Could you live with a Broken Heart?

For those of us who have loved and lost, I'm sure you'll know the feeling of a broken heart, of the heartache and pain. However, today I'm not going to go into the philosophy of love and such but a rather bizarre report of a Russian man who lives, literally, with a broken heart.

Yup, this Russian man was so saddened when he found out his wife was having an affair that he had a heart attack and his heart stopped. However, he did not die, and his blood still flowed. Doctors were puzzled and ran numerous tests on him, only to prove further that his heart had indeed stopped, and yet he still lived relatively normally.

What was actually keeping him alive were the blood vessels of his heart, which were still pumping his blood. Doctors are keeping him under observation and say that he can live a simple life for many more years, but he can't do any extreme sports. Not much of a sacrifice though since I doubt many of us would want to do extreme sports, even with a normal heart. But behind it all is still a sad love story of a man who's heart was literally broken by the woman he loved...

Nikolai Mikhalnichuk, a resident of the Russian city of Saratov, is a unique man. He is the only person in Russia, who lives with a still heart.

The story started several years ago, when Nikolai's relationship with his wife, Lydia, started worsening. Lydia was coming home late, Nikolai was answering dead phone calls: he realized that she was having a love affair. One day Lydia said that she wanted to leave him.

Nikolai was crushed with the news - he had a heart attack at night. He felt sharp pain in the chest, and it took him great efforts to call an ambulance. When doctors looked at the cardiogram, they were surprised to see that the graphic waves on the paper did not look like usual ones - Nikolai's diagram was much smaller.

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