Buzzers, Bleeps and Blips

December 1, 2011

The city streets are very deserted at 3:00 AM.  You can go from point A to point B with few obstacles.  It’s quite peaceful, really.  There’s a certain amount of serenity in the darkness, the quiet and the lack of traffic.  One has a moment or two to reflect on life’s strange quirks. 

Life has many quirks.  Some are funny.  Some are not.  When one gets a call before 3:00 AM, it’s never good and it’s seldom funny.  My first thought was, I hope that’s my husband’s buddy drunk-dialing again.  It wasn’t.

So I found myself on the deserted city streets, viewing the seeming serenity of the quiet darkness, contemplating this sudden turn, hoping the quirk turned out to be funny.  It didn’t. 

Buzzers tell stories, as do bleeps and blips.  Hospitals are full of these sounds.  Each turn in the long corridors offers new levels of sound, new reminders of the frailty of life—and life is very frail.  As I passed every door along the way, I viewed quiet, dark rooms with traumatized bodies, staff who worked to make them healthy and machines with monitors and mysterious buzzers, bleeps and blips. 

Those in the know, those tireless members of the medical community, possess the knowledge of what each sound means.  They view the monitors with careful consideration, jump to attention with every minuscule change, take action when needed, or simply offer words of encouragement to scared, broken humans. 

Even the waiting room has these sounds.  Coffee machines bleep and blip.  Intercoms buzz.  At this time of day, though, there’s no one else around to hear it.  There is nothing but the waiting, the quiet contemplation and the sad knowledge of why one is there. 

Whole lifetimes can be spent in a single hour of waiting.  The hospital chaplain will stand in quiet support, family members arrive with looks of horror on their faces.  Life is frail.

The halls of the hospital are long, dark and quiet.  Moving through them is akin to being a mouse trapped in a maze.  Each footfall is a reminder of the waiting.  Pacing through the corridors is hard on the feet, but occupies the mind, keeping it distracted from the sounds in the rooms. 

Doctors in white coats confer with families and loved ones, nurses and orderlies rush about as they tend to their charges, housekeeping staff bring linens and sweep floors.  Worried faces of mothers, lovers, fathers, siblings, husbands, wives, children—all listening to the bleeps and blips and buzzes—all of them hope for a miracle and some get it.

The interminable hallways beckon as we move from one waiting room to another on the other side of the facility.  The air ambulance has landed, the procedure performed and the patient moved to recovery.  The frailty of life does battle with the indomitable human spirit and loses.  The day is won, but the waiting continues.  A smile, a confused look, a frown that asks what happened and all are relieved to see the will to live, to return to things left undone and the anger of being disrupted.  There are strong indicators in the buzzing, the bleeping and the blips.  It’s a steady rhythm, a chorus of powerful music, singing of life restored.  Rock on.

The Blessings of Life

7/3/10

It was a good week.  Hell, it was a grand week.  All things considered, it ended on a very high note.

At the end of last week, I thought things were pretty crappy.  I was facing a Saturday morning spent in overtime, followed by an afternoon of long-overdue washing in the musty, humid confines of our friendly neighborhood laundromat. 

My washer is dying.  My dryer isn’t in much better shape.  The house needs work—lots of work—and book sales ain’t what I wish they would be.  After spending $1200.00 to keep my lemon of a Saturn on the road, I’ve been running a bit short in the cash department. 

Summer expenses are the worst.  You shell out money for entertainment in the long summer days.  You pay for fancy summer schools to keep the kids’ minds engaged.  Then there’s air conditioning for those sweltering days and supplies to keep the sun from frying your skin and the bugs from eating you alive.  Vacations—even those spent at home—take a bite out of the pocket book.  And let’s not forget yard beautification!  It costs a pretty penny not to be the one house in the hood people cluck their tongues at.  Sigh.  Summer is expensive and the income remains the same as any other time of year. 

Ah, but I digress (like always).  It was Saturday and not starting out to be the weekend of my dreams.  So off to work I went, to spend some quality time trapped inside my stall at the cube farm.  Gratifying though it was to see I wasn’t alone in the world of financial crunch, I would happily have given anything to be anywhere else.  As I looked out over the sea of equally dismal faces, I wondered what these people would be doing if not stuck to an over-cooled office on such a fine, sunny day.  Would there have been pool parties, trips to parks with kids in need of parental attention, cookouts and picnics?  What price do we pay when we sacrifice our lives to the almighty dollar?

I stayed as long as I could stand—three and a half hours.  I promised to stay longer, but there comes a point when too much is enough.  I left.

The laundromat was fun.  I loaded two large carts with all the dirty clothes and bedding I had in the car and wheeled it all inside.  There was a lot of wash.  To say no one besides the driver would fit in my vehicle would be an understatement.  As it was, I had to shift with the load while I drove.

Once inside the stink of the place, feeling the sweat of other patrons hanging in the air and surrounded by the chemical stench of detergents and fabric softeners, and the aforementioned sweat, I wondered if the wash could wait another week.  As this thought was wending its way through my brain, one of the hampers tumbled off the cart and spilled forth on the floor.  No, it couldn’t wait.

