Monthly Archives: February 2014

Les Miserables

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Tomorrow I go in for my surgery.  I’ve been listening to the Les Miserables sound track all day today.  It’s been a good distraction, nothing like some cathartic crying.  Every time I listen to the battle song, it reminds me of my Executive Management program at USC in Newport Beach California.

I’ve been retired from banking way longer than I ever worked.  My life the past twenty years has been about church, volunteering, golf, working out, travel, Rick.  But before that it was all about work.  A couple of years ago I helped out in the local Young Life office.  I was complaining to my friend Kim about something the youngsters were having me do and she said, “do they know who you are.” That made me laugh.  If I ever was somebody, it was a very long time ago.  I can assure you, it made no difference to my Young Life boss, Mike, who had asked me to photo copy the Lamar High School year book. 

 Once upon a time, I was a promising young banker at the Bank of Montreal. I was on the fast track, on my way up.  I had already done a stint in London and was being prepped to take over the Houston office.  Each year BMO sent one of its up and comers to the University of Southern California Executive Management Program.  I was fortunate enough to go in 1995.  There were about 30 people from all over the world in my class.  There were five or six AT&T people, several naval officers, one US Congressman, a guy from South Africa, a guy from the Philippines, a lady from China, some other people I don’t remember, and me.

In a lot of ways it was your typical corporate training program.  We had fabulous speakers, case studies and the required bonding/group dynamic exercise. I’ve done lots of these types of things and this one was unique.  We were divided into three groups and each group had to sing and choreograph the battle song from Les Miserable. Believe me, I would rather have done a ropes course. Fortunately, my team had the Filipino (they love karaoke) and we had a secret weapon: the US Congressman, who was no other than Gopher from The Love Boat, Fred Gandy.  Those Hollywood types are so multi talented. The hardest part for me was memorizing the lyrics in the allotted time.  We came up with some lame dance moves and I lip synced the song while everyone else sang. It was nerve wracking and exhilarating at the same time. Somewhere in my closet I have a VHS tape of the performance. Can you hear the people sing…….

"I Was Born Horny"

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When I was in tenth grade I dated a boy named Jim.  We had a mutual friend named Lane.  We all had houses at Pickwick Lake and one weekend they came over to my house to ski.  

Jim showed up at Lane’s with a T shirt that said, “I Was Born Horny”. Lane suggested to Jim that he at least turn his shirt inside out before coming to my house to meet my dad, but he didn’t see the need. I’m not sure Dad noticed the shirt or if he did, he didn’t say anything.  Dad had a sophomoric sense of humor, so he may have thought it was funny.

Jim, Lane and I took our ski boat out for the day.  Pickwick Lake was formed when the Tennessee Valley Authority damned the Tennessee River in the 1930’s.  It has a lot of old tree stumps in various parts and can be tricky to navigate.  Lane drove while I skied and we hit one of those stumps, knocking a hole in the boat. We somehow made it back home to our dock. Lane was worried about telling his father, Big Ben, what had happened.  We called him Big Ben, but not to his face. My Dad assured him that it would be okay. It could happen to anyone and he offered to go over to Lane’s house to talk to his father and smooth things over.

We piled into our cars and headed over to the Carrick’s. When Mr. Carrick saw all of us, he assumed the worst. He was not happy with my dad for running interference for Lane until he realized that it was our boat, not his, that had the hole in it.  Things got tense for a moment, but once the details were cleared up and Lane was safe, we went home.

I ran into Lane at our 35th high school reunion and we reminisced about that day. Afterwards, when I got back home, I told Dad about seeing Lane. Without missing a beat, he said, “you remember that time his dad jumped down my throat when Lane knocked a hole in our boat.  It really could have happened to anyone.”

And that’s the way my Dad was. He didn’t sweat the small stuff and it was all small stuff.  

