Twenty years of heart failure taught the author how to live, but not how to die. Haunted by the experience of saying goodbye forever to his wife and two young daughters, he is suddenly given a second chance. On the hair-raising plane ride to a life-saving heart transplant, he records his thoughts in a "nightwire"-an email to friends and family. The nightwires became an immediate and intimate record of all that happened, from heart disease to a daunting recovery from surgery.
He expresses his thoughts and feelings throughout, together with a wry exposition of his medical ups and downs, his...