I loaded up three four-load machines, two double-load machines and three single loaders.  After kissing goodbye to $25.00, I sat down to wait for the wash cycles to finish.  It was at this time I looked around at the other hapless patrons.  One thing I noticed was how shabbily everyone was dressed.  Yep, it was laundry day.  They were down to rags that were two sizes too small—a lamentable sight.  Apparently there is no dress code at the coin wash and I was over-dressed in my business casual. 

One woman kept yelling at her tweenies, while her husband/significant other rolled his eyes in frustration.  An older, tidy gentleman carefully guarded his two washers, stepping between them and anyone who dared wander too close.  A woman with the shape of a beach ball—with tiny head and short limbs—was intent upon telling me all about her horrendous health issues, going into vivid detail about the manner in which her many cysts were lanced.  A strange looking man was busily spraying every inch of every stitch of clothing he had with “Shout”.  Very odd.  My favorite, though, was the man with the braids in his long gray beard.  I’m just sure there’s a story there.

On the TV was some low-budget horror flick with bad acting and terrible animatronics.  The spectators were cheering for the monsters and laughing at the unbelievable panic of the nameless actors.  Ah, entertainment. 

When the washers finished, I began the arduous task of removing a couple hundred pounds of wet blankets, towels and clothing from my many washers.  The clientele of a laundromat is very territorial.  When I filled ten dryers along one long wall and staked out two tables for myself, I received quite a few nasty glances.  Tough ta-tas, ladies and gentlemen.  I got a lot to do and less time to do it in.

It’s been a long time since I’d been in a coin wash.  Did you know that you only get eleven minutes per quarter in a dryer these days?  I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve never been able to get anything dry in eleven minutes and I was running out of coins fast, so off to the change machine I went.

I passed by the guy guarding his washers and made the mistake of stepping too close.  He almost ran me down getting to them before I could steal his jockeys.  After waiting in line for the man ahead of me to scoop his change out, I slipped a twenty in the slot and heard that lovely clang of eighty quarters slamming into a metal tray.  “Jackpot!” I yelled and began snatching at the coins as if I’d hit it big in Vegas.  The manager was not amused.  I was by her expression though.

On my way back to the dryers, I noticed Shout-man was still hard at work spraying his trousers.  For a moment I thought of telling him about a new invention called laundry detergent, that you could just pour a measure in and, Voila! your clothes come out clean.  But then I thought maybe it was a kinky fetish of his.  One mustn’t interfere with another’s personal gratification.  I shrugged and went on.

Cyst-woman filled the last two dryers on the end of the row where I worked, taking the table next to mine.  Oh, goody.  A couple more hours of tales of gore and mayhem.  Joy. 

Another woman had come in with seven kids and several loads of wet laundry in tow.  She gave me a scathing look when she saw all the dryers I fed with coins.  The kids commenced to screaming and running the minute they came in until the biggest knocked me down.  Now, this boy was a huge kid, bigger than his rather large mother—but when she saw what happened, she laid into him until he squawked for mercy.  The shivering child found a chair in the corner where he sat quietly for the rest of my stay.  Cyst-woman began mumbling something about minorities who didn’t know how to control their children and I turned up the heat on the dryers.  Come on, clothes!  Cook up already.

I folded, put things on hangers and fed more coins into machines.  The older man, with his few items now neatly folded and tucked under his arm, made a point of approaching me.  He wished me a pleasant day before leaving and pointedly ignored everyone else.  How very peculiar.  Shout-man continued to spray his shirts.

Cyst-woman had finished the descriptions of her underarm cysts and boils and moved on to her copious amounts of stomach mucous.  I began making deals with the dryers.  “If you work a little faster, I’ll hook you up with that smart-looking washer over there.  You know she wants you.”  “Okay, look, just get the clothes dry fast and I’ll see you get a long vacation on the Island of Misfit Toys.  Help me out a little, will ya?”

Finally!  It seemed to take forever (four and a half hours actually), and I’d already made several trips to my car with loads of clean things, but it was all finished.  Big Mama smiled at me and apologized again for her clumsy son.  Cyst-woman seemed rather dejected that I was leaving.  Shout-man finally started his washers.  Braided-beard had a twinkle in his eye as he grinned and waved.  I still think there’s a story there.

Home again after a very long day, I carried the first basket of items in and set it down on the carpeting.  Something was different.  With a frown on my face, I looked carefully about the place.  Had hell frozen?  Was I losing my mind?  Was I hallucinating? 

The house was clean.  Not just tidied a bit, but really clean.  The furniture gleamed, the carpet had luster and the kitchen was spotless.  Even the kitchen floor sparkled from a fresh scrubbing.  Halleluiah!  I didn’t know what had happened, but I thanked the goddess of all celestial housekeeping for her kind intervention and went in search of my husband.  Every room I passed was tidy, beds made, things put away. 

