Appreciating the murmur

I would like to think I’ve evolved to the point where I live to serve, but it’s entirely possible I’m simply desperate for human company. Despite being an avowed apanthropist, I enjoy being around people once in a while. Not too close, and not for too long. I am protective of my solitude, to the point where people call me antisocial (ask me if I care; the answer is no). I can't always tell what I am feeling. Still, I don’t actually hate people, even though I sometimes act like it.

This week, speaking of people, I visited my cardiologist at the cardiology clinic at the hospital to discuss the results of last week’s echocardiogram. I admit, I might have been overly eager to see him, to see anybody really. I smiled at everyone. Nobody was wearing a mask in the hospital, so I took mine off, too. I trudged up the stairs to the second floor with a stupid grin on my face, hoping I wouldn’t pay for it later by getting Covid.

I really like my cardiologist, for so many reasons. First, he’s a short round guy with a thick beard, curly gray hair, and a handshake that resembles a spatula swooping in to flip a pancake. I like that he sits heavy on the padded wheely stool. He doesn’t pretend to be thin. Second, he looks me right in the eye. Even when we were wearing masks in the exam room, he really seemed to see me. Maybe he’s perfected the doctor stare, but it works on me.

I could hear the muffled voice of my doctor through the thin walls between exam rooms. Hey, he's my doctor, I thought, as he greeted somebody, who answered in a quavery old lady voice. I fidgeted and tried not to feel possessive. Finally, a quick knock came on the door. Before I could say "enter," the door opened to admit a slim young man I’d never seen before. Definitely not my cardiologist.

“I’m Xavier, the doctor’s assistant,” he said, blinding me with straight white teeth. He couldn’t have been more than thirty, and he was perfect. I could find no flaws. Perfect white teeth, perfect black hair, perfect figure in a perfectly tailored clean white lab coat. I welcomed him and his laptop, glad to have something other than the heart failure chart pinned to the back of the door to stare at while I was waiting.

Xavier proceeded to ask me a long list of questions about my physical and mental health, my meds, my vitamins, how much I exercise, plus more I’ve forgotten. He didn’t check my cognitive function, by the way. I did my best to answer truthfully, being careful not to indicate the slightest hint of depression or anxiety. I will check his report later and probably find he thought I seemed depressed. I consciously tried to be perky, but I have a hard time pulling off perkiness.

When we got to the topic of exercise, he brightened when I mentioned my intention to jog. Big hopeful smile. His shoulders sagged with disappointment when I complained the summer had been so hot.

“You should get a gym membership,” he advised.

I nodded. “I could, but I’m nervous about Covid, a little.”

“I know what you mean. I go early in the morning when there’s no one there,” he said.

“Yeah, good, early . . .” I trailed off to indicate early, no, not really my thing. “What time do you go?”

“Between four and five,” he said. “You could use the treadmill.”

“Right, I used to do that,” I replied. “I’m afraid with this imbalance thing, I might . . .” I left off the rest of the thought: I might fall on the floor and break a hip. Or my neck. Which would be a relief in some ways.

“They have stationary bikes.”

Feeling kind of like a bug wiggling under a microscope, I was relieved when the doctor entered, trailed by two other people.

“You met Xavier? I hope you don’t mind, I brought Sasha and Roberto too? They are students. Roberto will be our scribe today.”

I practically quivered with excitement. No longer alone with the pushy Xavier, lots of company, plus a teaching opportunity! What could be more fun!

I perched on the edge of the exam bed table thing. The doctor put his stethoscope at various places around my chest and appeared to be listening intently. Then he invited Xavier to listen. Xavier took the stethoscope in his ear, put the round end on my chest somewhere near my sternum, and leaned toward me for a couple seconds. He stood back with an expression I couldn’t read.

“What did you hear?” the doctor asked him.

Xavier shook his head in embarrassment. “I did not appreciate a murmur.”

My mind worked on the word “appreciate” as the doctor took the stethoscope, put the round end in a different place, and beckoned him to listen again. They stood there together, student and teacher, joined by a stethoscope, apparently appreciating my murmur.

“Ah. Two out of six,” Xavier said with some satisfaction.

The doctor motioned to Sasha, who up to this point had been watching silently. She approached and took one end of the stethoscope in her ear.

“Hear it?” the doctor said. “Whoosh, whoosh.”

I don’t know if she heard it or not. She acted like she did. I’ve been a student. Performance pressure in front of one’s peers is a terrible thing. In a few short years, she will be treating patients of her own. We can only hope she can detect a murmur that is a two out of six on the murmur scale.

I was released with an order to have a followup echocardiogram in one year, which was the outcome I’d been hoping for. My sticky leaky calcified bicuspid valve has not deteriorated appreciably over the past six months, so I might dodge a heart attack for a while longer. Not sure about all the other stuff, but at least the ticker is still ticking.

The doctor herded his charges out the door. As I waited for the medical assistant to fetch me and escort me to the appointment desk, I reflected on the weirdness of my life. I still keep trying to make sense, to find meaning in my experiences, which I suppose means I have enough curiosity to see what might come next. 

 

Free falling in the California desert

Greetings, Blogbots. I hope you are well. I am blogging to you from the lovely town of Rancho Cucamonga. At least, I think that is where I am. Can I really be sure? The map says this is where I am, but I’m feeling a little out of body, which I think is normal for a person on a road trip with many detours, wrong turns, and back tracks. All I can say is, thank you for a patient GPS lady who never yells at me even when I fail to follow her directions.

