The Best Is Yet to Come!

3/8/2001

Dear Jim-
Thought I'd run an old column this week to boost your morale. It wasn't too long ago that the docs played Pac-Man in my heart--and, Brother, look at me now! Rest up, get strong...the best is yet to come. cynthia

I got rhythm, LOTS of rhythm...if I had any more I'd croak. At least that's what the doc said. Not content with a lazy Sinatra two-step, my heart got down and boogied double-time with dueling banjos and tried to out-distance runaway bumblebees. Pfgrzblitznerzigov tachycardia, said the reports. I said phooey: it was Bond. James Bond.

Remember when he hit the scene? Right about the time some nutso fashion maven convinced us that blue and green combine as a great designer statement and clock radios became the rage. I papered my bedroom walls and ceiling with a blue/green algae kind of print and raised my bed way off the floor with building blocks. No drugs and booze for this starry-eyed teen--I rebelled with furniture, in an "East meets early Martha Stewart" kind of way. (This all has to do with my heart, so help me.)

My clock radio was set for 7:10 SHARP. For weeks, while Bond escaped from bad guys in cross-country motor boats and with umbrellas that turned into jet skis, at exactly 7:10 every morning, some lady screamed GoldFING-GERRRR! These defibrillating decibels jerked me upright, wherein I hit my head on the ceiling and then fell off the bed, sort of a GoldFING-GERRRR!, THUD, CRASH, which of course caused my heart rhythm to go wacko.

So suddenly at fifty I'm grinning back at Cardio-Man--a cross between Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, and Soupy Sales, who wears long white coats with pockets full of tootsie rolls and walks like a duck. I was reclining on an electronically controlled medical examination chair, sort of a Hosp-O-Lounger. Except it was more like Medi-Vac with Cardio-Man at the helm.

"You have a leaky valve and your heart goes too fast," he said, as he pushed the wrong button and dropped me on the floor. I could trust this man. "Time for an oblation," I hear him say. (Dictionary says an oblation is a sacrifice to the gods. Right up my alley.)

"No! No!," sez Cardio-Man, "Ablation!"

Webster: "ablation--removal, esp. of organs or abnormal growths from the body by mechanical means."

Oh, whew--what a relief. You say ablation, I'll say oblation, let's call the whole thing off.

In the big city, Cardio-Man #2 appeared in a Mickey Mouse tie and asked me to sign away all responsibility for death. This, he said, was standard procedure for when hearts are probed with electronically controlled stretched-out clothes hangers. My option, of course, if I didnÕt sign, was death.

They wheeled me into an operating lab that doubles on weekends for a set for Close Encounters, The Sequel. Doctors hovered over me dressed in lead and wearing goggles. Captain Marvel and space crew in drag. They stuck me with the first of several hundred thousand needles. I saw my heart on TV. Saw the search and destroy wires sniffing every niche and cranny. Equipment banged and whirred, Big-City-Cardio-Man barked instructions. Beam me up, Scotty; I don't want to be ablated...

I turned to the nurse in charge of sedation. "Pardon me," I said politely, "I seem to be normal." As in, I DONÕT FEEL SEDATED AND THESE ALIENS ARE PROBING MY HEART WITH LONG SKINNY RODS!! She flicked at my venous feeding station with her finger. "I just hate it when these things don't flow right," she sighed. That was it. Sacrificed to the gods. Right then and there, while the guy in the Mickey Mouse tie played Pac-Man in my heart. Ping! Zing! Oops! (Oops?!) I looked up at the nurse for mercy. "Gotcha!" came the chorus from space crew as I felt a Palooka punch to the pfgrzblitznerzigov.

Once in my room (on a bed, I might add, which could be electronically raised), they wouldn't let me move my legs for four hours (leg bone connected to the heart bone). So I poked a light-switch with my straw. The bulb above my bed flashed on with enough lumens to land the Columbia Space Shuttle on a foggy night in L.A. (So much for the white light) I think it was there (along with a well-worn back board and zapper-paddles) to comfort me. A plug with red letters said "Warning! Heart Machine Jack" Jack? I wanted Martha, funny colored wallpaper, and my old clock radio.

The light blinded me. Maybe I was oblated after all. I thought back to a night not long ago when I first felt a pain in my heart. What sacrifice would I have made had I not gone and checked it out? I had to close my eyes from the light, it was too much for me to bear.

And now, the work on my heartÕs begun. I may fill my pockets with tootsie rolls, paper my room with blue and green, and go see a Bond movie just for fun. I may even buy a Mickey Mouse tie and dance a jig with Cardio-Man, 'cuz I get to face the next 50 years with brand new rhythm. Who could ask for anything more.