ALEXANDER  didn’t feel well one January morning, but he had his pride. Over coffee he joked to himself: ”A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” And what he had
to do that day was take down the Christmas lights from the front of his house.

“Get someone else to do it and you stay here and help me take the tree down and clean up this house,” said his wife Judith. But no, he’d rather work outside, and alone.

By the time Alexander had lugged the ladder from the garage to the front of the house, he already was short of breath and felt a heaviness in the middle of his chest. But this was nothing new. He’d been tired a lot lately, and the trouble brea~hing and pressure in his chest were just part of that. He’d expected a livelier retirement, but he didn’t feel like doing very much. Anyway, why should he? He’d worked hard for thirty years. Why run around now? When neighbors or church members or his sons and daughters asked how he was doing, his answer was always the same: “Fine. I’m getting along just fine.” And in most respects he was. He’d never had a long illness or had to go to the hospital except for a few stitches to close up a wound he’d gotten at work. And though somewhere down the line a doctor had told him that he had “high blood pressure and a touch of the sugar,” he’d never done much about it.

Despite the hard job of lugging the ladder and climbing it Alexander felt the bitter cold. He hadn’t worked long before his chest began to hurt him worse than before and he couldn’t catch his breath. He came down the ladder to rest a little, but he wantec to finish the job, and before long he climbed back up, only to fee. the same discomfort again, this time more severe.

Now there didn’t seem to be any way around it. He wen: inside to tell his wife what he was experiencing. “Just let me lie down for a minute. I’ll be fine.” But no, she wouldn’t just let hin: lie down. Instead, she drove him to the local emergency room Events there moved fast. After the nurse took his blood pressure and listened to his chest, a doctor gave him a more thoroug.. physical examination. ”I’m sure you don’t enjoy all this fussin; over you, Mr. Samson, but we’ve got to do a couple of tests.”

First, there was an EKG-an electrocardiogram-that pre ~ vided a graphic display of each heartbeat. Then there were bloo tests, to determine if Alexander’s blood showed traces of tl. c enzymes released by the heart muscle during a heart attar. Finally, Mr. Samson was wheeled to the cardiac catheterizatie. lab, where a cardiologist inserted an intravenous (IV) tube in:
an artery in his left groin. “This way,” the doctor told him, “we G ~ct a picture of the arteries around the heart, to tell if they’re ?lugged up or not. It gives us a kind of roadmap of the arteries .hat feed the heart blood.”
“Oh my Jesus;’ Mr. Samson said. Despite his discomfort and
znxiety, he meant it. He’d been a machinist all his life, and these .iigh-tech gadgets and procedures impressed him.
They impressed his doctor in a different way. The tests :-cyealed that, although Mr. Samson hadn’t had a heart attack, the :”":1ajor arteries around his heart were blocked so seriously that he’d likely suffer a heart attack in the next few days if something wasn’t done to intervene. That heaviness in the chest and shortness of breath he’d been bothered by were early warning signs. His heart needed more blood than it was getting. Fortunately, in this case Mr. Samson and his wife had listened to the warning signs. Unfortunately, every day hundreds of African Americans die because they ignore these signs.

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