THE PSYCHOLOGIST GARY Klein once told me a story about a woman who attended a family
gathering. She had spent years working as a paramedic and, upon arriving at the event,
took one look at her father-in-law and got very concerned.
“I don’t like the way you look,” she said.
Her father-in-law, who was feeling perfectly fine, jokingly replied, “Well, I don’t like
your looks, either.”
“No,” she insisted. “You need to go to the hospital now.”
A few hours later, the man was undergoing lifesaving surgery after an examination had
revealed that he had a blockage to a major artery and was at immediate risk of a heart
attack. Without his daughter-in-law’s intuition, he could have died.
What did the paramedic see? How did she predict his impending heart attack?
When major arteries are obstructed, the body focuses on sending blood to critical
organs and away from peripheral locations near the surface of the skin. The result is a
change in the pattern of distribution of blood in the face. After many years of working
with people with heart failure, the woman had unknowingly developed the ability to
recognize this pattern on sight. She couldn’t explain what it was that she noticed in her
father-in-law’s face, but she knew something was wrong
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