The Heart

 I've learned how to be intuitive and read the signs. I had two instances of chest pain, one at the West Virginia Capitol in Charleston, in late July when I had 45 seconds to talk about why a ban on abortions is bad. This was after leaving home at 5:45 A.M. to get there by 8. The other time, I was walking my usual 1.5 mile route around my neighborhood, when I ran into my friend Eleanor, out with her dog. She asked how I was felling and I said "Great" then realized I didn't feel great. Then my campaign manager's husband, eighteen days younger than I am, died of a heart attack, and there was an article in the paper about how having COVID could mess up your heart. I had COVID in August. Also, my ankles were swollen, not a good sign. 

 I left a phone message for my cardiologist. The nurse called me back. She said "So you turned around and went home when you were walking?" Technically, no. I continued my route, uphill, only slowly. I'm like that. The doctor called me later and asked if I wanted a heart catheterization. I begged off, citing my campaign schedule (I'm running for U.S. Congress for the northern half of West Virginia). I agreed to a stress test for last Thursday morning, the day after Yom Kippur. I did great on the treadmill, going fast and steep, up to a heat rate of 146 bpm without chest pain. That afternoon, feeling good about the test, I walked a half mile to the PRT, West Virginia University's little trains that cover the sprawling campuses and downtown, and rode to a pro-choice rally on campus. I saw friends there and had the opportunity to speak. I thought about asking for a ride home from someone I knew who lives a few blocks from me, but decided to go back as I came. Yes, I was tired. I was walking the last few blocks, when my cell phone rang.

"Hi, Doc. How are you?" I asked. 

"How are you?" 

"You tell me." He said there was a problem in my heart, apparently where I had my original heart attack in 2003. So a catheterization was scheduled for today, October 10.

It took some time. I was there with my husband from 6:45 until 11:30. I  joked with the nurses beforehand, and told them about my campaign. They were impressed that I was married to a man for nearly fourteen years. I was impressed that my husband got up early and texted back and forth with my sister the whole time we were there, without telling me until we were home. There were other perks: a handsome young man shaved my arms and my groin. I asked him about his life and how he got this job. He's an undergrad at WVU, there is a short training period, and he wanted to work while he was in school. I admired his determination and work ethic. I would never have touched an old man, even in that extremely non-sexual way, when I was that young.

I was semi-out for the procedure. I sensed they were doing something, but I didn't know what. They were putting a camera through my arm to look at my heart. When it was over, the two doctors woke me and said everything was fine, they didn't need to do anything. I guess something was irregular, but not bad. The staff at WVU Heart and Vascular were all great, every one of them. The young man who assisted the nurses, the nurse who told me she gets up at 3:30 A.M. to go to work and has a 7-year old son, my cardiologist, who has worked with me for ten years, and the people who check you in and out. I respect and admire all of them.

My father died of heart failure at 69, and my mother at 75 of pancreatic cancer. I'll be 73 this month. I get that one can't expect to live forever. WVU Medicine still wants to operate on my left eye and look down my gullet to see what's cooking there. The skin people want me to put some crap on my bald head because they think I could develop cancer there. I'm a mess. And I see why people just give up and say "I'm not taking any more medical treatments." I'm still trying to work it all and stay healthy, and I understand how important it is that I have insurance (Medicare, basically) and don't pay for most treatments. I hope that this wealthy country can make sure someday soon that everyone is covered for medical treatments. I want to make that happen.

When I talk to college students about my campaign, I tell them this is my "capstone," the last thing I do before I graduate. If I win, I'll try for a second term. If I don't win, I won't run for office again (b'li neder, look it up) .

The people at the hospital all said I was lucky, lucky to meet my husband, lucky my heart is okay, lucky to be walking around nearly twenty years after a heart attack. If I were a Christian, I would say I was "blessed." As a Jew, I just say thanks to God for all the good things in my life so far, even knowing it won't go on forever. 

In "Interview With The Vampire," someone asks why there aren't more of them, since they can't be killed. And the answer is that they walk out in the sun, which kills them, after a hundred or two hundred years, because the world has changed so much and all the people they knew are gone. I understand that now. "My" era seems long ago, and I don't understand much of what goes on today. In "Lord of the Rings," Frodo sails away at the end, because he was bitten by the spider. He looks to have recovered, but he says he only stayed alive to write the story.

