He was fond of angling and was apparently proud of being fond of such a stupid occupation. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877 A few years ago I went for a routine diver’s medical examination. As part of this I was partially stripped and shaved and then wired up for an electrocardiogram. The printout should have shown a nice, regular sequence of blips. However, the doctor, after a pause, told me I had irregular ‘ectopic’ heartbeats and sent me to a specialist for further investigation. The cardiologist looked at me and said he was 99.9 per cent sure I was okay, as I had none of the normal risk factors for heart disease (I don’t smoke and I’m not overweight), but nonetheless, he sent me for an MRI scan to make sure. When I came back for the results, I could tell something was wrong. The scan had revealed two patches of scarring, areas of heart muscle that were dead and that would never recover. In the six weeks before my urgent follow-up test I pondered my mortality.