When I found him, he said something to me that I’ll never forget:  “You worked hard today.  I don’t want you to do anything but relax.”

My response?   “Who are you messing around with and how did you get her to clean the house?”

Yes, I’m sarcastic and rude, but give me a break.  This was completely out of character for him.  He’s not above helping me on house-keeping day, but he so rarely ever takes the initiative, I couldn’t help being a little suspicious. 

Then I decided it didn’t matter.  If he was screwing around, he was forgiven.  Gentlemen, let me clue you in on something about women.  When our homes are in order, all is right with the world.  We become very happy creatures.  I came home to a clean house.  That’s all that mattered.  And he got a big hug, a big smile and a very sloppy thank you kiss from a very grateful wife. 

After everything, the weekend was going to be all right.  And it had stopped raining.  The constant monsoon that was our Illinois spring had finally trickled to a halt. 

Sunday dawned sunny and hot.  The air was so thick you needed a machete to cut off a chunk to breathe, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me.  The yard needed a lot of attention.  All the rain had done wonders for the flower beds and tomatoes, but the weeds were taking over.  I had to use a digging fork to pull them all out.  Then my daughter helped me move the piles of refuse to the compost heap—a mound that doubled in size as we worked.  Together we planted the cannas my beloved Aunt Alice so loved and installed the water fountain my mother had given me for Christmas. 

My house was clean, my yard was in better order.  Things were looking up.  Still, one thing bothered me.  The skeleton of my ruined gazebo stood over the barren patio I’d built with my own hands.  It’s such a sad sight.  Knowing I wouldn’t be able to replace what Ma Nature tore asunder really irks me.  I loved writing out there.

Ah, but that’s why I was putting in the extra hours, right?  It was to pay for those extras we just can’t afford at present.  Times are hard all over and I should be grateful I have a job to put the time into.  Still, it would be many weeks of overtime before I could buy a new one.  It wasn’t going to happen this year.

But my house was clean.  When I woke Monday morning, it was still clean.  Oh, how I love a clean house, waking up and walking across the smooth carpeting, fixing breakfast in a neat, tidy kitchen.  I was in a good mood when I drove my child to school.  It was the same when I left work that evening.  Tuesday found me again in a good frame of mind even though I worked late and Wednesday morning when I got up, I found a few things out of place.  No problem.  In ten minutes I had the place neat as pin again.

Wednesday at work was a bit rough and very long.  It seemed everyone I talked to was in a foul temper and bent on taking it out on me.  Life at a call center is a pain in the ass sometimes.  But I was determined to keep everything positive.  I drove home slowly, taking time to unwind—after working extra hours—with the windows wide open and the wind in my hair. 

Pulling to a stop at the edge of the driveway, I got out of the car to get the mail.  There was an envelope from my father.  I thought, this can’t be good, and took a deep breath before opening it.  There were two small pieces of paper inside.  The first was a note.  “Spend this however you want.  With love, Dad.”  That’s all it said.

The second was a check—a very large check. 

My hand went to my mouth.  My butt went to the concrete.  The man who lived across the street came running.

He demanded to know if I was all right.  I said, “My dad is dying.”

“What?”

I handed him the note.  He looked more than a little perplexed as he helped me to my feet.  “My dad isn’t wealthy,” I told him, “and it’s not like him to do something like this.  He must be terribly ill.”

Once in the house, I started dialing the phone while handing the message to my husband.  The line rang as I handed him the check.  He dropped back into a chair and started grinning.  I got my dad’s machine and disconnected.  Once I got my mom on the phone, I asked her if she knew where Dad was and if he was all right.  She started laughing and asked if I’d got the check from him.

He had conferred with her before giving the gift.  It seems he felt his kids needed a little something to smile about and had written a check to each of us—just because.  By the time I finally got Dad on the phone, I was near tears.  I could buy a new washer, get the floor in my kitchen replaced, rebuild the deck, buy a new gazebo and still have enough to make reparations to my dwindling savings. 

My house was clean and no more OT!  Freedom! 

I called my sister and asked if she’d opened her mail.  She informed me she’d been too busy having fun with the neighbors.  “Open it,” I told her.  She launched into a tale of her evening’s fun and I interrupted.  “Open the *bleeping* mail!”

A moment later she was sobbing.  “He’s leaving us,” she said.  “Something’s wrong and he’s not telling us.”  All I could do was laugh.  It was the same reaction I’d had.  “He shouldn’t be doing this,” she insisted.  “We don’t need it.  He needs to keep his money.”

It must be nice, I thought.  No, I don’t really need it either.  The money crunch for us will be over by the end of this month, but it’s a very welcome gift.  Knowing how my father is with money makes it all the sweeter.  It’s not that he’s not generous.  If I really needed money, he’d write me a check in the bat of an eyelash with no questions asked, but he went without a lot as a kid and the lessons of childhood tend to stick for a lifetime.  He is a very frugal man.