Maybe my next project will be to write the story.

Recent Writings

People want to know what I've been saying, so here it is. 

This was in response to a column by Hoppy Kercheval, who writes for both the Charleston Gazette-Mail  and the Morgantown Dominion-Post. The Charleston paper published this as a letter two weeks after I sent it. I sent it to Hoppy and  he gave me ten minutes on his radio program.

"Hoppy's not entirely wrong about the Democratic Party. He says 'The party needs strong top-of-the-ticket candidates to energize voters...'  Whether or not the three of us who stepped up to run as Democrats for Congress are 'strong' is a matter of opinion, but three of us did step up. That would be me and Angela J. Dwyer in the northern Second District and Lacy Eugene Watson in the southern First District.

"All of us are interested in slowing or stopping climate change, creating gender and racial equity, helping West Virginia by fixing the roads via the Infrastructure Bill, helping the poor in our state by reinstituting the Extended Childcare Tax Credit, and capping the price of insulin so that people afflicted with diabetes don't have to choose between food and medication. We are all pro-choice, pro-LGBT, pro-union and worker.

"Since the primary, it's left to Mr. Watson and me to be the Democrats in the race. If by 'strong' Hoppy means 'raised a lot of money' we are not. But we don't have the benefit of the corporate and dark fund money that our opponents have. I personally am grateful to the sixty-five or so donors to my campaign, friends and family across the country and people who have heard my message in West Virginia. 

"Our opponents refused to certify the results of the last election, encouraging the false claims of fraud by the former President. 

"The Democrats in the race, with or without support from the National Democratic Party, are in it for the people of West Virginia. We could be strong with support from the good people of our state."

On Monday, July 25th, our Governor added  to the Legislature's "one-day" special session, a call to "clarify" the state's abortion law, in light of the Supreme Court majority overturning Roe vs. Wade. I drove to Charleston on Wednesday, leaving home at 5:30 A.M., to sign up to speak at the one public hearing on the bill scheduled for 9 A.M., with sign-ups at 8. We were close to 100 of us who signed up to speak, about two-thirds against the bill they had passed, which banned all abortions, with no exceptions. The special session adjourned Friday, having taken no action on the original tax cut proposal, and with the two houses of the Legislature not agreeing on locking up doctors who perform abortions or what, if any, exceptions could be made to the abortion ban for rape or incest. Each speaker was allotted 45 seconds (really!) to speak, so I paraphrased the first and third paragraphs. Martha Shamberger from my committee sent this out as a press release on Wednesday; no one published it.

Press release

From: Barry Lee Wendell, Democratic candidate for Congress in West Virginia-2.

Re: HB-302

"This bill takes a private decision about terminating a pregnancy away from the two people involved and their medical team and gives it to the state. This is unnecessary and intrusive.

"The Governor introduced this bill Monday afternoon and scheduled a hearing for the public at 9 A.M. Wednesday. For anyone with a day job or child-care issues, or anyone living in my constituency in the northern half of West Virginia, it was nearly impossible to attend this hearing. This is disrespectful to the people of our state.

"The Governor and the Legislature have repeatedly talked about increasing the population of West Virginia by encouraging young people to stay and people from outside the area to move here. Open minds and hearts and a willingness to accept diversity of thought and religion would do infinitely more to get young people to stay here than tax breaks for the rich and giveaways to large out-of-state corporations. 

"Rabbi Victor Urecki  of Charleston, said on Twitter yesterday, and I agree with him, '… any difficult decision of what to do is made by the woman and the guidance of her family and clergy if she chooses.That is the Jewish position and one accepted by many.That may not be the Christian view for some.' " This law violates the separation of church and state guaranteed by the United States Constitution. 

I will be available before the hearing on the front steps of the Capitol after signing in around 8 A.M. and after the hearing. "

After the hearing, there was a loud demonstration in the rotunda of the state capitol by pro-choice activists. I felt ill suddenly and left the building.