Face Your Fears

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I am not one to back down from a fight. I like to look my opponent square in the eye and take them on.  I love trash talk.  I love match play, mano y mano.  I love competition in general.  Life is a competition.  I have tried to suppress this tendency, to be kinder, gentler.  I grew up in a zero-sum-game household.  There had to be a loser to have a winner.  All of your successes were relative. We were awarded trophies and ribbons based on merit and they were prominently displayed in our family’s den.  We were all about winning.

Rick and I hike.  It’s what we do. It’s what we build our vacations around.  Some of our favorite places are Zermatt, Switzerland, the Lake District of England and the Santa Lucia mountains near Carmel.  All of these places are mountainous, which can be tricky for me because I’m scared of heights.  Over time, the fear started to beat me.  I would get to a certain narrow spot on the trail and despite all of Rick’s encouragement and cajoling, I would turn around, forcing him to either abandon the hike or go on without me. This was not tolerable.  This could not happen.  I would not lose to an irrational fear. 

So, when faced with a challenge that I can’t conquer, I enlist help. Houston does many things well.  One of these things is that we churn out gymnasts.  Bela Karolyi  lives here, for goodness sake.  It was an interesting couple of days on the phone trying to find an instructor willing to take me on.   My mission, to walk on a balance beam.  I found Sean, an Olympic hopeful now teaching cheerleaders to do back flips. He only returned my call because he thought I had a daughter who wanted to take gymnastics.  It took several months to work up to it.  Me and the preschoolers (their moms and grandparents watching through the glass wall) tore it up every Monday morning at 10:30.  I started out on the floor, then worked on a beam sitting on the floor, then a beam six inches off the floor, then a beam with giant mats underneath.  Then, voila, I mounted the beam, walked forward, walked backwards, did turns, fell off, climbed back on, all without a net.  Take that.


The Big One

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It’s easy for me to forget. To forget that a machine  beats every single heart beat for me. That another part of the machine prevents fatal rhythms from causing my heart to stop altogether. I used to be normal. 


Then one day I almost fainted in Aaron Brothers. Then I got a pacemaker, and I got better.  I started hiking and playing golf again.  I actually got to the point where I didn’t think about it all the time.  Except every morning and every night when I brush my teeth and I see the ugly caterpillar scar on the left side of my chest.  A caterpillar that gets thicker every five years with every new surgery.  

I had a second pacemaker because the battery of the first one got used up.  I am 100% pacemaker dependent which means that my pacemaker beats every beat for me, not a backup like lots of people have.  I have this thing called A/V block, where my A/V node doesn’t work.  The scar healed and I got back to living my life, back to being normal. That is, until the BIG ONE.

I imagine people who live in San Francisco don’t get all that freaked out about tremors.  I imagine that they happen all the time.  But I bet they would have a sixth sense about a real earthquake, about the big one.  

One day about two and a half years ago, Rick and I were at the driving range. I had gone through my whole bag starting with my wedges.  Rick went to the putting green while I finished up with my driver. We were going to play nine holes. I can’t remember if I hit one drive or two.  I know that when the driver hit  the ball, my heart exploded. I instantly dropped the club onto the ground.  I just let go of it. I collapsed into a chair that was right behind me.  I sat there as if I were watching a video of the event.  Henry Dean was hitting balls right in front of me.  I should call out to him. Ask him to help me. I couldn’t.  Time was in limbo.  I have no idea how much time passed.  It was all really pleasant and I wanted the experience to last forever.  But I knew that if I stayed in the chair I would die. 

I knew what I was having was no tremor, that I was having a ventricular tachycardia.  I have atrial tachycardia all the time and this was different This was the big one. Rick walked up and I told him we needed to go to the emergency room RIGHT NOW.  I was hooked up to an EKG machine within 30 seconds of walking in the door and word quickly spread throughout the hospital.  Soon my room was full of nurses, interns, residents, physicians. It wasn’t until after they left that I realized what was happening.  I was the patient impaled by the fence post,the man with the nail in his sinus, the freak show.  I was having sustained VT’s of 230 and I never lost consciousness.  I’m a stud that way.  I never faint.  They were about to shock me with the paddles when my heart converted on its own and my audience went back to work in other parts of the hospital. I had a battery of tests and they concluded I had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. They put in an internal defibrillator to intercept any future V Tach’s.  Being without one is like Russian roulette.  When the scars healed, I got on with my life until the V Tachs started again this past Thanksgiving.