Driving to work Thursday was a fun adventure.  With the princess in the back seat chattering away and feeding off my mood, and the radio playing a favorite tune, we made our way through town.  The stop-and-go traffic didn’t bother me.  Even my old nemesis in his pearl-white Cadillac Escalade couldn’t rile me.  I made a point of driving along side him.  As usual, he was juggling his coffee, his cell and his paperwork.  Today it even appeared he had his laptop open in the passenger seat, watching the screen instead of the road. 

With a wicked grin, I gave the horn a little toot.  His coffee hit the windshield and the cell phone hit the floorboard.  As he wrestled for control of the steering wheel and turned to give me a deadly glare, I smiled and waved—not the usual one-finger salute of most mornings, but a genuinely friendly wave.  I think he was a bit shocked because he took on that deer-in-the-headlights expression and offered a hesitant wave of his own. 

The princess laughed.  It’s good to hear her laughter.  The poor kid has been feeling the strain of our tension over the past few weeks.  Today, she’s feeling much lighter and much happier.  Work was actually fun with a few troublesome members of the team gone a day early for the holiday.  My mood of joy continues, a feeling I tried to pass on to everyone I met.  The long weekend awaits and much happy work is ahead at home.

So, to that end, the new Fortress of Solitude is in a carton in my garage—ready to be assembled.  I’m in search of contractor to fix the water damage to my house.  Tomorrow we’ll be shopping for a new washer.  And soon I’ll have the husband swinging a hammer on the new deck.  Life is sweet.  It’s truly amazing what a couple of thoughtful gestures can do for a person’s outlook. 

Drama in the Subdivision

 9/25/11

When you live in the ‘burbs of the state capitol, drama comes in many forms.  When one has a ten-year-old girl in the house, it can be especially unpleasant.  Take homework, for instance.  Getting her to do it can be murder.  It comes with whining, protests, shouting, violent stabbing of the paper with an abused pencil, more shouting (this time from Mama) and a whole lot of wasted energy.

Calgon, take me away.

When I got home from work on Friday, the drama was in the air so thick I needed a chainsaw to cut through it.  The first alarm went off in my brain when I saw my child with two neighbor girls in the driveway.  I remember what it was like to be that age.  I remember the games girls play and three is not a good number.

For those readers who don’t have daughters, let me just say you’re missing out on something.  Boys can be mean, can bully, pull pranks on one another and make things lively at home, but they got nothing on girls. 

Girls are sneaky.  Girls are cruel.  An odd number of girls spells disaster.

So, there were three little girls in my drive.  They were playing, and on the outside, everything looked good, but I knew better.  Then they all headed off to one of their houses down the street.  My first inclination was to stop them, but a mother has to let her child learn about reality, even if she knows the outcome.

Less than ten minutes later, our little princess came back.  She was crying, told us she felt so bad.  One of the other girls told her she wanted to play with the other without our princess.  When princess objected she was told to “get the f*&% out of here”.  As a mother, I saw red.  I wanted to tear the potty-mouthed girl a new one.  I wanted to confront her mother and ask what kind of home she was running.

Instead, I put my arms around my shaking child in an effort to lend comfort.  The two children in question have done this sort of thing before.  My child is not the only victim.  And the two girls aren’t the only ones to do this sort of thing.  And, let’s face it, my child is no angel in this regard.  I’m sure she’s done the same thing.  It’s a girl thing—odd man (or girl) out.  I know this and do everything I can to make her feel better.

It didn’t help, of course.  She was heart-broken.  My husband was in a rage.  My wiggly heart began to do a dance in my chest.  There are many different kinds of stress, but at the base of each type is the same real cause:  The mind’s power to override the body’s urge to beat the living crap out of someone.  I was in full stress mode.

The girls came back to retrieve a bicycle left behind in the previous exodus.  My very Italian husband, in full vendetta mode, stomped through the door.  Oh, he was going to take care of this.

My heart flipped.  I reached out a hand to grab him but missed.  I yelled for him to come back.  Then that little monster in the back of my brain—that naughty little voice we all have—chuckled with evil glee.  It said to let him have the child.  I almost smiled before shaking myself and holding my daughter back.

I couldn’t hear what he said, but he opened a new can of worms.  He only yelled at one of the girls, the one who used such foul language on his darling daughter.  Said child went home in tears.  I knew it would only be a matter of minutes.

I was right.  It was twenty minutes and I got a message on-line from her mother.  I cringed when I saw her name.  I wanted to clobber the man of the house.  I might still do it on pure principle.

It seems her child wanted to move away, quit her current school and live with her father.  She was humiliated and hurt.

I wrote back that I had the same issue at home with a little girl in anguished tears over someone she thought was her friend using such bad language and chasing her away.  I apologized for my husband’s behavior.  I told her if I had been the one confronting the situation, I would have had the same conversation with the child’s mother and not the child.

There’s always the hope that such a statement would put an end to the discussion.  My daughter said she felt bad because she didn’t want to get anyone in trouble and that Daddy probably scared the girl.  I smiled and said she got off easy.  She’s lucky she didn’t have to face me. 

Princess’s eyes got huge.  “Yeah, Mom.  You’re way more scary.”

