Poetry – zenzalei

Life On Hold

Well, I guess I’m not doing Horrordailies as much as Horror-On-Days-I-Can.

My head has been elsewhere this past week: The CT angiogram I mentioned in my last entry revealed a little trouble brewing, so I will have a heart catheterization with possible angioplasty and stent placement on Thursday the 16th.

This procedure is generally low risk and they usually send you home the same day as long as nothing goes wrong. But I am nervous about this because when they placed a stent placed at the midpoint of the same pesky artery the night I had my heart attack, I almost died when the heart went into v-tach, an irregular rhythm at the bottom of the heart that doesn’t allow the heart to fill with enough blood between beats. Now they need to look at the top of the artery because the potential problem is in the “widowmaker” position and I am worried about the same thing happening again.

I’m not in imminent danger in that the blockage is only 40%, which is considered mild, believe it or not. However, the plaque is the soft sticky kind that is prone to rupturing. If it ruptures, the body sends clotting soldiers to the site of the wound, you get a blood clot in your heart, and you have a heart attack—which is exactly what happened two years ago when the midpoint of the artery was 40-60% blocked.

With a work trip coming up in November, the approaching holidays, and having to find a new place to live and then pack up and move by the end of the year, I needed this like a hole in the head. But if they do place a stent and all goes well, chances are that it won’t be my heart that gets me in the end: The rest of the heart looks pretty good and the stress test I had in August showed that the heart is functioning very well. In fact, the tech looked at me and said, “You said you had a heart attack? Wow, it’s like nothing ever happened.” Enough clinicians from my cardiologist to my internist to emergency department physicians to cardiac nurses have made similar comments that I trust my heart is not weak or failing.

Think of it like a car: Everything may be running well, but if the fuel injector gets clogged, there will be engine misfires, poor acceleration, and hard starts. You want to fix it before the “check engine” light goes on and you stall out.

Halloween pumpkins carved to show car warning lights such as check oil and check engine. — Truly terrifying.

If they do place a stent, as long as there are no problems, it’s an outpatient procedure or a one-night stay in the hospital for observation, at most. One guy in my cardiac rehab class a couple of years ago had five placed at once and went home that evening. A few days of rotting on the couch, a week of not lifting anything, and then life goes on, work trip, packing, and move. Getting a stent would require three months of cardiac rehab and a year back on the antiplatelet medication that had me bruised like I played hockey without protective gear, but that’s all manageable.

Still, not fun. Unfortunately, I’ll have to be awake, if slightly sedated, for the procedure. Medical stuff generally doesn’t gross me out or make me queasy. I just don’t want to be awake if something goes south and then be aware of all the ensuing commotion as they try to keep me from kicking the bucket right there on the table. The last time I had a cath, I was out cold from the heart attack. I’m hoping I don’t remember any of it this time either.

And now I’d like a word with the internet at large. While I was preparing to write this entry, I began to type in a search for “do patients remember their cardiac catheterizations?” This is what autopopulated:

A Google search showing that "do patients fart during surgery" is a popular query. — Who asked this?

Well, it turns out that patients can and do pass gas during surgery, and it can be dangerous. Witness the case of a woman whose tale of woe made it into Women’s Health. She was undergoing laser surgery on her cervix when she passed gas. The laser ignited the gas and caused a spark that lit the surgical drape on fire, and she got badly burned from the waist down.

Anyway, what I would like to know is who is Googling that? And why?

Until next time, friends and fiends.

A plastic model of a human heart with a haiku that says long white coat/we found something/life on hold — Image: Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

A Dimmer

My mind is a bit muddled tonight, like my brain is saturated in goo, owing to a whopping two hours of sleep. I just didn’t feel tired when last my head hit a pillow, perhaps because I forgot to turn on my blue light filter, f.lux. That app is a lifesaver when I remember to use it. It gradually turns your screen a dark salmon color as the sun sets outside. The idea is to keep your eyes from tricking your brain into thinking it’s daylight. Daywalkers need that like a hole in the head, so I’m glad for the wonders of modern technology that counter the other wonders of modern technology.

No, this is not sponsored content. I’ve been using that app for years. An ex-boyfriend who was partially color-blind hated it, so when I stayed at his place and wanted to keep him from looking over my shoulder while I was reading or writing, I’d turn it on.

See, one night, before you could stream YouTube directly out of your TV, I VERY STUPIDLY agreed to hook up my laptop to his huge flat-screen so we could indulge our sadistic humor with some FAIL videos. I had another tab open on my browser which just happened to display an old private blog of mine that had some randy fiction I had written when earthly pleasures like that still interested me. He clicked on the tab and the first line to the story on the screen was a doozy: Jake was always up for a good, hard fuck.

“NICE.”

“Oops. I had forgotten about that.”

“Who’s Jake?”

Ah, crap. Here we go.

“Don’t worry. This entire blog is fiction.”

“But who IS he?”

“It’s FICTION.”

“Who’s it ABOUT?”

“NO one.”

After about four rounds of that I said, “Will you look at the date on this, please? It was before I divorced my ex-husband.”

“So it’s about HIM?”

“No. I said it was FICTION.”

“So you made it up?”

“That’s what fiction is, yes?”

“I guess.”

I don’t think he bought it because for three months after that he kept trying to figure out who Jake was.

Anyway, that’s when I started turning f.lux on as a deterrent whenever I was reading or writing on my laptop at his place. That was about 12 years ago, so it’s an old app.

And this, kids, is why you don’t go poking around your beloved’s laptop when your beloved is a writer. You might up in said writer’s public blog years after you break up.

Now I need refreshment, so I leave you with this:

An oil slick, with a haiku that says "dark prism/slips over surface/suffocation" — Image: Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

It Begins

In case anyone was wondering about the social fallout of Donald Trump winning Tuesday’s election, it’s already starting.

Men are commenting on women’s social media saying “your bodies, our choice.” I’ve read several accounts by parents whose daughters came home from school in tears after boys said that to them.

There are accounts of children of immigrants coming home afraid because their classmates are telling them they’re going to be deported.

There are posts advising gay couples to get their affairs set up as though they were single so they can be prepared for when their marriages are annulled.

There are posts telling people with chronic illnesses how to get their medications on the dark web when they lose their insurance, and posts hinting at where to get drugs to die by suicide when people can no longer afford their treatments.

Women who can afford to buy Plan B are being advised to stock up so they have some to take or to give their friends and daughters in the event of sexual assault.

People are posting Google docs listing the names of physicians who will perform tubal ligations, no questions asked.

People in marriages that might otherwise survive rough patches are throwing in the towel and deciding to divorce, in preparation for the abolishment of no-fault divorce.

This is the country the Trump-humpers are creating. They sold out their own wives and daughters, sisters and mothers, aunts and grandmothers. They sold out their friends and neighbors. They sold out the people who built their homes, gather and transport their food, teach their children, defend this country, and save their lives.

There will be no joy in saying “I told you so.”

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