Tag: health

The Heart of the Matter

echocardigram

I saw my heart on a monitor today. It was beating away, keeping me alive. I got to watch the red, blue, and yellow flashes of my blood flow while Emily, the technician, took still photos to show my cardiologist. Green doesn’t mean go here, and red doesn’t mean stop. Red and blue are indications of speed and tell Emily  if the blood is flowing towards her or away. It’s mostly all red and blue, but the flashes of yellow are where the blood is flowing fastest, speeding through the valves of my heart. The grayish image on the screen doesn’t look like hearts on television or the movies. The more I watch the more clear it becomes, but it reminds me of the last time I had a sonogram. I was pregnant with my daughter, though in the first sonogram I didn’t know what sex she was, only that there was a baby growing inside me and there she was with her first cardiac movement fluttering on the screen. Her heart so fast it sounded like a hummingbird’s heart. The first rhythm we hear is our mother’s heart, you think you don’t remember it, right? The first time I laid my head over my first husband’s heart that thick, even beat panicked me. It sounded wrong to me, not soothing, not right. I would talk to my grandmother later and find out that my mother had a heart murmur, and when I laid across my then husband’s chest I’d been listen for that thump-whoosh, not thump-thump-thump of my ex-husband’s heart. I had no way to know about my mother’s heart murmur, no one had ever spoken it aloud to me, but I knew the sound of my mother’s heartbeat, because it had been the music that had soothed me to sleep for nine months.

My heart today sounds slow, thick, in some spots deep bass, then Emily moves the wand to another spot and suddenly my heart sounds like like a frog, with a two tone sound higher pitched, as if my heart still holds a piece of the marshes and swamps that our ancestors crawled out of to come onto land all those millions of years ago. I ask, why it sounds so different, and it’s different valves in my heart. Nothing sounds like my husband’s sure, thick heartbeat against the my ear when I lay my head on his chest as we’re falling asleep at a night. By the time we married a second time I’d grown accustomed to the sound of a healthy heart against my ear.

I listen to the push and pull and flow of my heart, sound to sound, spring frog croak, deep bass rhythm, water pushed through a rock crevice like a spring coming to the surface of the earth and spilling out into a trickle of water. My grandfather would walk down from his wooden cabin every day to get water from a spring on his land. It was this tiny pulse of water, clear and cold spilling into a small pool and then seeping away into the grass and down another crevice going back under ground. He made his coffee with that water every morning, even though he had a well for the house. That water tasted metallic heavy with minerals, the water from the spring tasted clean, no iron taste to it at all even though the spring and the well weren’t that far apart from each other. I always wondered if the spring flowed into the same aquifer as the well water was drawn from, did that clear, cold, bright taste go back under and mix with some larger underground reservoir and get lost in all the rocks and roots that flavored the well? Or did the spring flow into yet another body of water hidden beneath our feet and stay clean and sweet?

I stared at the screen today and wondered if my blood stayed clear and sweet and healthy, or if my doctor would find that somewhere in me was a root of something not so sweet. The thought scared me, so I forced myself to ask technician Emily more questions about hearts, blood flow, valves, sounds, and how all that thick muscled certainty kept beating. I asked academic questions like I was back in Human Anatomy in college, though I’d never asked many questions about the heart, except enough to help me memorize the parts of it. I’d never seen it as anything more wonderful than the bones, or any other part of the body. it was just something to memorize for the test to come. I hadn’t seen the body I was sitting in as anything that special. Watching my heart on the screen today it seemed special, not just because it was mine, in my living chest, but because it was fascinating watching it work, and thinking that’s inside me, that’s my heart. I realized that all hearts were this amazing. If I had ever had today’s epiphany back in college maybe I’d have stayed with premed classes for my biology degree, but it had been dry work back then, not as interesting as birds, mammals, reptiles, fish, or my own stories.  I’d seen one film in school of an open heart surgery, and the moment they used the big shears to cut through the sternum it made a sound, wet and sharp as the bone was cut. I don’t know what it was about that particular sound, but my eyes rolled back in my head and I started to sink down to my desk with another girl beside me. Then the teacher was there screaming in our faces, “If you faint no one will give you their notes. No one!” We rallied and didn’t faint, but that took care of any thoughts I might have had about majoring in medicine as my undergrad degree. If I couldn’t make it through a film of an operation, well, the real thing would surely put me on the floor, but today for the first time I wasn’t sure of that. If I had known the heart was this … alive, vibrant, literally the heart of the matter. I might have tried my luck at hearing that wet, sharp, terrible sound in person just to see this living muscle in our chests that keeps us alive. It was an epiphany moment, like another dream come to knock on my door, but it’s not loud enough to derail my life. I make a living from writing. Okay, more than that. I am a best selling novelist. I’ve hit #1 more than once. I’ve succeeded beyond my wildest dreams when I was in college. Biology had always seemed the road less traveled for me, but today I listened to the inner workings of my own heart and realized that there were other possibilities had I been inspired at the right time. Now, instead of changing my major I sit down at my desk and I write. I share what happened today with you here. I’ll finish this then get back to working on my forty-fifth novel.