My point was made.

And I got another message from the angry mother down the street.  She was not mollified and she was not happy.  I pulled the heart condition card.

Yeah, that’s right.  I did it. 

I told her how I’d had a recent heart attack, how my doctor wanted me to avoid all stress, but that I was doing everything I could to resolve the situation.  My monitor had gone off twice, the monitoring company had called and my head was pounding, but I was there to help her get through this.  It was all true, but really not something I wanted to share with the neighborhood. 

And end to the matter was found.  She told me she was willing to help with anything I needed.  Kind of her, seeing as our children were at war and my husband was acting as a five-star general on the opposing side. 

I have one rule about kids.  I never get involved in their battles.  I’m there to patch the wounds, bake cookies and make Kool-Aid.  Beyond that, I don’t have any part in it.  Children have to learn about the social pecking order on their own, or they grow up miserable and unable to cope.  I think it’s harder on the parents than the children, but we have to let them learn on their own.

A Good GP in the Hand Is Worth a Dozen Specialists on the Branch

9/21/11

Today was very enlightening.  Everyone should have a good general/family practitioner.  Mine is a real doll.  Doc is a fabulous lady with a genuine twinkle in her eye and always ready to lend a hand.

I don’t believe she thinks too much of my cardiologist, but I can’t be sure.  She did mention something about finding me a new one when I visited her today.  The hospital set up the appointment.  I hadn’t planned on bothering her with all this hole-in-heart business, but they insisted, so I went.  I’m really glad I did.

Doc was busy, so I was sent in to see the nurse practitioner who pulled up all my test results and started to shake her head.  “Yeah,” I said.  “I’m a hot mess.”

We talked a bit and she told me Doc had just had the same hole repaired in her heart.  My brows shot up.  Really?  Doc took time out of her busy day to come talk to me.  She spent more time with me on the fly than that blamed cardiologist did in all three of my visits with him. 

I got the diagnosis wrong from the other doctor’s nurse.  I don’t have VSD.  Interesting.  So, this hole in my heart, which I was told was not likely the cause of my atrial fibrillation, is most probably the cause of it all.  Even my life-long fight with migraines could be attributed to it.  Nice.

ASD.  Atrial septal defect.  It sounds icky.  What it means is the oxygen rich blood goes back to the lungs instead of out into the body.  I over-breathe; hyperventilate, while the rest of the body is starved for oxygen.  My head hurts.  Now I know why.

It also means that blood pools in the top half of my heart, goes stagnate and clots.  Those clots go straight to the brain.  Fabulous.  It’s a good thing I have naturally thin blood and have been taking aspirin daily for the past two years.  It was about two years ago when the situation seemed to start getting worse, but no one could hear the heart palps but me.  Sigh.

Okay, so what’s to be done?  Well, I’m told by the good and fabulous doc that most insurance companies won’t cover it unless you have terrible symptoms—such as a stroke.  My chance for stroke has been greatly elevated by this little pinprick of a hole, but I have to actually have a stroke to qualify for repair.  Excuse me, but I’m trying to avoid a stroke. 

The battle lines are drawn.  Doc is unhappy with the lack of information from the cardiologist and wants to see about getting me a new guy, because the current guy has not told me a single thing about my condition.  I love my doctor.

I will have to find someone to go to bat for me, someone willing to fight with the insurance company on my behalf because my GP believes it has to be fixed.  I’m inclined to agree.  Where I come from, if there’s a hole in the levy, you plug it or the river floods the crops.  The surgery is extremely costly.  The device used to close the defect commands 90% of the cost. 

I need a drink. 

And a big stick.  I think I’ll put it someplace where it will do the most good. 

In the meantime, I’m waiting for a stroke, pulmonary embolism or heart failure.  Meh.  Just another day.

Another Trip to the Good Heart Fairy

9/20/11

The return to work yesterday was a bust.  I was late because I had to pick up paperwork at the doctor’s office.  It took them a minute to get it together. 

So, then I drove to work.  I parked in my usual area, walked up the stairs to my cube.  Only problem was, by the time I got to my seat, I was feeling pretty rough.  After fixing my tea, I realized I wasn’t going to make it through the day. 

I wasn’t having issues with my heart, at least not that I could tell.  The problem was breath, or lack thereof.  It must have been the stairs.  I could not get enough wind in my lungs to feed my body and brain. 

After taking my first call, it was evident I couldn’t carry on.  I clocked out and headed back to the doctor’s office.  They hooked me up with an appointment for the next day and sent me home.  I almost went to the hospital.  Not being able to breathe is a terrible feeling.

Today, I felt better.  Catching my breath was still a trick, but I could move without feeling like going back to bed.  My day started with a trip back to ye ol’ cardiologist.  He’s a friendly sort.  Good of him to fit me into his schedule. 

He asked questions, made notes and listened to my heart.  He smiled.  He wrote more notes.  He smiled again.

Well, at least he didn’t grunt at me.

