How many times over the past couple years have I said "my heart is broken"? Haven't you? More times than we can count, probably. We've all had losses. My cat died at the beginning of the pandemic. I still haven't recovered, I doubt I ever will. Then Covid swept us under. So many people lost loved ones. Mom dodged Covid but died of an aneurysm in her upper GI tract almost a year to the day after Eddie died. Then wham bam, four months later, I find myself in Tucson, just in time for monsoon and wondering what the heck happened.
After a bizarre year at the Bat Cave, finally I come to rest here in the Trailer Del Arte. I thought, finally, a place to breathe, to catch my breath. A place to regroup and figure out what comes next. Not so fast, the Universe seems to be saying. This week I got the unsettling news that my heart really is broken. Not just emotionally and metaphorically, but also physically.
WTF, Universe!?
The "small murmur" turned into a rather alarming diagnosis of aortic stenosis. "Mild to moderate" calcification of the aortic valve. Better than "severe" I guess, but any amount is not good. Apparently my valve has an amount of calcification that would typically be seen in a person in their 70s or 80s. The question is, what type of valve do I have? Is it a two-leaf or a three-leaf? Nobody knows, which is why I have a referral for a CT scan. Lucky me. Ho hum. Another scan.
Meanwhile, I am now the proud wearer of a little white box attached to the left side of my chest. It's about an inch and a half square and it sits in a blue plastic casing that is permanently attached to a piece of tape that is glued to my chest. Inside the piece of tape some electrodes are embedded. This strange limpet communicates with a slim shiny smartphone, which must be within thirty feet of the sensor at all times or it throws a hissy fit. The sensor communicates with the smartphone, and the smartphone transmits my EKG in real time 24/7 to some company somewhere, God only knows. Far as I know, there is no GPS, so I am not being tracked. Not that I'm going anywhere.
So this thing has to cling to my chest for thirty days. I can shower with it on. Every few days or so, it needs recharging. I did that yesterday. It felt so good to peel that thing off me and get my skin back. I plugged the sensor into it's charger and waited for the light to turn from blinking amber to green. And waited. And waited. Finally I decided to plug it into the USB port on my computer. That seemed to do the trick. Then I had the fun of figuring out how to put on a new patch. The med aide put it on me at the doctor's office. She showed me the process but my audio memory, well, my memory in general, is not great. I have since referred to the instruction booklet multiple times to tell me what to do.
The smartphone needs recharging every night. It wakes up randomly and beeps. The day after I had the device, an alert on the phone said it wasn't sending data and to call the 800 number. I called the 800 number and got a nice person who spoke excellent English and who told me how to fix it. Since then, the phone seems to be happy. I wear it strapped around my waist in a stretchy piece of cloth. Apparently the battery in the sensor will last longer if the phone is in close proximity. I feel like I'm carrying two electronic infants, one strapped to my waist and the other glued to my chest. Like Giga Pets, they need a lot of attention.
Sorry if I'm boring you. It's easier to tell you about the details of the barnacle clinging to my chest than it is to describe the thoughts going through my head at the news that my heart doesn't work right anymore. This all happened very quickly. I'm still in shock and denial.
I admit, it did occur to me that I might have brought this on myself by all the times I moaned, "My heart is broken" over the past two years. What do they say, be careful what you wish for? No, that's not the adage I want. What you resist, persists? Um, no, that's not right. Something about if you say something, it will happen? I don't know. The assumption is that our minds have control over our bodies. That if we got cancer, we must have wanted to for some unknown reason. Some sort of cosmic lesson.
Besides being colossally unhelpful and cruel, it is also not true that if we say something, it will happen. How many times over the years did I state an intention to lose a few pounds, or get more exercise, or turn my art into a business? Right. As if my mind had such power. I'd be thin, wealthy, and living in the Caribbean if simply visualizing my success means it is going to happen. It's the "do what you love and the money will follow" idea, which is the worst advice for artists ever given.
Do I take the blame for my broken heart? You might say, well, Carol, weren't you raised on Wonder bread, Froot Loops, Crisco, hamburger patties, and canned green beans? As an adult, didn't you drink, didn't you smoke cigarettes, eat red meat and lots of saturated fat and processed foods? Yes to the first one, no to the second. I was vegetarian for a long time. I have never smoked cigarettes. I haven't had a drink in years. My worst vice is coffee. Black, no sugar.
Compared to many Americans, I eat a spartan diet. Maybe it was too spartan, who knows. I don't blame my environment so much as I blame my genes. The cardiologist asked me if I had kids. When I said no, he said that's good, because they would have the risk of the same problem. This is largely genetic. Maybe a defect that went unnoticed until now, I don't know. My father had a heart problem, not enough to keep him out of the military but it caught up to him eventually. By the time he was willing to do something about it, it was too late. He was too weak for heart surgery. He fell off the front porch and broke his hip, but it was his heart that killed him.
Today I feel pretty good, given I've been on a starvation diet for three days in preparation for a colonoscopy tomorrow. I assume the technicians will read my chart and take all necessary precautions. It would be pretty embarrassing to have a heart attack while I've got a camera up my butt.