 

A Twisted Ankle, a Bum Knee, and Dancing All Night

Why do I exercise? How do I stay motivated to do it? Those have been some of your favorite questions for me lately.

Why do I exercise? That’s an easy one, because to begin with I went to the gym to stay out of surgery. I twisted my ankle over five years ago now, and I didn’t think anything of the sprain. I mean we all sprain our ankles now and then, right? Except I twisted it about three times in two weeks. Apparently, I have permanently damaged my Achilles’ tendon. Orthopedist told me that she could do surgery with an almost guaranteed loss of movement, or I could hit the gym and put more muscle around the injury – think of it as an internal splint. I chose gym. I hit it with a vengeance and when I went back months later, she said, “You really did it. You went to the gym.”

“You told me to,” I said.

“I tell a lot of people that, but they never go.”

Hmm . . . surgery in my 40s with a almost certain loss of movement forever in my ankle, so I’d never run again. I’d never . . . do a lot of things again, or I could exercise more. It seemed an easy choice to me, and one I’m very glad I made.

When I walked into the gym three, or is it four years ago, I was medically not allowed to run. Now I can hit 6 mph on the treadmill for sustained periods, not for long sustained periods, but I can do it. Before, the ortho told me, “You can run to save your life, like if a car is about to hit you, but other than that, don’t.” Now I’m looking at signing up for a Monster Run.

It was my ankle injury that got me into the gym, but my back and hip stopped hurting from all those hours typing at my desk. At the very end of a book I give up nearly all gym time, and most everything else that isn’t writing, and my back starts aching again, so exercise is better for all of me, not just my ankle.

I admit that about three years ago I was doing more cardio, eating better, and had attained the weight I wanted, and then I lost my workout partner – a lot of things happened and I started to lose some of my progress. I hadn’t realized how much until my knees started hurting. I went to a different orthopedist, one for knees and found out that if I don’t lean down and take off the weight I’ve gained back, and put the muscle I’ve lost back on, I’m headed for knee replacement with in two to five years, and probably more like two, or I can hit the gym harder. I’m going to hit the gym, thanks.

I haven’t gained that much weight back, but it’s not how much you weigh, it’s how much your body can tolerate. Think of your body as a car, some can pull heavier loads than others without ruining their suspension. Apparently, I’m over my weight limit and need to get some strengthening done to my undercarriage, that would be the muscle I need back. So, Jon and I have started eating better again, but this time we mean to stay with it as a permanent nutrition change, a lifestyle change. He was told that he, too, needs to lean down and muscle up if he doesn’t want to have another knee surgery, and since early heart attacks run in his family that’s another good reason to exercise and eat healthier.

And before you ask, we do not exercise together. It’s one of the few areas where we are not compatible.

So, we exercise to stay healthy and out of the operating room as the patient. I like that I’m a size 8, but it would never have been enough reward on it’s own for me to do all this, but being able to go up a flight of stairs without pain, now that’s a reward. I also find that my mood is lighter, happier, and just all around better when I exercise consistently. That’s not just me, studies have shown that exercise truly is a mood lifter, and a natural antidepressant. It won’t cure serious depression on it’s own, but it helps.

If your body doesn’t need as much exercise as mine does to stay healthy, great for you. It really is a genetic thing how much weight your body can carry and be in good working order. The same goes for how much junk food you can eat without upsetting your system. Everyone is different, so do what makes you feel good, but I’ll add that the older you get the harder it is to stay in shape, especially if you don’t exercise and eat junk food. Our goal is to get Jon at his “fighting” weight before he hits 40, because that is a metabolic milestone that makes everything harder. Whatever weight you want to lose, muscle you want to gain, doing it before you hit another decade is usually a smart idea, because it does get harder from there. I love every decade, life just gets better, but the one thing I have noticed is that its harder to get in shape and stay there, but thanks in part to the fact that I do workout, it’s the only downside to getting older that I’ve found. I believe sincerely that the amount of good, consistent exercise, and healthier eating habits are a large part of why I get mistaken for being ten to twenty years younger than I am. I admit that part is awesome, but I’m also happier, healthier, not in constant pain, and Jon and I can dance for hours again. We danced a lot when we dated, but injuries and lack of exercise had stolen that from us. Hard work in the gym and the kitchen won back what we thought was gone forever and we just recently proved that we can literally dance the night away again. That was a very sweet extra to all this healthy stuff, and more romantic than we could have imagined. Yay, gym workout and eating better, who knew they could be so damned romantic?

I’m Back!

