Heart Monitor

I finally made it to the cardiologist whom I had not seen since before the start of the pandemic.  I ran out of my two cardiac medications about six months ago.  I know the condition with which I’ve been diagnosed can’t kill me. It causes discomfort but that mild and occasionally accelerating flutter does not mean “call 9-1-1”.  But the “Corley heart” has killed quite a few, so I keep tabs on the situation.

Going without heart pills for six months gives me a new perspective.  More importantly, it allows this cardiologist to get his own baseline.  He did not scold me. In fact, he leapt at the chance to make his own record.  He knows that SVT won’t kill me.  VT can; SVT will not.  So you live with the discomfort, you try ablation, or you take one of the pills that I’ve had prescribed for more than a decade.  The fact that I did not drop dead over the summer tells him that the diagnosis is likely correct.  The monitor which I’m wearing for the next two weeks should provide more input.

Monitors have changed since I last wore one.  No more long wires and sticky pads.  No more heavy box to hang at your waist.  I’ve got a six-inch strip adhered to my chest and a button gizmo snapped in the center of it.  I press that button if I feel “a symptom”, and a list of one through seven in a log where I record the event.  My favorite is “7. Other”.  I seem to fit into the “other” category at almost every level of my life.

So now, along with working 32 hours per week, planning our Holiday Market, getting ready for my sister’s visit, and battling cobwebs, I’m trying to distinguish heartburn from heart palpitations.  I realized halfway through the first full day that I’ve essentially trained myself to ignore what my body feels.  The muscle cramps in the night; the pain in my gut when I accidentally eat cheese; the perpetual headaches; the burning in my legs; I push all of these to the darkest recess of consciousness and grimly trudge forward.  Now that I have to attend to one small center of my physical universe, my mind spins a counter narrative.  That’s not tachycardia.  That’s lunch.  No, don’t push the button — what if it’s just an asthma attack?  They’ll read the chart and say, ‘This woman has no heart issue, she’s just bored.’

On the rare occasions when I have to present myself to an emergency room for an actual injury, I resist the triage nurse’s inane query about my level of pain.  “Zero being no pain and ten being the worst pain you ever felt, how would you rate your pain today?”  Uh, what?  Here’s my pain scale:  The haunting disconnect from pushing the Vicodin prescription to its extreme versus my mother’s long, slow death from metastatic misdiagnosed uterine cancer which hit her lung, bones, and brain before death finally soothed her.  My understanding of “ten” might be different than that of the nurses in those over-crowded ERs.  

Wearing this heart monitor gives me an idea, though.  Why can’t someone invent a device to monitor emotional heart sensations?  Like, on a scale of zero to ten, how much joy are you feeling?  What quantum of grief?  How much in love are you?  How sad?  

Push a button here, in the center of your soul, and jot a note.  11/21/2021, 9:30 a.m., Homesickness surge.  At a distant monitor, a technician turning the pages of a magazine and wondering what her spouse packed in her lunchbox suddenly notices a blip on your screen.  Danger! Danger!  Imminent heart-sick attack!  Send help!  She dials a number and sends your next-door neighbor down the front walk to knock on your door with a batch of chocolate cookies.

How cool would that be?

In the meantime, I’m going to take another stab at showering without getting this monitor wet.  Later, I’ll haul the Harvest Market vinyl banners into the community room and use the backs of them to make Holiday Market signs.  By and by, I’ll get out my trusty stepstool, and take another stab at the ash and dust which has accumulated in the upper regions of my tiny house.  My big sister is coming to visit me for Thanksgiving.  When I see her walk through the doors of the Southwest Airlines Passenger Arrival gate, my heart will beat against my chest as happiness surges through its chambers and sets it dancing to its own wonky beat.

It’s the twenty-first day of the ninety-fifth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

My big sister Joyce Corley and me, April 2021, Vallejo Ferry Terminal.

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