Heartbeat

 Last week I got carried away with a squirrel. He was pillaging the bird feeder in broad daylight. It was war. I burst out of the screen door, got him with the first shot from my water gun and chased him up the oak tree. My heart was pounding. It was too much for a guy on the heavy end of the scale. I dragged myself inside, short of breath. A couple Xanax later, I had recovered. 

 From now on, the birds would fight their own battles.

A walk later that day set off another heartbeat of well over a 100. It’s a great system, tachycardia. The brain sees unusual heartbeats and says “Hey, you’re under stress,” which adds more stress and more beats. I turned around after a block. 

“You have an appointment with your internist on Friday,” my wife reminded me.

 “Butterfield? I was there last year.”

 “Butterfield has your number,” Nancy replied. “He’s keeping you alive so you can make the house payment.”

 “How come your heart rate is so great?”

 She answered, “I smoke.”

My heart could wait for Butterfield on Friday. I called my friend Steve and canceled our pool date. Like, I would be over the 8-ball: my heart would start pounding, my hands would start shaking, and I’d miss the shot.

 Before supper, Nancy sent me to the store for avocados and half n’ half. I was almost to the deli counter when my heart called out, “Not enough blood!" I was battling high anxiety, high blood pressure and a high pulse. I wasn’t gonna make it back to the car during a cardiac crisis. I sank helplessly to the hard floor, feeling stupid and embarrassed. I called Nancy. One of the baggers wheeled out to my car. Nancy drove up and followed me home.

After supper, another bout of racing heart, angina, weakness. I was a freight train barreling down the tracks, out of control. Nancy dashed me off to the emergency room. They treated me for a heart attack (false alarm) and kept me overnight. Friday with Butterfield was out—a 24-hour Holter monitor was in.

 Saturday morning, another episode. All I did was get the paper from the front yard. When it was time to return the monitor, Nancy took me to the hospital. They had to wheel me in, this time.

 Sunday I was crawling from the bed to the bathroom.

Well, Butterfield decided on a cardiac stress test to find out what was wrong. A treadmill.

“I can’t believe it,” said Nancy. “Treadmills almost killed Oscar Wilde.”

 “Butterfield has an affinity for treadmills.”

 “Don’t ask me to carry you out to the car tomorrow morning.”

 Five minutes later, my son-in-law had sized things up. He volunteered to wheel me out to the car on a dolly, a wheelbarrow, or a bicycle. 

 “We'll call an ambulance, thank you.”

 5:30 AM the next morning I was washing my privates at the edge of the bed. I heard an eighteen-wheeler in the front yard. “They’re heeeere!” exclaimed Nancy.

 It took two medics to shoe-horn me out of the bedroom on a gurney. “Hey man, no big deal. You should have been there when we wrestled a 750 lb. woman out of a second-floor apartment.”

 No one was happier than the squirrel.

You have no idea how time flies when you’re on the way to the hospital listening to paramedic jokes with an irregular heart and a dry mouth.

“You got the fast heart?” they said.

“Yeah.”

“Afib-dfib. Kinda rhymes, huh?”

“Probably nothing,” they said. 

"Could be a valve, though."

“Ever heard of an aortic aneurism?”

“Ann-what?”

“A bulge in the aorta.”

“Ohhh.”

“Did you know if you disconnect the heart from the brain it keeps beating?”

Mine was beating.

At 6:00 AM sharp, the medics wheeled me into the cardio lab on a gurney.

A nurse comes in.  “Please understand. We do not place certain rules and restrictions on you without a great deal of thought about their therapeutic value. It is entirely for your own good that we don't take people that come on a gurney!”

I mumbled under my breath, “Nurse Ratched, that’s what you are, from Over the Cuckoo.”

“What? Do you want to go to the ER? If you don’t mind, I’d prefer you not wait here.”

Where would I go? I asked her to call Butterfield. The medics took the hint, put me in a wheelchair, said their goodbyes and took their gurney.

I was praying that Ratched would get to Butterfield’s deeper side, but reality is different in windowless rooms. She called out, “He wants you on the treadmill.”

The cardiologist was Dr. Lutan, an energetic little Filipino with a Capricorn ascending Pisces. He turned on the machine “Your EKG is nuts!”

Butterfield picked a fight with the wrong man. Cardiologists are a progressive lot with heavy purses. If they have doubts, they hide them. Lutan unhooked me, and made hasty preparations for a cardio look-see and handed me a consent form.

I signed the consent, and then decided to read it: operators are standing by. If doc finds blockages, he doesn’t call a timeout and consult the sidelines. He calls an audible and puts stents into you, right then and there. Or, he sends you to Christian North-East where little green men run bypasses.

I was seeing dead relatives, but Lutan was layin’ it down, makin’ it happen, checkin’ my plumbing while I lay on a cold table, lights blazing, watching the clouds roll by, flaxen-haired assistants bending low, checking my vitals—a far cry from a turn on the wheel in the gloom of oil lamps and candles. 

Here it comes!

 A dye, mainlining my arteries with a warm rush—the best feel-good ever. (Ten grand, including the money shot.)

 “Doc, I’ve never known such peace and happiness.”

 And I was still alive!

“Look at that video,” says Lutan. “Nothing to be alarmed about. You have four blockages of twenty-five percent each. You’re fine. No problem. You’ll be okay.”

 No one was happier than yours truly.

At home I couldn’t walk very far before setting off alarms. Nancy set chairs six feet apart all around the house. Next day, ten feet.

 There’s a whole medical system out there waiting for you. Although they didn't do much and there was no reason for me to feel better, I did feel better, and noticeably. It’s really something.

 I gotta go. The squirrel is chattering, “vindicta ego retribuam,” (“vengeance is mine.”)