New Attitude
"The glass has always been half full to me."
—Howard Schaffer
(pictured with his wife, Ronna) |
A diagnosis of diabetes and heart disease led
48-year-old Howard Schaffer to discover that the choices we make about our
lives and about our health care are ours-and ours alone.
Most Sundays, Howard Schaffer logs between 15 and 25
miles on his bicycle. Schaffer and wife Ronna tour the area's byways as
southeastern New England shrugs off winter like an old coat—crocuses
decorate lawns, fiddlehead ferns shyly emerge by the roadside and the air
is flavored with the fragrance of damp earth. Spring is an annual ritual
that's welcomed by winter-weary New Englanders, but Schaffer has a special
appreciation for the season. Consciously, joyously, Schaffer says
"yes" to each and every day.
Schaffer works a hectic six-day week as the general
manager of an auto dealership. He's always exercised to help relieve
stress but he has an even more important reason to keep an eye on his
health: his father was only 48 when he died of heart disease.
It was April 1997 when Schaffer felt pain rip across his
chest and in his jaw while he was working out. "It was unlike
anything I've ever felt before," he says, "a tightening kind of
pain." A week later, the pain returned. Taking no chances, Schaffer
called his doctor, who scheduled a stress test. Two days after speaking
with his physician, Schaffer says, "I woke up in the middle of the
night with really bad indigestion. At 2 a.m. I went to The Miriam Hospital
emergency department and told them I thought I was having a heart
attack."
A frightening diagnosis 
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