Then he voiced his concern about the breathing issue.  I told him I thought it was the medication.  He told me he thought it was my heart.  Joy.  The medication was cut in half and I was told to rest.  He left the room.

Remember Michael, that much put-upon technician from the stress test?  He entered my room next, carrying a new gizmo intended be my lifeline.  It’s an event monitor, which is currently strapped to my hip.  He explained that I’m to push the magic button any time I feel onset of symptoms. 

I asked if this was to help them find my body when my heart finally seized.  He gave me a strange look.  The man still has no sense of humor. 

I’m not sure if I should be alarmed, but he had a miserable time trying to get the thing to work.  It comes with three sets of batteries, each set designed to last ten days.  This means I’m to wear if a full month.  Good times.  Only problem, the batteries were all dead.  This does not instill a great deal of confidence. 

When he finally got it working and wired me up to it—after I showed him the rash from previous adhesive electrodes and reminded him of how many times I told him I was allergic during the last tests—he tried to get the thing to transmit.  Again, it didn’t work.  He dragged me through the office to a window where it finally transmitted.  So, if I’m to have a heart attack, I can’t be in a brick or stone building.  I’ll keep that in mind when I schedule the event.

Then I was sent home.  I don’t really feel like the good doctor did much, or that he’s taking any of this very seriously.  All I could think of was to tell him, “Hey, this is my life.  I’m a human being, not some product you’re working on.”  I probably would’ve told him, too, but he had disappeared again.  Sigh.  Specialists.

At The Heart of It All

It’s a funny thing about hearts.  The human heart holds all the joys and dreams, love and anger, laughter and tears of our lives.  I have them all in droves.  The funny thing, though, is how they don’t leak out when you have a hole in your heart.

It’s called ventricular septal defect, or VSD.  It’s not uncommon, present at birth in a large number of individuals.  Most close without issues during the first three years of life.  For some of us, it doesn’t.  It’s no big problem for those who grow up with these tiny perforations, but occasionally it can be discovered when one visits a hospital under cardiac duress. 

I was on my way to work last Wednesday when I decided I’d drive to the ER instead.  You see, I was having palpitations.  This is not unusual for me.  I’ve had them all my life, but they usually go away within a few minutes.  The odd aspects of this episode were: 1. I woke with the condition, which has never happened before, and 2. the condition did not resolve on its own.

I started getting concerned when each irregular beat seemed to rob me of my breath.  It’s a very disquieting sensation.  Sitting at a red light, I took stock of my risk factors.  I’m a smoker, my job is sedentary and very stressful, I spend many hours sitting and writing, and I’m not as young as I’d like to think I am.  Hmmm…

I turned right instead of left and headed to the med center.  A man smiled at me in the parking lot as I walked to the door.  A woman eyed me suspiciously as we passed when I entered the ER.  The admission clerk asked the nature of my complaint.  When I told her there was a bird fluttering around in my chest and I was having a hard time catching my breath, I was summarily placed in a chair.  Machines were attached to my body and it was nearly impossible to get a blood pressure reading.  They tried so many times my arm was bruised. 

As it turned out, my blood pressure was low-normal and nothing to be concerned about, but the heart monitor was bleeping out of control.  The nurse looked at the clerk and a wheelchair was ordered.  They trucked me into an exam room and left me to the tender mercies of the waiting staff.

I have no training in medicine, but I do know human nature.  The look that passed between them was not a good one.  Okay, so this is probably a little more serious than I thought.  Maybe it was a good thing I decided to blow off work in favor of a quick check.

Tests were ordered, nurses and technicians entered and left.  I was hooked up to a heart monitor and then an electroencephalograph and a ginormous tube shoved into a vein in my left arm.  It hurt.  I hate the nurse who did it.  Even more fun was the lovely forked tube that was shoved up my nose to deliver oxygen.  Seriously?  Was all this necessary?

I didn’t think it was but the EKG showed a different picture.  Aside from the 100+ beat differential in my heart beat second-by-second, it also showed a distinct absence of the all-important “P-wave”.  The on-call physician wandered in.  He seemed friendly, not bad to look at, had a winning smile.  He didn’t seem too concerned, but I know how they are trained to keep panic-stricken heart patients at ease.

I don’t do panic.  It’s really not in my nature—unless you count the time I saw my three-year-old daughter tumbling head-first from the top of a tree.  She caught herself and I yanked her out, vowing to whip her backside if she scared ten years off my life like that again.  Come to think of it, she may be the reason for my now-present heart condition.  I may go in there and smack her just on principle.

So, when the nice little doctor said he wasn’t too concerned but after discussing with the resident cardiologist, they were going to admit me, I nailed him to the proverbial wall. 

“Spill it, doc.  What’s happening to me?  And don’t sugar-coat it.”

“Atrial fibrillation, that’s what we call it,” he said.  As he explained it to me, he continued to watch the monitor.  He was watching for signs of alarm or undo stress.  It didn’t happen.  He seemed satisfied and walked away to have a room ordered.

