Heart Light

THE ACTUAL BLOG ENTRY IS BELOW. THIS IS JUST A QUICK NOTE. SKIP IT IF YOU LIKE.

I am not going to talk about politics beyond this: I despise Biden. I think the Democratic Party running the place without restraint is going to be a disaster. And I will tell you this, and you can take it to the bank: If the treasonous assholes who broke into THE SEAT OF OUR CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT find me between them and Biden, or AOC, or a stick of furniture, they need to pray I'm out of ammo before I spot them. 

They should have started killing these maggots as soon as they crossed the line into the restricted space of THE SEAT OF OUR CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT, the Government to which I have taken oaths a half-dozen times throughout my life to preserve and defend. They damned sure would have if they'd attacked a military base, or any other CRITICAL infrastructure with intent to overtake it. I see no slightest difference except the actual intent to destroy our Government and way of life.. 

These treasonous maggots are another version of Antifa. They have demonstrated that they are the enemy, and at the first twitch of them taking action beyond running their ignorant mouths and waving their flags, I will do everything in my power to cause them to be destroyed where they stand.

Odd times indeed, when a foreign-born actor who knows more about being an American than the President of the United States and who represents a state responsible for breeding the despicable left-wing version of these animals best expresses what I'm thinking. So, if you haven't seen it, run this video. And when you're done, come back and read my blog entry if you're so inclined. This ain't it. And I will discuss it no further for any reason whatsoever.

 

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 BLOG ENTRY STARTS HERE, IF YOU COME BACK FOR IT

"The way of the transgressor is hard. God made this world, but he didnt make it to suit everbody, did he? I dont believe he much had me in mind."
     -Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

The Beneficiary, aware as she is that I have a high pain tolerance and a low people-prodding-on-me tolerance, surprised me last month by deciding that I desperately needed a heart doc.

"I'm not waiting for you to do it anymore," she said. "Your stupid nervous system would probably let you die before you noticed there was a problem. "

This opinion was crystallized for her by the birth of our great-granddaughter. During labor and delivery my granddaughter had refused all the pain meds the worried nurses kept bringing her because it wasn't bothering her. Her first kid, and she almost hadn't even realized she was in labor. It took a full day, during which she mostly slept. She says it was pretty uncomfortable right at the end, but no biggie.

"Of all the shit she COULD have inherited from you, THIS is what she got?" asked The Beneficiary rhetorically.

This apparently re-motivated her longstanding opinion that while my internist is a great guy and a good doctor, SHE has a heart specialist and therefore my ancient carcass probably needed one, too. (Click here to see the day SHE got a cardio doc).  

As for me, a small "ER/Two Days In The Hospital" incident about 15 years ago already earned me one cardio doc, even though it just turned out to be a 100% work/stress-related system crash, and wasn't cardio-related at all. Six or seven years later that doc and I had the further interactions which amused my constant Companion no end.

No, not The Beneficiary. The Companion I knew years before I met her.

(Click here for a quick reminder, and/or if you didn't read it the first time.)

Getting to be a regular nostalgia parade, innit?

Anyhow, in addition to everything else, several years after that little bit of excitement I got one of those general body scans that were all the rage awhile back. I think they're bullshit, but a deal came up where I could get one for pocket-change. Eh, why not, right? This kind of crap fascinates me anyhow.

So, they did the scan and, as expected, it fascinated me watching all the gooey/juicy stuff pump, slosh, and sluice around and through my internals. Cooler than shit, it was. That's pretty much what I was there for, the entertainment and the near-free scan, and on that metric it was an unqualified success.

Less successful was the result. The scan guys said that I had considerable plaque and calcification in a variety of tubes and pipes and other places it wasn't supposed to be. The numbers were pretty bad.

This "news" did not unduly surprise nor concern me. I've always figured that odds were good that if I lived long enough, sooner or later my internal sludge would accumulate sticky platelets and fat lumps till it pinched something down to zero-flow and killed me and/or broke loose a fist sized chunk and stroked me out. I knew that SOMETHING was going to get me (see "Companion" at the link above vis-a-vis our relationship) and here in 'Merca, circulatory and heart stuff leads the list of high-probability terminal events by a pretty good margin.

Yeah, I know, I get it. You aren't the first to tell me it's weird. Sorry, it's just the way my head works. There are important things in the world, and that little nugget of finality just doesn't bump all that far up my value scale.

When I got the scan results, I decided to visit the original heart doc to see if he wanted to dig out my old records and run a quick bore-brush through the works. Seriously, it really was the plan. But I got busy and for some reason or another never got around to it. At least part of that lack of prioritization was that I knew that a 70% or so blockage would be the minimum needed to get that kind of action, and according to the scan guys I was only running 50-60%. In other words, it was going to be awhile before I got deep into roto-rooter range anyhow.

