I know that medicine has hardened me, just a little. It struck me this week during a group ride. The bloke I was chatting with as we hummed through the suburban coast at 35km/h recalled a friend of a friend who'd recently died. She's had a heart attack in her early forties.

Three years ago, it would have really rocked me. I would have thought long and hard, empathy welling inside me, wanting to know the how and why. Thinking how awful, how unfair.

The first thought that jumped into my mind was, "I wonder what the likelihood of an MI is for a 40-something woman?" and visualized a distribution curve. Then, I considered possible risk factors. Then, I thought about the woman's family.

This all happened in a second. Three years ago, I would have thought "Gosh, how tragic!".

It's not that I don't care. It's not that I don't feel. It's just that sometimes, the things that rock a lay-person aren't as raw, as world-changing as they used to be. Evidently, I'm still thinking about this woman. I listened to my riding partner, he talked about the unfolding of events, the death itself, the funeral. Of course I didn't ask anything about risk factors or other medical things; he wasn't telling me the story because he was interested in all that.

He was just telling me; I asked how her kids were coping. I hope they're okay.