On Monday Dr. Doyle said the first thing that has made sense. My diseased heart is getting worse because I’m alive. Because I survived the big one. Because I defied the odds in such dramatic fashion that the entire emergency room staff came to witness it.  I had gotten complacent about the miracle that my life is. I’ve been taking it for granted. No more. I will count my blessings with each breath. I’d been given a second chance and I had forgotten all about it.  For a while, I thought I was normal.

Mac Daddy, (WARNING – contains graphic material)

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I’m assembling my team. We live in Houston after all, and we have the best and the brightest.  Every one’s expendable. I’m starting from scratch.  Deciding who’s in and who’s out.  

Today was a good day, a very good day indeed. I went to see Dr Doyle who’s been taking care of me for 12 years. He’s a veteran on my team,  but his recent performance had put him on the fence. We talked it out and I think I’m going to stick with him. Jennifer, his nurse is also a keeper, as is Ainsley, the pacemaker tech.
Today was a good day. Dr Doyle thinks I’ll be around in five years when he retires. Yay. I can work with that. He also thinks that a new pacemaker might help improve my quality of life. Ainsley said it is the Mac Daddy of pacemakers. I like Ainsley. She played basketball and softball for Furman University in South Carolina. She’s met Freddie Couples and she has a firm hand shake.

So, we have a game plan and I like that.  Something to hang my hat on, something that has odds, statistics, a chance.  A course of action.  Something that is not waiting.  I hate waiting.

Next week I’ll get an MRI to identify the amount of scar tissue in my heart and to determine if the dysfunction started on the right and moved to the left or vice versa. This is important for some reason and it also effects my odds.  Of course, let’s all hope and pray for a good MRI outcome. I just pray that my claustrophobic self can stay in the machine long enough to get some good images.

Then, I am getting a bi ventricular pacemaker/ICD on Tuesday, February 25th. This device may improve my EF, that’s the heart’s version of an IQ.  Mine pretty much sucks at 25%.(The first time in my life I haven’t tested well.) Any improvement on that should help me breath easier and maybe even improve my EF.  I’ve never been so excited about getting cut open. This will be my fourth pacemaker scar.  But that’s OK. It’s the Mac Daddy.   Bring it on.








I Am a Nuisance

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My first grade teacher was named Mrs. Schuester.  She was a Yankee from Boston.  She pronounced fine with a long “i”. So I did too.  My mother thought that was funny.  She was older than my mother, so she seemed old to me.  

A hot lunch cost 25 cents back then.  A quarter.  We had fish sticks on Fridays to accommodate the Catholic kids, even though it was a public school.  The Jewish kids got to take their own holidays in addition to the Christian ones. It’s funny how we all used to get along that way.  

One day we were standing in line waiting to march to the cafeteria like a little miniature army battalion.  As an aside, I don’t like putting kids in lines.  They still do that.  I guess it is better that a stampede or a melee, but there is something very prison-like to me about putting little kids in line.

Anyway, we were standing in line waiting to go to the cafeteria. Mrs. Schuester had put two book cases back to back to make sort of an entry way into her class room. They were stuck together somehow, maybe nailed.  I was standing there in that darn line waiting for the rest of the little soldiers to fall into place.  While I was waiting for the others, I rolled my quarter around on the top of the bookshelves.  Oops.  That dang quarter slipped in between those two stuck together bookshelves.  I should have kept my mouth shut and either gone hungry or eaten off of someone else’s plate.  What happened next changed my life forever. For it labeled me.  I am a nuisance.  That is what Mrs. Schuester said when she called the custodian, who had to stop throwing that pink stuff on kids’ vomit long enough to come to our class room to unstick those book cases to get my quarter out.  Why didn’t she just give me a quarter and ask me to bring two the next day?

