My Misfiring Heart

For the past year and a half or so, I've been having arrhythmic palpitations.

At first they really freaked me out. I thought I was dying. They led to panic attacks. Then I read up on them and found some relief in that they probably weren't deadly.

The panic attacks went away, but the palpitations didn't. Probably about once a week I have an unnerving, 20 second - or less - episode. It's scary while it's happening but it passes.

Now that I have health insurance, I'm taking action on it.

My primary care physician hooked me up with a cardiologist. They've now fitted me with an event monitor. I have two electrodes strapped to my torso. They had to shave a patch of my chest to make way for one of the patches, the other goes on my side.

The unit is pretty small, about the size of a beeper (remember those?). It comes with a belt clip and hangs out on my pants most of the time.

The wires stick out from under my shirt.

It feels weird. I haven't gotten used to it yet.

It's constantly on, always monitoring my heart. If I feel an attack, I press a button and it records the 30 seconds before I press the button and the thirty seconds afterward.

I then call a toll free number and - and this is the coolest part - I play the recording back through the phone. It sounds like an old dial-up (remember those?) modem. If the folks I call detect something life-threatening, they'll keep me on the line or pass it on to Maine Med.

I can take it off when I sleep, shower and such. The electrodes are just stuck on with sticky tab.

It beeps when I activate it. It's not supposed to beep during the recording, but when we tested it this morning it sure did.

Ah well.

Anyway, if you see wires sticking out from my shirt, hear weird beeping or see me dart off and make a clandestine phone call with a box, that's what's up.

It's all for my heart.

Abuelissima

I've been thinking a lot about it and I've decided it's true, Grammy Jo is pretty damn cool.

She doesn't skateboard or listen to hip, young music. She doesn't skydive and I can't imagine her wrestling alligators. But for such a tiny woman she has a massive heart. It's gotta be three or four times the normal sized heart, which you'd think would provoke serious medical problems. In her, though, there just seems to be a preponderance of love. It's staggering, really.

She has seven children, siblings, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. So just in the family she has 30 or so people she loves. Then there are the myriad friends she's made in her long and hearty life. I believe she loves them all, too. And the dogs! And cats. And now even a bird.

If you need proof that she's been loving to all these people, try remembering all the names at one of her birthday parties. They regularly get bigger attendance than my college graduating class. People coming and going throughout the day, camping out in tents. Traveling from foreign countries, even. Although in all fairness, that's usually her firstborn and company.

All for one little woman. She's tiny. I'm not sure she's five feet tall but she's ridiculously dense with love.

Here are two examples:

In WWII when my Grandfather went off to join the army, she followed him. Wherever he may have been stationed, she worked for the troops. When she first started she was on sandwich duty. It was war time and the country was still pretty desperately poor from the Great Depression, so you can imagine there were pretty heavy rations. My grandmother ignored them all. These were hungry boys! So, she fed them what she felt they needed.

Of course she was caught. So she was pushed down to coffee duty. Where she was only too happy to hand out extra rations of sugar and cream.

Then they put her at the candy shack. Apparently you could only buy candy bars two at a time for a nickel a piece. Of course, when a young soldier came up and said that he and his boys were going out for a tough mission or whatever it is army boys do, and they were going to be desperately hard up for sweets.

Accordingly, she sold them several crates, ringing them up ten cents at a time.

Of course, when the powers-that-be found out about that, they busted her down to water duty.

When she was working in the cafeteria, she always had the cleanest dishes. The dishwasher was, apparently, some sort of booze hound. It was common knowledge and not a lot of people treated him with much respect. But of course my grandmother was nice to him and of course her dishes were the cleanest.

Here's another example. This one transcends humanity.

My grandmother had a horrible car accident a couple years ago. She crashed into a tree and was pretty close to dying for a long time. Way longer than any of the family (and friends) really wants to think about.

This wreck, this catastrophe, happened right around the corner from the house and her dogs were in the car. The running theory is she was distracted by the dogs (which were all fine) and lost the road for a second.

But the reason she was even on the road was that the dogs were all barking at a toad. She packed up the dogs into the car to protect the toad. My grandmother cares so much for an amphibian, I can only imagine what's going on in her heart for her family.

Anyway, it's a lovely sentiment and I love my grandmother very much. I can't imagine a person who couldn't.