My father was rejected for military service during World War II because of his heart condition. I had a heart condition too, but I was told that it wasn't as serious as the one my dad had. His condition eventually killed him at the age of 74, which was two years younger than I am now. I didn't know whether or not my condition would disqualify me, and I didn't want to lie to get in any more than I wanted to lie to get out, so I answered all the questions on the form they gave me honestly. One question was if I ever had rheumatic fever, which I had, and the next question was if I had any lingering effects from it. I wrote "slight heart murmur", which was the truth. At my physical, this doctor was going down the line listening to everybody's heart. When he got to mine, he looked at the business end of his stethoscope and gave it a shake. Then he went back and listened to the previous guy, then back to me, then to the next guy, and then back to me. He finally wrote "functional systolic" on my form and moved on down the line. Nobody said anything to me about it, and I didn't ask.
Later, during my training, I found that I had trouble keeping up with the rest of the guys if we ran much over a mile. I could keep up if I walked alongside the formation, but not if I tried to match them step for step. That running we did was stupid anyway, it was more like jogging than running, it didn't get you there any faster, it just made you burn more oxygen. We all hated it and, when I have seen civilians doing it, their faces seemed to be contorted in pain.
Nowadays I breathe almost as hard walking as I did running in the army. My wife says I should see a doctor about it, but he will just tell me to quit smoking, and I'm not ready to do that yet. Doctors! What do they know? They told my father that he would only live about two more years if he didn't get this operation, so he got the operation and he was dead within a year.
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