Be Still, My Heart
Mamacita says: I know I haven’t been keeping up with my posting, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t been a very good comment-acknowledger, but there is a reason I’ve been more absent-minded than usual lately. My husband went to his doctor for a routine checkup last week and yesterday he had bypass surgery. We were told that it was to be a quadruple bypass, but it ended up “merely” a triple. I told him it was like golf: the lower the number, the better.
There were no symptoms, none, zip, zero, nil, just a general tiredness. No pains, no chest-clutching, no drama. Just a question from his doctor: “How are you feeling these days?” and Hub’s answer: “Fine; I’m just tired.” As I sat in the hospital waiting room with other women whose husbands/brothers/fathers were having this surgery also, I discovered that quite often there ARE no symptoms. We associate open heart surgery with drastic happenings: heart attacks! vampire bites! cutlasses! sword fights! karate kicks! avada kedavra! But more often than not, there is just that feeling of exhaustion. One woman in the waiting room told me that her husband had just casually mentioned to his golfing partner that he got a funny feeling in his neck when he looked UP. The partner had recently read an article mentioning that as a symptom of blocked arteries. Who knew? I didn’t. But I do now. I also now know that symptoms can be as simple as a pain in EITHER arm, or a persistent lower back ache. Some people’s TEETH hurt when their arteries are blocked. Women sometimes mistake breaking out in a cold sweat, jaw or face pain, and hyperventilating as being symptoms of menopause, which they most often are, rather than symptoms of a pending or actual heart attack, which they occasionally are.
Now you all know these things too, and maybe you’ve learned them just in time.
I never associated a “funny feeling” or just general exhaustion with heart trouble, but from now on I will. Maybe all of you should, too.
Thank you all for the kind words of support this week. You have made a tremendously large difference in my life, and it’s such a GOOD difference.
Things I Haven't Done Yet
Mamacita says: Sometimes we hear about certain things and we say to ourselves, or even out loud, “Oh, I could NEVER do that!” Then a week later, we find ourselves eating our words and doing it.
Many times, these new things we find ourselves doing are simple things that just require a little push to step up and do, like carnival rides, or unfamiliar foods, or meeting new people. Other times, we are actually talking about something dreadful that we’ve read or heard about, things like people who neglect or abuse their children, or someone who knocked over the liquor store, or hurt someone deliberately in any way. Sometimes, we say it when we hear about someone who has done something extremely brave or even heroic: climbed a mountain, saved a life, etc.
But then there are those times when those words come out of us. . . I could NEVER do that! . . . because we just can’t picture or even imagine ourselves in such a situation. Such as, you know, someone close to us facing serious surgery in, say, a few hours. And then, if we are made of anything sturdy at all, we step up to the plate and we do a lot of things we never imagined we could, or would ever have to, do, because when someone is depending on us, we always manage to come through.
1. I have never filled out an Advance Directive.
2. I have never packed a bag for someone else that didn’t contain vacation stuff.
3. I have never taken a permanent marker and drawn an X on someone else’s body without smirking snarkily. Because, you know, it, um, marks the spot.
4. I have never eaten any kind of egg except the kind you buy at Marsh for 89 cents a dozen. They’re from chickens, or so I’ve been promised.
5. I have never tasted heavy, dark rye bread without gagging.
6. Ditto for any kind of flavored soda if it came that way. Cherry coke, lime cola, lemon Pepsi, cherry Sprite. . . . No, thank you. In fact, get it AWAY FROM ME. I’d rather go without.
7. I do, however, enjoy the very occasional cherry coke if it was mixed at a fountain. Key words: very occasional. If it’s not a fountain coke, and it’s flavored, I have never been able to force it past my lips. It even SMELLS like medicine.
8. I have never cared for a thick hamburger. I love those extremely thin Steak & Shake burgers, though. You know, the kind that make people make comments such as “Did you want a little beef with that pile of pickles?”
9. In spite of my appearance and the assumptions one would naturally make thereof, I have never cared much for most pasta. Some pasta I adore. Most pasta, I do not. It’s all in the sauce, of course, so I suppose the correct phrasing would be, I have never cared much for most pasta sauces. But aren’t we picky tonight! Oh wait, that was me. Never mind.
10. I haven’t ridden in a heliocopter. I’ve watched enough MASH episodes to imagine how it must be, though.
Tomorrow promises to be a very long day. My tiny pink Asus EEE is charging up, as are my cell phone, my Mp3 player, and my iPod. One bag is packed and one more for me, to go.
I think I’ll finish watching the last two discs of Ugly Betty Season Two, and go to bed. Call any time tomorrow; I’ll mostly just be marking time.
Crop Circles
Yeah, well, not much happens here, Mamacita says.
And people in these parts do tend to make a humongous big deal when something does.
We passed by this field on the way to town today, and both sides of the narrow country road were filled with cars and gaping tourists. Go figure.
The tornado passing over us last night had nothing to do with it, I’m sure. Completely coincidental.
Bear in mind that this is a community that has at least one UFO sighting per week. This one time at band camp a woman called the police and reported that her trailer was shaking and she was sure it was the aliens.
Honestly, the police log here is more interesting than the National Enquirer.
