Mortality, Part II - Death Has Its Little Joke...

So I went in to see the doc for the mandatory follow-up visit, to discuss all the testing and results. I sat there across the desk from him as he shuffled through what was obviously the unique roadmap of my irradiated veins and arteries and heart, pages of charts, numbers, tables, timelines, chemistry, and jagged EKG tracings extracted from stress tests and other tortures. He read through the summaries, occasionally glancing up at me mournfully. He finally closed the file and leaned back, sighing. 

I was anticipating the news that I was going to have my chest cracked and re-plumbed, minimum. And would not have been surprised to find out that I'd done something damaging over the course of my life that was finally irreparable, and was slip/sliding down the big chute - the doc's grim approach to giving me the news could go either way. Either would be an annoyance, because things seem to be going pretty well in general at the moment, and I don't have time to deal with all that noise.

"Mr. Dust," he said, clearing his voice. "You're fine."

So you remember that time when you were a kid on your bike and you were pedaling fast, leaning forward, off the seat and pushing as hard as you could from a near-standing position, the wheels humming against the asphalt, and your eyes tearing up in the wind blast and your foot slipped off the pedal on the power down-stroke and pitched you forward onto the ball-breaking bar with your foot trying to drag you under the sprocket as you wobbled out of control into a high-speed collision with the curb? That was roughly how the doc's statement hit me.

"Sorry," I said, "come again?"

"You're fine. You should have no concerns. There is not a single unusual thing here."

"Doc, I was referred to you because I was having what was diagnosed as atrial fibrillation. How can that be fine?"

"No sign," he said.

"Have you got a strip from when I was running on the treadmill?" I asked. "Let me see that."

He was surprised, but opened the folder and turned it around so I could see it. I ran my finger along the line that recorded my heart banging along at 145 BPM and found what I was looking for. Well, NOT what I was looking for, actually.

"That's a really clean P wave," I conceded, "but isn't that fibrillation chatter right there around it?" 

"No," he said. "Just noise. Mr. Dust, don't you like good news? You're fine." He took the file away from me and began reading from it. "Cholesterol fine, triglycerides fine, blood pressure a little high but not dangerous, just needs watched - everything is fine, sugars are frankly excellent, which I did not expect because you are fat - you are fine."

"So what the hell was going on with me?" 

"You're over XX years old," said the doc, "and what you're describing is pretty common. We don't know why it happens, but it's not really dangerous, just scary as hell. Your heart is healthy." He considered for a moment, flipping through color prints of my heavily-annotated echocardiogram. "Very healthy."

"So, I can exercise a bit and not drop dead?" I asked.

"You can train for a marathon, if you want," the doc said, clearly beginning to lose patience with me. "Come see me again in five years and we'll do all this again, if you like. You still need to lose weight. Very important."

------------------------

Later, on the long drive home I glanced over at my constant companion.

"I'll bet you thought that was pretty fucking funny, didn't you?" I asked him(?)

"Yesssss," he(?) hissed, grinning at me. But then, he(?) grins at everything.

"Fuck you," I said. "I'm still not afraid of you, you know. I know you too well."

"Yessss. I know. Ssssssstilll funny." I realized the creaking noise I was hearing was laughter.

Asshole.

In Our Next Episode: Back to the routine...