I’ve been on the road for seven days. It sounds kind of romantic when I say it like that. “On the road.” There is nothing romantic about being homeless, and that is what this resembles. Unfortunately, unlike a true homeless person, I tried to bring everything with me, which means I’m spending a lot of time rearranging boxes. It’s been a learning experience.

So far, I’ve spent a night parked at a casino, a street in Venice, a residential neighborhood, a grocery store parking lot, and a rest stop on I-15. The only location that gave me pause was the street in Venice, parked between two campervans that had clearly not moved in some time. I’m guessing only street cleaning day forces them to vacate their prime location just blocks from the beach. Does parking near the beach make up for living in a car? Maybe when you are young. If you are under 40, it’s a bohemian lifestyle. If you are over 60, it’s down and out in Venice, California.

The weather in Tucson was just getting hot when I left. I drove west in lovely sunshine and hit a wall of gray clouds about 30 miles east of San Diego. The clouds followed me north. Venice was cold and gray. I drove up the PCH to Oxnard and Ventura, dodging rain drops. On Day4 I walked out on the Huntington Beach pier, huddled in my jacket and warm hat, hoping it the clouds would blow out to sea with the oil tankers. On Day 5, I headed northeast, desperate for heat and light. On Day 6, I spent about five minutes in Las Vegas, long enough to know I hope I never have to go there again. Today is Day 7.

What have I learned? First, I learned it’s okay to drive in circles, to get lost, to take an exit to avoid traffic jams or just to see where it goes. It doesn’t matter where I go when I have no firm destination and loose timetables. Second, wild camping in the city means I can’t heat water on a butane stove to make my coffee. Starbucks coffee is not great, hot or cold, but you do what you have to do. Third, meeting friends for food will eventually make me sick, fat, and poor. Finally, I learned that going up in elevation is not good for my head.

I learned other stuff, too, but I’ll save those tidbits for next week. This is just to let you know, I am alive, somewhere in the low desert suburbs of southern California. I hope you all have a good week.

Is there a human in this room?

In the past year, I've walked down the hall from the back door of the retirement home to my mother's room almost three hundred and sixty-five times. (I missed a few evenings in the past year.) Every night at about 6:15, I park my car in the cul-de-sac under a tree that drops detritus on my windshield. I admire the tall fir trees overlooking the unkempt garden, hoping when they topple in the next winter storm, they will fall toward the empty field. I punch in the code and pull open the heavy door, doing my best not to let it slam behind me in case the residents in the first two rooms are snoozing. People go to bed right after dinner at the retirement home.

Every evening, I stride down the hall and pass a certain door. The door displays a large sign: Happy Birthday, Rudy! Last year, pasted around the sign were colorful stickers that said Happy 100! A few months ago, the stickers were changed to say Happy 101!

In all the times I've walked by that door, I have never seen it open. I have not heard a peep from beyond that door, not a radio, television, or murmuring pastor. I have not smelled poop as I passed. Is there a human in that room? Who, I wonder, is Rudy?

Tonight I saw an aide enter the room carrying a large garbage bag. That means someone is in there. I picture a stinky wizened man in a bed, gnarled and still, waiting for family that never comes. Well, I'm making up that story, for sure. They probably come on Sundays after church like normal people.

A few nights ago, Mom told me she was awakened from a nap on her couch to find her neighbor Dan's hand on her forehead.

Mom's neighbor Dan is a thin, long-faced grizzled man who has severe dementia and doesn't talk much. Normally, Dan gets around very slowly in a wheelchair. Apparently, nobody knew he could walk. When I mentioned my mother's story to an aide, she said, “Yes, we saw Dan in your mother's doorway. He's walking!” I told her Dan had paid a visit to my mother as she slept on her couch. “It's a miracle!” the aide said.

I sat next to her on the couch in my usual spot and switched the channel from the Flintstones to Love It or List It. I looked at Mom to gauge her level of concern.

“You could take him, I think,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” she said promptly. “I could take him.”

It isn't hard to imagine Mom and Dan ending up on the carpet in a slow-motion tangle of fragile limbs. Nobody will win that match.

“If it happens again, you can push him away or yell at him,” I said. “Then ring your call button.”

“It will be five minutes before anyone shows up,” she said.

“Well, punch his lights out, then.”

“Okay.”

I turned back to the TV. “All-righty then. What do you think, are they going to love it or list it?”

Yesterday I caught a bus downtown just after dawn to attend a five-hour workshop on business basics for small business startups. Five of the twelve attendees, me included, were volunteer mentors-in-training. The remainder were a motley group of hopefuls seeking information and advice. We packed shoulder-to-shoulder in a tiny room that alternated between stifling hot and freezing cold. The woman sitting by the projector kept bumping it, knocking the image askew on the screen.

I sat by the wall and sipped homemade coffee from a little cup, trying desperately to stay awake as the speakers droned on about business plans, banking, finance, record-keeping, and marketing. A lot of the material was familiar to me. I could teach most of it myself, and I have. I imagine I will volunteer to present something in that tiny stifling room at some point. They really need some PowerPoint help. In between drawing funny faces in my notebook, I reconfigured the tables and chairs in my mind.

At noon, I ate my homemade lunch of toasted oats, apple, raisins, and soy milk alone in a small break room down the hall. People who went out of the building came back and reported having a disappointing experience at McDonald's. At two-thirty, we were released. I gathered up my rain gear, made a pit stop in the restroom, and hiked a block to the bus stop.

The bus home was a long time coming but the rain held off until I was a few blocks from home. I shucked off my rain gear, fed my annoyed cat, and burrowed into my couch until it was time to visit Mom.