A week ago I was in the hospital for my second day. I caught a virus, just a stomach virus. We’ve all caught plenty of them in our lifetime, but I’ve never had one like this before. I spent about two weeks throwing up, and a pretty solid week of being unable to hold anything down, including water. I now understand why they think dehydration killed many of the victims of flue epidemics in the early 1900s, before there was such a thing as intravenous fluids to give the sick, and stop that spiral downward. I was never so happy to be on an IV in my life. I’m feeling much better, though still surprisingly tired with very little effort to show for it. My doctor warned me to increase slowly back to a normal activity level. What he didn’t say was that I’d feel so weak and tire so easily that I would have little choice but to behave myself. But everyday is a bit better, and so am I.
A funny thing happened during this illness, it sort of cleared away a lot of mental debris. Put things into perspective, as it were. I found a quote that says a lot of what I learned, and what I’m still enjoying.

“Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.” – Mary Jean Iron.

You would think I would have learned this lesson by now, but I hadn’t. I thought my mother’s death when I was six had taught me this, but maybe there was too much pain attached to that “lesson”, so that it taught me other things. Some things helped me appreciate what I had and take chances and set goals and DO THINGS! But it didn’t teach me to lay in the dark and listen to my husband’s breathing, and cuddle tight to the smooth, warmth of his body, and be grateful that I wasn’t hurting. They gave me morphine in the hospital for the pain, I’d never had morphine – warm, trickling through my veins, the weirdest feeling, like I could trace it through my body, and then the pain abated for the first time in days. I was able to sleep with enough medicine in me, and that, too, was a wonderful thing. Death didn’t teach me to appreciate sitting in my office and typing this to all of you, but life did. I love the view from my office now more than ever before, I no longer bemoan that it’s not a lake, or an ocean, which is the only thing my dream office lacks. I’m happy with my tall green trees now. I no longer think wistfully of that Dalmatian, or English setter, that I’ll never own because I’m not runner enough to keep them happy, but am thrilled with the silky fur of our two Japanese chins, and the comforting snoring of our pug. I realize that the desire for the Dalmatian that came when I was twelve, after reading Dodie Smith’s book “One Hundred and One Dalmatians,” is really a wish to be a different person than I am. I’ve worked too long and too hard to be who I am to wish for such changes. I go to the gym, but a marathon runner I will never be, and that’s okay. I guess there was still a tiny part of me that wanted to be tall, and blond, and gazelle like, but I am short, dark, and . . . and what? Certainly not gazelle like. *laughs* Zebra like? Something sturdy . . . a horse? Pony? In old vaudeville slang I would certainly be a pony, tall leggy girls were stallions.
When I was a little girl I wanted to be either tall, blonde and leggy, and a natural athlete, or darkly exotic and ethnic anything but my Northern European background. There’s still part of me that wants to be that tall athletic girl that I will never be. I am competent in the gym now, but it’s not natural. I will never put a hand out in a slow, easy arc and catch a ball, and throw it without thought, easy as breathing, but then those girls didn’t read much. They certainly didn’t write. I’m not saying athletes can’t be writers, but I think I would have made a choice, been different, aimed outward, rather than inward, and in the end that’s what a writer is – we aim inward. The real world effects us, Gods know, but it is our processing of that reality inside our heads, our hearts, our very souls, that makes the difference. In the last few years I’ve learned to live in my body in a happier, healthier way than ever before, and make peace with the fact that I have to work a little harder to do what some people take for granted in the gym, but that’s okay, they ask me, “How can you write a whole book?” I ask, “How can you run marathons? How can you lift four hundred pounds?” I guess, we all look at the other half and either wonder about them, or even wonder what we might be like if we were them.
It’s okay to wonder, even day dream about being other people, which is part of my job description, I guess. I put myself in other people’s lives, thoughts, what if . . . what if . . . But today I am grateful for what is, because what is, is pretty damn good. I will endeavor to hold this lesson tight and close and not forget that the ordinary is actually pretty extraordinary.

Being Sick is not a Crime, Damnit!

They say Europeans take vacations. Americans take sick days. I’m proof of that right now. A virus I had last week keeps getting better, so I keep hitting my day head on, full steam ahead with no hold back, or consideration that I might not be a 100%. I’ve had three setbacks after a day of feeling fine. What should this stubborn American writer learn? That a day of recuperation after being sick is ok. Anita & her men will still be waiting for me. The new project will still be editing. Even that first tentative whisper from Merry & company will still be there, if I will simply let myself rest one extra day. I hope not to have to learn this lesson again. I can be taught. To all you other sicklings out there, “It is not a sin to rest.” It is okay to lay in bed with books & stuffed toys (Yes, I actually do collect stuffed animals, just not penguins) sleep when you can & , weird as it sounds, enjoy being sick without worrying about everything you’re not able to do today. ” It isn’t exactly enjoyable today, but I’m trying to relax & just let myself feel what I feel. No guilt about deadlines, time lost with my daughter, or the thousand other things that eat away at me when I’m sick. No guilt, no worrying allowed, just be, let yourself feel & heal. Being sick is not a crime, damnit! I shake my fist at the Puritan ancestors & strike a blow for sanity. If this is not one of your neurosis, bully for you, but for the rest of us this is an issue that really hurts, sometimes quite literally. Now, I’m curling under the sheets with my non-penguin cuddle objects, a book on tape, & sleep – to sleep perchance to heal.