The School Nurse Said I Was “Faking It”—Then My Heart Stopped in the Hallway

the ceremony, I stepped away from the crowd and pressed two fingers to my neck. Heartbeat steady. I thought of Uncle David, who didn’t have a smartwatch to warn him or an ICD to catch him. I thought of how my watch buzzed in calculus like an annoying interruption, and how twenty minutes later paramedics shocked my heart back to life.

That fall I started continue reading …