Echo of a Heart

Note: This entry was accidentally placed on "Legacy of a Courtly Curmudgeon" the more infrequent blog that features stories about and stories by my father. I could not for some reason cut and paste, so days later, it is retyped here and deleted there.

I have a new cardiologist. I had an old one because my father had his first heart attack at 51, at least two others after that and a quadruple by pass in 1989. Despite the fact that it wasn't his heart that killed him, or the diagnosed bladder cancer, but a sepsis that I attribute to the lack of proper care by his doctors, I haven't ignored my family history of heart disease, particularly since I also have had high cholesterol and blood pressure.

My old cardiologist was also my primary care physician, the one who dishes out who I am allowed to go to for insurance purposes if I want it all paid for. Those who know me well know gthat for the last five or six years, I have felt less than attended to by my attending physician. A few years ago, a regular swelling of my salivary gland resulted in an infection severe enough to warrant removing a stone from my neck. I had raised the penultimate episode with my doctor, and he had said, "if it happens again, go the hospital". I did. They referred me to someone who was actually helpful. But my internist, on the eve of my surgery when my mouth was literally so swollen I could not articulate without a lisp, tried to convince me to put it off and see his reference. Still I stayed with him. But when I called to tell him I was lightheaded, and the front desk did all the diagnosing, and a call back was not forthcoming, that small episode was the one that did it. Two friends have been suggesting their respective doctors. I picked one who was also a cardiologist, and he has seen me, and accepted me as a patient, but he isn't an internist requiring me to keep my old internist, as internist. We had a heart to heart before I decided to do just that, in which I allowed him to chalk up our breakdown in relationship entirely to my "perception". I also allowed him the cognitive dissonant insistence that he always calls people back except on rare occasions. I guess the failure is only with me then. But he'd disagree, back to perception again. He also let me know that while my new doctor was a good one, if I call in an emergency, he won't be the one to answer, unless he is on call. I did not, again, biting my agitated tongue point out that my emergency needs were not met by him, when purportedly he was always available. I did not remind him of his "go to the hospital" in emergency exhortations. I did not, therefore, say that his availability was a fiction. He also said, with that dual edge of the back handed compliment, that my new doctor "did a lot of tests." Hmmmmmm. That can't be goo, right? He finally said that some of my new doctor's patients had been unhappy with him and had fled (the "fled" is my word) to my ersatz internist. I allowed that I suppose it was possible that I might not be happy, but I'd like to try. I didn't foreclose anything. So, today, me, my heart and my perceptions took their first echocardiogram, at the new guy's office, a test that is designed to more fully examine the heart using ultrasound.

As I write I still have goop on my chest that is used I suppose to conduct the waves. And I don't have the results, although I do know from the chest x-ray taken previously, that as is consistent with a person with high blood pressure, the wall of one side of my heart is thicker than in a person without that condition. There is something surreal about watching your own heart and hearing its beat. This is all that is keeping me conscious. I found myself surprisingly relaxed while watching the red and blue colors, the manifestation of the electric energy, flashing the flow to and from the muscle. It occurred to me that no matter what I do, however careful or ill conceived my behavior toward my heart, in a span of time, no more than 30 or so years, if I am lucky, it will simply stop.

When I was a teenager, I recalled, right after my dad's first heart attack, the reality of the organ's paradoxical strength, and concomitant fragility triggered a year of hypochondria in me. I was convinced I was having a heart attack, all the time. I was heart aware. Every beat, slow or fast. I drove my family crazy. I drove myself crazy. Listening to the echo of my heart in whatever fluid it floats in, that relaxation was a passing acceptance of what will come. It made me a bit ashamed that today, again, I was angry at virtually everything, right up to the man who was delaying me in putting my money in the communal parking meter. I raged and cursed in my head. Lying sideways on a crumpled paper atop the exam table, I thought, yet again, I have got to stop that, before my heart stops and its echo dies with me.