Short Story Of Mr. Lehrer's Heart Attack

Contrary to first thought, Mr. Lehrer's heart attack actually resulted in many good things. Not only did it lead Mr. Lehrer to make better life choices, like quitting smoking, and pursue his passion more, such as getting back into fiction, it literally saved the lives of some of the people watching the MacNeil/Lehrer Report.

The first and most immediate benefit is that Mr. Lehrer decided to change some aspects of his life for the better. He quit smoking, something that he had done since 1954. As he described it, prior to the heart attack, he had been determined there would still be cigarette smoke in his lungs when he succumbed to the hospital reaper. All of that had to change, and it took a heart attack, recovery, surgery, and another recovery period, along with the fear of a repeat of the cycle, to break the habit. Mr. Lehrer also

Lehrer did My Heart, Your Heart on TV. It prompted viewers to pay more attention to tight chests and tingly arms, to quit smoking, and, uh… eat better. Of course there are the people who had close calls, and that know that Mr. Lehrer saved their lives, but there are also people who never developed the problem in the first place, because they weren't poisoning themselves daily with tobacco, or for other reasons. Those people, of whom there are likely more of and we'll never know about, were actually done an even greater service than those who had the close calls. Their heart problems either never began, or never got out of hand.

In conclusion, Mr. Lehrer's heart attack had a lot of good consequences. However, the judgement of whether the good outweighs the bad is up to Mr. Lehrer himself, and he remarks in his autobiography that the heart attack was absolutely not worth the poor habits. Through getting out of smoking, and pursuing his passion more, he made leaps and bounds in his personal life, and through My Heart, Your Heart, he prevented the same fate from coming to many other people, and saved the lives of