Just breathe...

The call came early on a Sunday morning.

My grandfather — a towering man with a barrel chest, some of the biggest hands I’ve ever seen, and a sparkling sheriff’s badge — had succumbed to the heart disease that plagued him his entire adult life.

But it couldn’t be. I had visited him just days before in the hospital. There he sat, smiling and promising to be back behind the wheel of his spit-shined Ford pickup in no time.

I dropped the phone. My “grampa” — my rock — had died. No more stories about the malt shop he and my grandma owned. Never again would he describe the day he met Wilt Chamberlain. Or the time my dad, his son, won the 440 at the Kansas State Track Meet.

Maybe it could all be attributed to my grandpa’s childhood on the farm. Home-cooked, deepfried meals. Lots of salt and even more lard. They made homemade ice cream and buttermilk biscuits the size of your head. And as they grew older, it became habit. Certainly, there was nobody anywhere, anytime who could make a cast-iron skillet full of fried potatoes the way my grandpa could.

So that had to be it. His diet. Surely, then, I would be OK. This wasn’t genetics, this was the times. When my grandfather was filling his plate, there were no nutrition labels, no good fats and bad fats. Definitely no trans fats.

Still, I worried. If heart disease could topple that man … I arrived for my CT calcium heart scan filled with apprehension. I try to do all the right things — avoid red meat; limit the cheddar; and exercise 30 minutes, five (OK, three) times a week. But what if this did run in families? My family?

After my grandfather passed away, I worried I would be one of those people whose only symptom of heart disease was a fatal heart attack.

The scan would be simple enough. Three deep breaths and, within minutes, the results would reveal the amount of plaque in my nearly 40-year-old arteries. I trembled as the computer images were pulled from the printer. My stomach knotted. But the doctor smiled. There was no buildup. Zero. With diligence and awareness, he said, I could keep things that way.

Secretly, I celebrated. And silently I promised my “grampa” to do just that.