Had I been wise, I would have picked a set of parents and grandparents who didn’t all die of heart attacks. (With the odd case of diabetes thrown in.)

But because of those ancestors, it turns out that years of playing squash, chopping wood and eating 12-grain bread didn’t provide immunity to heart disease. And when I went to the emergency room with a slight twinge in my left arm, I ended up first in a helicopter and then, some hours later, in an operating room.

When I was finally wheeled out of intensive care, I had time to ponder all the wonders of modern medicine. And all the sights to which doctors had made me privy. To wit, I recall waking in a different hospital years ago and peering down through what seemed to be a valley of liver. When I finally figured out this was my own vastly distended stomach — which had been sliced open due to a ruptured appendix — I immediately passed out.

That was a macabre sight. But I have seen others just as frightening. On several occasions, the miracles of modern medicine have let me look deep into my innards. For instance, once a doctor handed me an eyepiece as I was lying on an examining table. He said, “That’s what your bladder looks like.”

I looked. Reluctantly. “Should it really be striped like the skin of a zebra?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

At that point, I dropped out of the conversation.

Sometimes, my memory is a bit fuzzy on the wonders of medicine. But it seems to me that the view of the inside of my bladder led to probes being fired into parts of my body through a convenient aperture. And, eventually, some roto-rooter work.

Before that experience, I worked for a company that offered selected executive perks, such as free parking or a car or club membership. My perk was a free yearly examination by sigmoidoscope. And, yes, I got to look through the eyepiece. Not easy when you are upside down.

(If you don’t know what a sigmoidoscope is, think colonoscopy.)

I also have been wired up a number of times and run on a treadmill — much better than having your insides probed. But there’s one treadmill operation where they run you and then make you lie down and then they read some sensors. And if you turn your head around, you can see what I think is your heart on the screen. And it looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. One look was enough for me.

Amazingly, most of these tests and procedures are relatively painless. Although a couple of times, when I asked a nurse what fluid was being pumped into me by intravenous needle, I was told morphine.

I have been through several CT scans, and the only trouble they caused was claustrophobia. I have had endless quarts of blood sucked out of my left arm, and I bear it stoically. Nor do I ever look — because when once I did, I fainted.

I recently sat through a series of breathing tests in which I was asked to pant and also blow into a balloon of some sort. I sailed though that part, although I did get a bit nervous when the technician shut me up in a glass box like a goldfish or an aged Snow White.

Once, I even passed easily through a barium x-ray: I had to lie on a table while a doctor ( I assume he was a doctor) filled me up with barium through a handy body aperture. In my recollection, he used a foot pedal to feed in the barium and I did worry about what would happen if he tromped too hard. But I may have imagined that part.

Indeed, I think I have had my money’s worth out of medicare. And also my share of luck. I trust it will last a little longer. IE