I hadn't gotten around to mentioning any of this to The Beneficiary, but sooner or later (about a year later, actually) she figured it out, I don't know how.

She's pretty good.

She was annoyed and got up my ass about it for awhile, but I explained that I fully intended to follow-up, and there was plenty of time, and there was this, that, the other, and whatnot that needed done first…and besides I was still getting past my yearly physical with the internist with flying colors except for being a fat-ass. I don't remember if I mentioned the scan to him.

She backed off. I thought.  A couple of more yearly physicals went past, and a birthday where I turned XX, and she went for one of HER yearly checks with HER heart doc. And announced when she got home that I was scheduled for a initial appointment with him the following week.

She'd apparently conned him into taking on a new patient. At the dead-end of the year when finding a doc taking new patients to be rare as a snowflake in a blowtorch. There was no arguing with her about it. She can get pretty hard-core, as I'm assuming the doctor now knows.

So, I went. It took TWO FUCKING DAYS out of the middle of my holiday schedule. It was probably the most intense, invasive, long-term routine I'd ever been to. Resting. Not resting. Stress. Chemicals. Dilation. Constriction. Radioactive IVs till I was pissing glow-art. Contrast dyes. Fasting. No Fasting. Pictures. Videos. Scans. Doppler. The whole shiteree.

After all that, about a week's break. Then the other day we went to the final appointment with the doc to see what he made of it all. And here's an odd thing: I was jittery as a new bride knowing that in an hour or two, this new doc was going to cough up The News, which would make for an interesting afternoon with The Beneficiary. I was surly and snappish, and she finally asked me what my problem was.

"I don't know, " I admitted. "I'm nervous about this one, and I don't know why." This, incidentally, was stone solid truth. I really didn't know what the problem was — projecting the likely news and prodding around my internal reactions didn't find me any sweatier about the outcome than I'd ever been. But SOMETHING was bothering me.

"Yeah, that ain't like you at all," she agreed. "Well, in a little bit we can go get some lunch. You're probably just hungry," which diagnosis was likely to be 100% accurate based on our history.

We got to the doctor's office and were ushered straight through to an exam room, and the doctor appeared nearly instantly. In my experience, this rarely heralds good news. I sighed.

"So, Doc, I can get a couple of weeks scheduled in March, if that's soon enough," I started.

"Sure, OK," he said. "For what?"

"Well, I my carotid plaques should be pretty close to needing scraped out, and I figured we could do any bypasses you needed on any heart blockages you turned up while we're at it."

"Uh, no," he said, confused. "You only have moderate plaque buildup. It's moderate until you hit 50% or so, and we don't want to go in until it hits 70% or more."

"Told ya' so," I said to The Beneficiary, feeling oddly relieved. "So, Doc, how about any arterial blockages and whatnot, and how long you reckon it's going to be before we hit the 'critical' stage on the rest of it and have to hose everything out?"

"We're not," he replied. "As I was ABOUT to say before you got into diagnosing yourself, you have zero blockages and your plaque buildup is moderate. In fact it's…" he consulted the computer monitor "…ahh, below 20%. " He clucked in annoyance. "That should say 'minimal'," he clarified, typing notes.

"Blood pressure's great. Chemistry is great. Cholesterol is fair,  but controlled. In fact, literally the only problem I could come up with out of all this is a slight bit of backwash in the tricuspid valve which is so common at your age it's practically normal, and will have no effect on you. Keep eating a baby aspirin every day, and we'll see you next year. Call if anything comes up."

The Beneficiary was ecstatic with relief. I was still trying to get a grip on it. Lesson learned — complex scans and diagnostics should probably cost more than pocket change. Spectacular pictures, though.

"So it's OK if I exercise a bit to try and get back into shape?"

"Yup," he said, "but only moderate exercise at first."

"Old heart, huh?" I joked.

"Nope," he said seriously. "Your heart will put up with anything you throw at it. It's very healthy."

"So, why just moderate exercise?" I asked.

"It's not your heart," he said, leaning over and prodding my midsection with a pen. "Your limiting factor is your knees. I doubt they'll put up with too much of you pounding around till you get rid of a wad of that."

Summary Diagnosis: Healthy as a horse. Well, a fat horse.

Walking back out to the car, I found myself nearly dizzy with relief, which I tried to hide from The Beneficiary. Should have known that wasn't going to work.

"Told you so," I said again.

"Uh huh," she replied. "If you're so damned smart, why have you spent all morning rumbling like a bear with a sore ass?"

Good question, actually. Had my long absent sense of mortality caught up with me? Had my uncaring Companion finally begun to frighten me as my timeline moved closer to the invisible but inevitable intersection with his? No, that didn't feel right. So, what the…

Great-Grandchild. I suddenly have gambler's odds of seeing her graduate from High School, and maybe more, and the idea of that upcoming journey made me smile.

Bingo, that's it. Piss off, Death. I have shit to do.