A friend in Fairmont is a member of Physicians For a National Health Program. She arranged for me to speak to the West Virginia chapter of the group on Zoom on Sunday, July 31. Here are my remarks to them:

 PNHP 7/31/22

"I am Barry Lee Wendell, the Democratic candidate for United States Congress in West Virginia’s Second District, which covers all twenty-seven counties in the northern half of the state.  I’m a native of Baltimore, Maryland. I spent the first half of my life in Baltimore, New Orleans and Miami and the second half in Los Angeles, Crescent City, California and for the last ten years, Morgantown, where I served two two-year terms on the city council. 

"I looked at your website, and I am interested in your three parts of 'Medicare For All,' Chronic Care, Prevention and Job Freedom. I have stories relating to each of these. 

"I worked as an SSI claims representative in Miami from 1978 to 1984, when I was promoted to Los Angeles as a supervisor. I was in the southernmost office in Dade County. Many of our clients were poor farmworkers, Black from Georgia or Spanish-speaking from Mexico. We also had refugees from Cuba and Haiti, and people from Puerto Rico who were only eligible for SSI if they lived in the fifty states. One day, a well-dressed professional-looking woman came to my desk. She wanted to file a claim on behalf of her son, who was turning eighteen. He had cystic fibrosis. His parents had enough income that as a child, he was not eligible for SSI or Medicaid. The medical bills for her son were exorbitant, and they could get no help. They had taken out second and third mortgages on their house. At eighteen, their son was an adult. I filled out the papers for her to have her son sign. She said he was unable to come into the office, and was not planning to enroll in college. She looked surprised that I would ask that, but as a college student, he would not have been eligible. The case was quickly approved by the medical people in another office, and her son received a small SSI check and, more importantly, Medicaid to pay his enormous hospital bills. He died three months later. That there was no help for these parents and others like them, I still find baffling. Poor families could get Medicaid from the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program or would have to go to the emergency room where the state would have to pick up the tab.

"I’ve heard politicians say that undocumented people in our country should not be able to receive medical treatment. But if there is a pandemic, COVID-19 for instance, and people are turned away because of their immigration status, then they are likely to further spread disease through the general population. If there is a contagious disease in our community, then everyone must be treated, whatever legal status they have, regardless of their ability to pay for care. It’s not rocket science. Everyone must be protected and treated, or else everyone in the community is vulnerable. Yes to prevention.

"Many of us have been in jobs where we stayed for the benefits. I worked for more than eighteen years in Los Angeles Unified School District as a substitute. If I worked one hundred days in a school year, I was eligible for good health insurance through the district. 

"Though this benefit is no longer available, I was able to keep my health insurance in retirement if I had one hundred days in fifteen consecutive years and was at least fifty-five years old. In February 2003, seventeen years after I started with the District, when I was fifty-three, I suffered a heart attack while visiting my mother in Baltimore. It was her seventy-fifth birthday, and she was dealing with pancreatic cancer. I was supposed to miss three days of work, but I missed two weeks. Three weeks after my return to Los Angeles, my sister called and asked me to come back. Mom was in hospice and it looked like she was near the end. I saw her the last two days before she died. I missed another two weeks of work, and as of late March, I didn’t have one hundred days in. I was working three days a week and going to cardiac rehab two days, instead of the three days they wanted me to do at rehab.

"I came home from school one day to find a letter from the Substitute Unit saying they were firing me for 'not working enough.' They knew about my heart attack and my mother’s death. I threatened to go to the newspapers with this story, and they backed down. I retired on my fifty-fifth birthday, kept my health insurance even to today, although I have Medicare now. 

"I should have been able to leave that job after my heart attack, instead of risking my health, indeed, my life, by going to work when I could barely walk up a flight of steps.

"My experiences in life teach me that we should have a national free health insurance plan, to protect all of us from epidemics, to get the chronic care people need, and to not leave it to employers who are always trying to cut costs, to provide health care for our people. I will publicly support national healthcare, and I pledge to work for it if I’m elected to Congress this year. Thank you for having me on your call today. "

If you've read all of this, and have questions, while you can post here, it might be more efficient to send a question to me at barrywendellforcongress2022@gmail.com. if you are so moved, you can mail a check  made out to "Barry Wendell for Congress" to Barry Wendell for Congress, P.O. Box 831, Morgantown, WV 26507. If you go to ActBlue.com, you can put my name in the box at the top of the page and make a donation there. Thanks for reading.