After he left, a gorgeous young resident walked in with his equally stunning student.  They didn’t really have anything to do with my case, but they were there to learn.  I didn’t mind.  They were real eye candy.  Mmm-mm.  As they chatted with me, their eyes wandered to my heart monitor.  They both suddenly looked as if watching an exciting football game with their favorite teams running neck and neck.  Whatever was happening, it was fun to watch. 

“You think that’s cool,” I said, “wait until you see what happens when I raise my arm.”  When I did, the beats-per-minute jumped from 69 to 185.  I lowered my arm.  It went down to 80.  I raised both arms and it was off the chart.  Their eyes were huge.  They really began asking questions then.  I told them it was their faults.  Good-looking men get me all excited.  They both blushed a bright crimson.  It does a woman good.

By the time they finally had me upstairs in the cardiac wing, the situation had resolved itself.  My heart went back to its regular rhythm.  When I told the nurse it had stopped, she looked at the monitor and went in search of the cardiologist.  Without even talking to me, he had signed a plan of treatment.  Not sure how I feel about that.

Then he came to see me.  He was a nice-looking man, very presentable, with a friendly nature.  I so detest cold demeanors.  When you’re talking about my health, you better have a modicum of empathy or you run the risk of being told off.  He seemed personable enough and told me about my condition as well as the medications he wanted to put me on.  I settled only for the pill that would lower my heart rate.  I’m not one to take a lot of chemicals into my body.

I was to see him again the next day in his office.  He ordered more tests.  More tests?  Seriously?  I was already feeling like a guinea pig and had sores where skin had been removed with the adhesive tabs from all the machines.  Ah, such great joy.

So, I was sent home.  By the time I left, my mother, her husband and my mother-in-law had all been in to visit.  I refused to allow my husband to visit.  I’d spend more time watching out for his feelings than my own, so I told him to stay at work.  When they were ready to discharge me, I called to let him know.  He was relieved.

The next day, I arrived at the doctor’s office at the appointed time.  As it turned out, I didn’t actually see him.  I saw nurses and technicians, but not the good doctor.  Again, I’m not sure how I feel about that.  Actually, it kind of ticked me off.  

The tests were to be an echocardiogram and a nuclear stress test.  Owing to the nature of my condition, they said, I would not be expected to get on the treadmill.  That’s a good thing.  I used to have gerbils when I was a kid.  They would get on their little gerbil treadmills and run until they stopped of pure exhaustion.  No matter how long or how hard they ran, they never got anywhere.  I had no intention of being like a gerbil.

The echo was fun.  Got to watch my heart beat.  The tech thought I had a hole in my heart.  She did a bubble test.  Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but I always thought that if you got air bubbles in your blood, you would die in excruciating pain.  So when she told me what she was planning, I almost went through the roof.  Apparently, one does not get the bends from this little test and it takes much larger amounts of air to cause the condition.  I think my reaction amused the Amazon who conducted the tests. 

I watched the foamy bubbles enter the heart and saw them leak from one side of my heart to the next through the side wall.  Ooo-kaaaay.  Not normal.  Interesting.

Next, it was on the nuke stress testing lab.  It was an assembly line of patients at various stages of the process.  It’s funny that most cardiac patients don’t have much sense of humor.  It would’ve been nice to be warned about that going in.  I think I offended a couple.  Oh, well.  Being the youngest one in the room by a number of years, I think a few of them were somewhat suspicious of me.

Now, as the test was explained to me, I kept thinking about what my mother told me in the hospital.  She had offered a dire warning about this particular test.  She said she couldn’t describe the feeling she had when the chemicals flowed through her body, but it was horrible.  I rolled my eyes.  This is going to be enjoyable.

Okay, so mom was right.  It was a nightmare.  There was a terrible rush, as if I had run a mile flat out.  Only think is, every time I run a mile, the stress of the activity is accompanied by those tasty endorphins that cushion the stress with a feeling of euphoria.  This doesn’t happen when he stress is induced with a chemical agent.  Where the hell are my endorphins?

The feeling came upon me like a blow to the head.  It felt as if my brain was trying to escape through my ears.  The top of my skull needed a pressure valve.  My stomach began a treacherous climb toward my gullet.  My eyes began to cross.  I couldn’t breathe. 

“Michael,” I said to the tech, “get me a bucket.”

“Do you feel sick?” he asked.

Was the man stupid?  Did he have any concept of the poison pouring through my veins?

“No,” I said.  “I thought I would build sand castles on the floor.  Just get the damned bucket.”

Charlie was the other tech.  He just smiled and told me it would burn off soon.  Was he kidding?  How soon was “soon”?  I wanted it gone immediately.  If I could’ve lifted my arms, I would have throttled him.  I never wanted to tell someone to go to hell so badly, but he survived and so did I.

It was over in less than five minutes with my blood pressure not going too high, so no need for the unfortunate crash cart that sat too close for comfort.  They sent me back to the waiting room to put in more time before they took more pictures. 

After several hours, it was all done but the waiting.  I went home to wait without once hitting someone—even though my arm is hopelessly purple and sore from the wicked IV’s.  My mother would be so proud.

