Cousin,
You said you'd be interested in a narrative of my latest medical adventure when I had time to write it. Well, it's 4:30 in the morning, an hour earlier than my usual rising time, and I'm wide awake, and writing is a better use of time than surfing the internet or even working the crossword puzzle I didn't get to yesterday.
Often things happen out of the blue; certainly this latest brush with mortality seemed to.
But it's like piloting a boat across a tidal inlet: Sometimes the best way to see where you're actually going is to look back at your wake. In this latest case, I was confident in my compass -- the three bypasses I had thought would last as long as I did -- and I damn near ended up on the rocks.
Things got choppy on a Saturday two weeks ago. The started with me feeling vaguely crummy; nothing specifically wrong, just not a bundle of energy. Later in the day, I was helping Adelaide plant some pansies down by the seawall. When I walked back up to the house, not a great distance, I was really out of breath. I also felt a tightness in my chest. Not pain, not even that squeezing feeling that people often describe. Just a tightness that I still can't say whether was real or psychosomatic. I took my blood pressure. It was higher than it should be, but not dangerously so.
Then I tried to do what we so often do: deny what is. It's arguing that you've followed that safe course on the compass while hearing the surf pounding in your ears.
I'd played 18 holes of golf in Auburn the day before and then driven with Adelaide over to Clanton to pick up a car we were thinking about buying. Earlier in the week I had been in the gym at least a couple of times, including good sessions on the stationary bike, and had taken at least one good, long walk.
But, dammit, something just wasn't right, and we decided to go to the emergency room on the theory that a false alarm was better than a real one unheeded.
Potential heart attacks get prompt attention in the ER. They gave me some stuff that would help if I were having a heart attack, including aspirin, and did an EKG, took an X-ray and drew some blood. The ER physician said the EKG and X-ray looked normal, and there was nothing in the blood chemistry to indicate a heart attack, but he had talked with my cardiologist, who said they should keep me overnight and that he would look in on me on Sunday.
It turned out to be a good call.
Although my EKG looked normal, it looked different than the last one I'd had when I had my annual checkup with him in February, a checkup that included an echo cardiogram and a stress test, which did not reveal any imminent dangers. My cholesterol and triglycerides had been good, too.
There was enough question to warrant a heart on Monday, so I spent a second night in the hospital.
I really didn't think he was going to find anything (denial again), but he emerged from the procedure to tell Adelaide that he had found scar tissue creating blockages at all three sites where veins had been grafted onto the arteries. They scheduled sessions to put in stents on Friday and the following Monday. The reason for doing it in two sessions was that the dye they use in the procedure can damage the kidneys if there's too much of it in the blood.
Adelaide didn't even have to work hard to keep me from doing much physical activity while we waited for Friday, and I plenty of time to ruminate about how I got to this point.
After the bypasses (three years and a month earlier) I had worked at keeping fit and at eating wisely. While I hadn't limited my diet to leaves and twigs, a hamburger was a rare treat; we didn't eat red meat of any kind very often. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had bacon. We always used skim milk and put flax seed meal on our oatmeal or cereal in the mornings.
But I had to admit, I had not gotten as much exercise during the hot, dry summer (which around here seemed to start in May and is just now ending) as I ordinarily do. And I had noticed that I would be breathing a little hard when I began some activity, although that went away after I got going. And I was a little slower going up hills than I used to, but I didn't have to stop to catch my breath. And I am 70 years old; that ought to account for some slowing down.
So there were signs, but doggone subtle ones.
On that Friday the doctor put four stents in one artery, and on Monday he put in two more stents, one in each of two arteries.
As I'm recovering, I've thought about my brother and sister. My sis, a year older than I, has always eaten pretty much what she wanted, and what she wanted was often fried or salty or sweet. My brother, four and a half years younger, is a very disciplined eater. Both of them have coronary systems to envy. I think they inherited genes from my mother's side of the family. My inheritance, apparently comes from the Brown side of the family, not particularly noted for longevity.
Even if fate has drawn the line on the chart, though, I will keep trying to account for the current.
You recently sent me a copy of one of your favorite poems. There is a poignant line: How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
I can promise that I will not rust unburnish'd.
Cousin Bill
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
