Category Archives: Heart

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’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.



Why I Don’t Trust the Man

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Our health care system is messed up. It is a far cry from the personal touch of Marcus Welby,MD. How I long for those days. I understand why Michael Jackson would want to have a doctor on his payroll. I do too


As it is, I am just a cog in the wheel, a part on the assembly line. And what is really scary is that the very people who screwed up are the ones I have to turn to to fix me

12 years ago I had a radio frequency catheter ablation to fix an atrial tachycardia. Dr. Daedalus got too close to the sun and I eventually ended up without an av node.  That’s how I got my first pacemaker. I’m a 1 to 2 per center. The joy just keeps coming.  Dr. Daedalus did not fix my tachycardia, so now my pacemaker paces these rapid beats. Pacemakers that are meant to last 10 to 15 years, only last 5 years with me. 

As it turns out, the research is showing that right ventricular pacing, which I have, leads to heart failure about 7% of the time.  The lack of synchrony in the ventricles can cause the left ventricle to lose effectiveness. My life is in the very hands of the people who caused this and they are not returning my calls.  This is one messed up system.

Night in the Condo

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They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. As much as I would like for that not to be true, it is true.  You all now know that my mom checked herself into her bedroom for a year or so of me time.  Truth be told, as an adult, I get this. The total inability to face the day. One misquote that I hate above all misquotes is that God will not give you anything that you can not handle. What a load of BS.  That is not what the Bible says.  There are plenty of web sites that discuss this atrocity, I don’t need to.


Many people probably do coast through life with no single incident that drives them to the quiet room.  But life is hard. Sometimes it’s too hard.  While I have never checked out for a whole year, I have spent a night or two in my walk in closet.  We call it the condo.  I put in an air mattress, a lamp, sleeping bags and a book. We have a spare bedroom. It’s not about that. It’s about total darkness, total silence, four walls that I can reach out and touch. It’s about crawling back into the womb. 

Life is full of tragedy and disappointment and we all respond in our own ways.  Does life sometimes throw us stuff that is too much to bear.  I say, yes it does. Sometimes people rise up to the occasion and sometimes we step over them on our way into the Galleria.  I was watching the golf channel yesterday and this young boy had lost both of his legs in a boating accident when he was 16 years old.  He founded a charity to raise money to buy prosthesis for kids who could not afford them. How friggin noble.  I hate him.

Black Hole

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Well, the bills have been arriving from my recent ER visit and subsequent tests.  I’m a health insurer’s worst nightmare.  I require an operation every five years to replace my pacemaker/defibrillator.  On top of that, I  have the octopus thingy.  For all of you out there in the medical profession, I apologize.  I am a slow pay.  When you are both the patient and the bill payer, something has to give.  For me, it is my sanity.  I’ll wait for that second and third notice.  The bills have to work their way through the insurance system anyway.  No need to pay for something before the insurance company has had its go at it. To determine what you actually owe, you have to steel yourself for the fight.  It is a date with the dark side.  Sisyphus and his rock.  It is insanity.  Oh, wait, I’m supposed to stay calm.  These bills are going to have to wait.

Thin on Kin

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The whole dance is fascinating.  The clubbing, the hookups, the late night phone calls.  The entire mating ritual.  Do these hormonal units even get it?  That the brass ring is a handcuff.  I’m not knocking marriage, I’m just saying that sometimes it’s not pretty.  Sometimes it’s not what you signed up for.  But, no, really, it’s EXACTLY what you signed up for.  But did you really mean it?


Rick is a trouper.  He’s my best friend, he’s my support, he’s my family.  He gets up at zero dark thirty to wait for hours for the procedure of the day.  He takes notes when I’m too upset to remember anything the doctor says.  He holds my hand.  He has a phone tree.  A PHONE TREE……  Just in case.  

When I had my V Tach two years ago, I survived despite the odds.  If you want to know more about ventricular tachycardia and cardiac arrest, read I’m Still Standing by Fabrice Muamba.  I spent four days in the hospital and I specifically said “no visitors.”  I was processing.  One particularly tense moment, when it was just Rick and me, I made a comment about how we don’t really have anyone. Rick said,yeah, we’re sort of thin on kin.  That man has a way with words.

The Waiting Game

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I am waiting to heal.  Only the passage of time will tell whether or not my stupid heart will repair itself.  In the meantime, I wait and try not to be upset about the possibilities.  It’s hard, I will not lie.

So, what do I do while I wait?  I think about what was because what might be is too scary. 

I think about my parents because they’ve been through this but they aren’t around to talk about it.  Isn’t that the ultimate irony?  I think about the things I now understand about my parents that I couldn’t possibly have understood at the time.  And I forgive.

I AM trying to relax…

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This weekend we came to our cabin in Wimberley. It is my Walden. My place of solitude. No tv, no cable, no internet. Just quiet and beauty. That is until the troop of middle aged men hiked through our property from the B and B up the hill.  I tried not to hoot and holler but I did very calmly offer to call the police if they didn’t immediately high tail it back up the hill. In Texas we don’t take trespassing lightly, and certainly not in my walden pond. I spent the rest of the afternoon in bed.  The fence guy should be here any minute. 

Broken Heart Syndrome

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Tako Tsubo is also called Broken Heart Syndrome.  That sounds bogus, doesn’t it.  Really?  I just got back from tutoring my girl Kiera.  On the outside wall of the school as you walk in is a no bully sign.  You know, the kind with a circle and a line drawn through it.

I grew up in a different era when kids weren’t coddled.  My elementary school bully was named Dick Hardin.  He was a chubby kid who would knock us off our bikes on our way home from school.  I, in turn, bullied poor little Renee who was skinny, had pale skin and a knee brace.  She was a cripple.  We didn’t use words like handicap back then.  It was all very Darwinian.

When I suffered my first broken heart, my mother told me to get over it.  That no one ever died of a broken heart.  She had forgotten about Romeo and Juliet.  Anyway, that’s what you did.  You got over it.  I had my heart broken a number of times and each time it healed, a little scar tissue formed and a wall went up around it.  Before you get all concerned about my upbringing, 10 years of therapy (and Jesus) has removed most of the scar tissue.

The irony, however, is that the person who broke my heart one too many times is this man.  He pushed me over the edge.

I had the blessing of exercising the purist type of love, unconditional.  My dad had never told me he loved me, never hugged me, never asked about my day or came to visit me when I was sick.  He did, however, do what his generation did.  He went to work every day, paid the bills, sent me to the best schools he could afford, or not afford, bought our horses, paid for riding lessons, all that.  He and my mom attended every swim meet, horse show and sporting event I ever participated in.  

After my mom died in 2007 I called my Dad about 3 times a week until he got a girlfriend and was not so lonely. Anyone who knows my father knows that there is no such thing as a short conversation.  Well, actually, it isn’t a conversation so much as a monologue.  Nevertheless, I got to know my father more in the past 5 years than ever before.

When his lung cancer metastasized to his brain in September, 2012, the final journey began.  It was the task I was born to do.  It was my life’s purpose. It was the greatest gift I could ever give and I in turn received back many fold. It was a blessing.   Between September and when he died in November we hugged many times; he told me he loved me every time I left the hospital.  I crawled into bed with him when I told him we were taking him home.  He asked me, “to die?”.  I said, yes, to die.  And so it is that my heart is broken and I have this dreadful thing called Tako Tsubo.