As luck would have it, I didn’t have to wait long.  They called me the same afternoon and told me about the VSD, the atrial fibrillation and the thankfully healthy heart and arteries.  No blockages, no disease, only the congenital defects causing my condition.  I’ll be on medication for the rest of my life, but I’ll stop fainting at dinner with my friends or in the break room at work, in front of my supervisors.  It should be a relief to them. The best part is I likely won't have as many migraines now.  That's a relief to me.

I love this day

Okay. Maybe “love” is too strong a word, but it sounds nicer than “loathe”.

Back-story setup: A few weeks ago, my much-beloved neighbor succumbed the economic climate and decided to sign her beautiful home over to the bank rather than continue to struggle making ends meet. It was a tough decision and I hated to see her go. So now her home is empty and the two-story, much-used playhouse out back is fair game.

Which brings us to the present day—a day, I might add, which started before 6:00 AM. The playhouse is right outside my bedroom window. Some neighbor boys decided it would be fun to get up before the freaking sun and play construction worker. They borrowed some of their dad’s tools and went to work.

WTF? It’s not even sunrise and the little brats are hammering and pounding away at this thing. The resulting noise pollution woke first my child and then my husband and I. Of course the neighborhood dogs joined the chorus. Before long there was a cacophony of racket designed to rob everyone of much-needed Saturday sleep-in time. I suddenly decided I hated little boys.

Now, I try to be a good neighbor. I don’t yell and go into fits over such things because it’s not good for local relations. I growled a bit and grumbled and stumbled to the bathroom to wash my face.

Once I got the glue off my eyes and managed to get the kid away from the TV, I glanced out the window. The boys were carrying firewood away from my wood pile. Damn. How many times do I have to tell them it’s not safe? How many times do I have to remind them to leave stuff that doesn’t belong to them alone?

After a yell out the door to tell them to put it back and keep clear of the pile, it was time to start in on the house. Holy crap! The kid was only up about fifteen minutes before me. How the hell did she do that much damage in so short a time? Time to hit the warpath.

Sensing the trouble in the air, my husband wisely decided to take his family out to breakfast. Good thing, too. He was next on my hit list.

Back home, I saw the mess in the garage. I could barely get the car in, and with so much water standing in the yard, gardening was out, so it was time to clean the garage. The things I found! I won’t even go into it, but suffice it to say, I was pretty angry at the state of affairs—especially when I discovered how much of the junk in there belonged to all the neighbor boys. It’s all neatly piled in the yard now with a sign that says take it home by Sunday night or lose it forever.

Taking a break from the garage work, I decided to slog through the yard and see how much damage was done by all the rain. That’s when I found the big pile of trash the kids had carried from the playhouse and put in my yard. I suppose I shouldn’t have been so angry, seeing as how they had filled my burn barrel (thinking it was a trash can) and piled the rest neatly in three huge piles, but damn! This was the last straw. Time to talk to the parents.

So, I got all the firewood out of the playhouse (in seven trips) and stacked it back up. I drove down the road to speak to the very hot and hunky Ken about his children. No luck, no one home. Double damn.

I got back home to discover someone—during my short absence of five minutes—had nailed my mailbox. It was lying in the road, gasping out its last breath. Triple damn. My mail was scattered in the mud.

After asking my child if she had seen anything and watching her blasé shrug, I threw up my arms in disgust. The mailbox—looking a little worse for wear—is back on the job. It only took a sledge hammer and the vent of my growing frustration to put it back in place.

Back in the house to fix lunch, I discover the little hurricane had been at it again. When I went looking for her, I saw her clear down the block at the bad neighbor boys’ house. I had just told her not to go over there. Of course the little twit spilled the beans—since they were now home—about how angry I was. Time-out time. “In your room until I tell you to come out.”

The lunch done, house back in order and supper on the table, there’s a knock at the door. By this time, I’m very tired, very cranky and ready to let someone have it. Hot Ken was at the door with one of his errant boys in tow. Shit. I don’t want to deal with this now.

There’s a long discussion, ending with the boy being sent out back to clean up the trash and promises that I’ll be able to get some rest tonight. Hah! Believe it when I see it. I know his boys. Then he took a look at the big old dying tree in my yard and decided it needs to come down. Now! Oh, hell. That’s all I need to deal with. He volunteered.

This tree is situated between the corner of my house and the corner of my other neighbor’s garage. The only place to safely drop it is in the street. To fell it correctly takes real experience. Hot Ken? How do I know his capabilities? The man was nearly salivating at the prospect. Apparently he’s a closet lumberjack.

Of course, the thought of watching his muscles bulge as the sweat trickles down his naked chest is tempting, but I declined his offer. I really don’t need a lawsuit on my hands.

Supper’s cold by the time he left. So, after nuking, we finally sit down to eat. I’m no longer hungry. I’m just tired. The kid is whining. The husband is bitching. The cat is howling. The neighbor boys are hammering away in the playhouse again.

I need a drink. Or a valium. Or a really big gun…