The James Mayes Seal of Approval

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I have published 24 blog posts and James Mayes has liked two of them. So I know he’s reading them. He is clearly a man who does not hand out compliments lightly. When he does it means something. Why do I value his opinion and need his approval?


You see I am a people pleaser and somewhat of a whore. I can adapt and transform. I can be whatever you want me to be. I majored in English. My dad thought that was dicey business because the grades are subjective. I’m ok with that. I only need one paper to figure out what the professor is looking for.  Just let me know and I can serve it up to you on a silver platter.

Being like this makes me a good student. I always made good grades. What it doesn’t make me is my own person. I have been searching for my true north for as long as I can remember. When you only exist in the mirror, it is hard to be yourself in the dark. 

Writing this blog is therapeutic. It serves many purposes, mostly for me. Believe it or not I have held back. I have edited because some of the people are still around to get offended or even shocked. Also, I’ve done things I’m not particularly proud of like making fun of poor, little crippled Renee on the playground. Tick tock the game is locked.

So I’m doing this for me. Let the chips fall where they may, and if James Mayes likes it, even better..

Go Texan Day

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I am what they call a naturalized Texan.  I’ve been here my whole adult life so I sometimes forget that I haven’t always been a Texan.  I started out a Southern Belle.  Texas is NOT part of the South.  It is it’s own universe.  Memphis was and is as slow as molasses.  People talk and talk and talk and talk.  There is no such thing as a short meeting.  You have to have at least 10 or 15 minutes of small talk before you jump into your business.  I didn’t know that until I started handling my father’s estate.  I spent three months in Memphis while Dad died and then afterwards to take care of things.  It reminded me how Texas is not the South. How hard edged I have become.  How worldly and cynical.  


But it wasn’t always that way.  I showed up in Austin in 1980 having run out of options in Memphis.  This is the God’s honest truth;  I filled out the University of Texas Graduate School of Business application because it was a one page bubble thing.  No essay.  I just found out that my friend Jackie did the same thing.  I really wasn’t all that committed.  But I got accepted and I rented a U Haul and off I went.

And what can I say?  It was the most fun, fantastic, redemptive time of my life.  I loved almost everything about it, except the content of the classes  ….boring…..

But I did well, made good grades and better friends.  And I got a job.  

If Texas is a universe unto itself, Austin is it’s own planet. At that time Austin was a small town with no jobs.  Had that not been the case, none of us would have left.  It was heaven.  Most of my Texas friends were from Dallas.  I had only heard horror stories about Houston. Unsophisticated, bad traffic and hot and humid.  Mostly just hot and humid. But Houston was where the jobs were and they paid up for the inconvenience of having to live there.

My very first foray into Houston was to interview at Texas Commerce Bank in February, 1982.  I hopped on a Southwest Airlines flight for the 45 minute ride from Austin to Houston. This was during the hot pants and free drink era of the “love” airline.  

For starters, exactly which cluster of skyscrapers is downtown?  I’d never seen such a thing.  Memphis has only one downtown and it is snuggled up against the river. Everywhere you look, there are downtowns in Houston. 

But despite the abundance of tall buildings, the city was surprisingly cowtown.  I took a taxi from Hobby airport to the right downtown, got out of the car and guffawed at the Jock Ewings parading up and down the street.  Everywhere I looked there were  bankers and lawyers wearing cowboy boots under their Brooks Brothers suits, some donning hats. Women, mostly the secretary kind, were also sporting their western wear. OK, note to self – adjust wardrobe. But the people seemed alive, there was a certain bounce in their step, a festive mood to the work day.  I think it was some time after lunch that I commented to my host that the cowboy culture of Houston was a little surprising to this Memphis via Austin gal.  It was then that he told me that it was the opening day of the Rodeo.  I had landed in Houston smack dab in the middle of “Go Texan Day.”


