An age of wonder

I like to say that I know the exact day I became old, because I remember the awards dinner Suzy and I attended in Dallas 11 years and two days ago. I remember the first sniffles and sneezes of an infection that weekend that marked the beginning of my life with Crohn’s, putting me in intensive care a few weeks later.

Simply not good enough

Half a lifetime ago, I wrote about the day I lied (twice) to a panhandler about being able to give him the money he was begging for. That day, I had just come out of the local pool hall where I had been spending money to drink and play games.

Looking on the bright side

Today is “Be Glad to Be Alive Day.” Yesterday’s post, and my mood of late, have been too gloomy, a little too resigned for my taste. I don’t like surrender or the feeling of weakness. It is a measure of my illness that it saps my get-up-and-keep-going.

Who Needs Health

What passes for health care discussion these days is enough to make you sick.

The prevalent sound bites in fact have almost nothing to do with health care and are instead a guide to greed and selfishness in an ever-escalating battle of “my ox will be gored more than yours.”

The question that matters on health care is, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

Mixed signals

Ah, for the days of energy and discipline, when I could sit down and pop off an essay, a tall tale or just a journal entry in a few short minutes. Not only could I do it, but I insisted on doing it, because words are my favorite toys and thoughts are my favorite games. An examined life is the only life, and sharing the results of the examinations is a kind of bursting forth in song.

Breathing easier

We got some much-needed help in yesterday’s mail. A check came from the Treasury, and some phone research confirms that my disability claim has been approved.

I am not so happy to be officially labeled so ill, but I am relieved we will be able to “unmax” our credit cards and get off our “don’t buy anything you can’t eat” budget. We also can stop worrying that we will have to quickly sell our house. If there are no further disappointments, we can hope to be nearly debt-free except for the mortgage by year’s end. That’s a welcome reversal from wondering whether we were wise to cling to our home while awaiting the disability ruling.

So, we are breathing a little easier today, starting to budget for debt repayment and home repair instead of wondering how we’re going to pay the utility bills.

Maybe I should try to teach Salsa to give the mailman a break, since his visit yesterday was anything but unwelcome.

Old man

We buried my father two years ago today. As I’ve written before, he was really gone long before then, and I have little fondness for the memories of those last years as my mother struggled to care for him and the rest of us struggled to make each word or visit, which could have been our last together, a kind and loving one.

Update on Suzy’s heart

Suzy is home from the hospital (10/7/08), tested and cleared to go about her normal life.

The symptoms that sent her to the emergency room have passed and seem to have been momentary. Various diagnostics all came back normal for nutrient levels, blood condition, infection indicators and so on.

In checking all of that, however, doctors detected a heart murmur, and subsequent tests showed a weak valve. Much is known about the mitral valve, but much of what is known is that not enough is known yet. The immediate upshot is that Suzy has a fairly common heart problem that does not require surgery, but will require careful and regular monitoring for the rest of her days.

As I understand what the doctors told us, the outward signs that this valve problem might cause (physical difficulties like chest pain or whatever) become apparent too late. Surgery at that stage is not so undeniably helpful, so there’s a bit of a drive to intervene early. At the same time, many patients lead ordinary lives with this problem and surgery would be too drastic a response. The cautious middle ground is constant monitoring of underlying physical indicators (size of the heart chambers, blood flow, blood vessel configuration), rather than waiting for external symptoms like impaired ability to exercise.

Suzy will start having regular close looks at her heart to see if the weak valve leads to leakage that warrants surgery. Her next followup is in December, and then perhaps every six months or so after that (perhaps less frequently, depending on findings).

We will be working on keeping stress to a minimum and improving general nutrition and fitness. We are glad that the moment has passed and that it brought us an early warning of something that might have been much worse.

The doctors confirm what we all know: Suzy’s heart is a delicate treasure.

Suzy having tests

Suzy didn’t feel well at work this morning (10/6/08), and a co-worker thought she looked a little flushed. Her doctor is out of the office today, and she had been having some little odd symptoms in recent days, so she went to the emergency room.

“Better safe than sorry” has become our motto as we’ve dealt with my Crohn’s.

In one of the early diagnostics, the doctor detected a heart murmur and scheduled an echocardiogram. The cardiologist then found a mitral valve prolapse. The same cardiologist had seen her a few years ago and had noted he found no sign of heart murmur, so he is a bit concerned that now he should find so clear a change. He has scheduled a further test to check more closely on the valve.

Suzy will be staying overnight at Baptist (Springhill). The symptoms that prompted the emergency room trip have faded and seem not to be threatening or worrisome, and the valve condition is fairly common and also generally non-threatening, but keep Suzy in your thoughts and prayers as we await further results.

Listen, hear

Hospitals are great teaching institutions. I am a little sorry to say I do not mean this in the sense that they are important places for our medical practitioners to learn their trade, but rather that they are places where patients can learn valuable lessons about the human condition.