I shouldn't have laughed at the old man in that commercial

I found out last night that Michael Baker had a heart attack. No, not me. My cousin, who is also named Michael Baker. That's right. Not only was I blessed with very common first and last names, I wasn't even the first person in my family to bear my name. And this Michael Baker is a dentist in Austin, so I'll never catch up to that.

He's doing fine, thank goodness. But just the mention of heart attacks--even when it's not a family member or someone who share my name--gives me chest pains. For some reason, I fear that worse than any other disease you can name.

There was a time, in my early 20s, when I was just convinced I had heart problems. I used to get frequent heartburn, and I heard some news anchor talking about his own heart problems, and how it had initially felt like indigestion. That summer, I made several unnecessary trips to the doctor, when I learned that with some doctors, all you have to do is point, and they'll write you a prescription. He put me on heartburn medicine, which made me absolutely miserable and unable to eat right. I'd get so anxious before appointments that my blood pressure would read artificially high, something I inherited for my mother. Of course, this was also what inspired me to start working out regularly at a gym for the first time, which, of course, was the one good thing out of all this.

I later figured out, through my own trial and error, that the heartburn was caused by me eating and drinking way, way too much dairy. I cut back on that, and everything was fine after that. Why could I figure that out, and my pill-happy doctor couldn't?

At any rate, I managed to get over all this--without therapy, no less. I even inadvertently got myself confirmed with an EKG and a heart scan a few years ago when doctors wanted to check for heart bruising after my last car wreck, and everything checked out fine. Even better, my cholesterol at my latest check was only 160. Of course, that's 10 points higher than what my cousin's was.

Damn.