I’m Afraid

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I went for a second opinion last week.  I’m still having a lot of tests done to determine all the many ways my heart is defective, but it is unlikely I have  Tako Tsubo after all.  I might just have the old fashion kind of heart failure instead of some funky Japanese variety. That’s not nearly as much fun to have or to say. They call it idiopathic cardiomyopathy, just a fancy word for your heart muscle is too weak to satisfy the demands of your body and we don’t know why. It has been a twelve year slide, kind of like a frog in a pot of boiling water.

I don’t know what to do with this information.  I am a Christian.  I know God will walk with me through the valley of the shadow of death, but I am still scared as hell.  I am so scared in fact that it is hard for me to get out of my pajamas some days.  It is becoming increasingly harder for me to breath.  Pulling on tight jeans, taking off a sweater, climbing into bed.  These things are sometimes all it takes to leave me ever so slightly out of breath. Anything harder than that, and I’ve just run a 100 yard dash.  I can still function independently, carry on a normal routine, drive a car, run errands, have dinner with friends. The problem is, I don’t want to.  I don’t see the point.

Many people live with tremendous aches in their souls, but we don’t want to know about it.  We want them to soldier on, to fight the good fight, be brave, get over it, move on. And just how do they do that? I’ll tell you how they do it. Denial, alcohol, shopping, drugs, food, minimizing, risky sex, religiosity.  I’m a recovering alcoholic, so drugs and alcohol are out for me.  I’m not going to be in denial; I’m not going to whitewash my situation.  I’ve thought about eating whatever the heck I want, what difference does it make now.  But it does make a difference.  Food is fuel for our bodies and it is one thing we have control over.  Crappy food makes you feel crappy. I will continue to take care of my body even though it has betrayed me.  

What I am going to do is to feel my feelings. I will cry a lot and I will wallow for a while, I’ll probably spend some time in the Condo, I’ll go back to my therapist, I’ll find a support group, I’ll lean on my friends.  I will rely on my best friend, my husband.  I will pray.  And I will try to get to the point where I want to participate in life again, but I will live it in a distilled manner.   I will weed out the stuff that has no purpose, I will surround myself with things of eternal value. People whose lives are full of hope and joy. And I will do this by the strength that can only come from my maker. I will lift up my eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help comes from the Lord.



Billy Reuben

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The first boy who ever tried to kiss me was named Billy Reuben. Who names their kid after a liver enzyme?  He sat in front of me in third grade.  Third grade was a traumatic year for all of us.  Our sweet, young, beautiful Miss Carmichael did the unthinkable.  She got married over Christmas vacation and did not come back.  Mrs. Wilson never had a chance.  I almost feel sorry for her now.

Any way, Billy Reuben tried to kiss me and being totally repulsed at the prospect, I resorted to name calling.   In an effort to save face, Billy replied, “You mean, I am mud spelled backwards?”  That’s what he said, mud spelled backwards.  I didn’t have a come back for that one.  All these years later, I can still see him slowing turning around and uttering some of the stupidest words ever said in the history of the English language, you mean I am mud spelled backwards.  He had no game.  He wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes in my house. That’s all I remember about Billy Reuben, other than his liver enzyme name, which didn’t even mean anything to me at the time.  That was way before I started preparing for my liver function test more than I did for my college entrance exams.

Then one day I go to take the GMAT. This is during the days when you dragged your sorry butt up from a late Friday night, made sure you had a number two pencil and you showed up. That’s all you did.  You showed up. It’s a competency test.  I casually looked over at the paper of the guy sitting next to me and whose name do you think I saw on top of that test?  You got it, Mr. liver enzyme himself, Billy Reuben.

ps.  all you literal types, I know Biliruben is not an enzyme.  It’s just fun to call it one.