to get in a workout in the hotel���s gym before theater. Little did
either of us know that a tiny blood clot had developed in her
leg on the flight to London and was quietly working its way up
to her heart. Her workout on the Stairmaster pumped the clot
right through a too-porous wall in the heart on a direct path
to the right side of her brain.
Hurrying down to the gym, I suspected that whatever the
���small��� problem was, we might still have time to make the play.
Instead, our lives were about to change fundamentally, and we
were both about to experience firsthand the inner workings of
British health care.
HYLAND
2
