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.

Medical Check-In

I have healthcare through WVU Hospitals. I see a general practitioner annually, a cardiologist, dermatologist and allergist usually twice a year, and I have an annual check-in with a Medicare doctor. They GP, cardiologist and Medicare doctor  were scheduled for this month, but the general practitioner was postponed and they asked me to do an online with the Medicare doctor. I've seen the same Medicare doctor for four years, a soft-spoken Italian woman. This year they told me she was on leave and gave me a physician's assistant. There were complicated instructions involving an app on my phone, but they relented somewhat and said I could do it on a laptop. The app on the laptop wanted permission to go into all the other apps on my desktop and change them, so no. The phone app was better, but then there was a WVU app on top of that that wanted to access everything on my phone. When I clicked "No" it said I couldn't use it, so I said "Yes."' Later, I sent a note to WVU complaining.

The PA was an older woman  (I checked. Her degree was from 1979, so maybe sixty). She had issues with the technology. They always ask the same questions "Do you have rugs or rickety stairs?" "Do you have a bar in your bathtub to hold on to?" "Are you afraid in your house?" No, I'm afraid out of my house these days. They test your memory, and ask if you are depressed. "I'm a 70-year old gay man living in West Virgina," I said. "Of course I'm depressed." I said that.

I told her about being sick all of January after spending a glorious week running around Manhattan at the end of December. Is it possible I had a mild case of COVID-19? Mild, like not going out of the house for ten days, then no more than an hour a day for the next ten, not being well until the end of February. She told me there is a test, but we don't have it, and if you had it before, we don't know if you can get it again. The regular test for the virus would show if you had it, but you don't qualify for the test.

Meanwhile, our Governor wants to partly reopen the state this week. Maybe outdoor dining if separated from others (and if it ever stops raining) and haircuts. Our county is not included, because we are considered a "hotspot" in the state with 107 confirmed cases. My constituents are already asking City Council here in Morgantown to block off a lane on certain streets to add space for cafés on the expanded sidewalk. And Delegate Evan Hansen, from our district, and a scientist by training, points out that, although the state has recorded fifty deaths from COVID-19, statistics show that deaths in the state since the first of the year are running 1,600 above what one might expect, with most of the "excess deaths" in March and April. So maybe the pandemic is worse here than people think. Certainly everyone should be tested, and everyone should be covered by healthcare, not just rich people or people who are here "legally." People who lose their jobs, and thus their health insurance must be covered. You can't stop a pandemic if there is anyone excluded from treatment. Anyone.

Joe and I have still been going to the grocery store twice a week. All but one worker at our local Kroger is masked, but the vendors who come in to stock the shelves are typically not, and many of the customers are not masked, especially the younger ones. With pressure from the state and federal government to reopen quickly, I fear going out in the future will be terrifying. Even our city manager's office has proposed reopening. There's a meeting tonight (Tuesday) and I know some of us will object to opening city offices too soon.

In addition to my OLLI class and City Council, I've been reading a lot, five books at a time. I'm reading about the music from the Brill Building in the 1960s (my next class), a haunting collection of short stories from Carol Shields, purchased at a library sale in New Vienna, Ohio on my trip to Clinton County in December of 2018, a Pulitzer-winning book about people who are evicted, and how and why that happens. I'm reading Ta-Nehisi Coates' book We Had Eight Years, a collection of his writings during the Obama presidency with new commentaries, and Vikram Seth's more than 1500 page novel about India in 1951 and 1952, which I'm reading for the third time, A Suitable Boy. Coates attended my high school, briefly, I think, and twenty-five years after I graduated.

I read Morgantown's Dominion-Post and Charleston's Gazette-Mail every day, and Sunday's Washington Post and New York Times. We get Consumer Reports and Rolling Stone for me, and The New Yorker and The Economist for Joe. Joe has stopped reading news for the most part. It makes him too anxious. I have to read about the virus in New York City and the politics in Washington in short doses to keep from losing my mind completely.

I'm traveling in my dreams. Last night, I told the bus driver parked on 6th Street by the Los Angeles County Art Museum that I wouldn't be going on the trip to New York because I had been there with Joe in December, and last year with my mother and sister. I had a memory in the dream of visiting some elderly relative in The Bronx in an apartment house on a hill. I was, in reality, in New York with Joe in December, and in New York with my mother and sister (and nephew) not last summer, but in 2002. I haven't had relatives in the Bronx since the 1950s. That scene was filched from another dream. My friend and classmate (second to eighth grade) Rodger Kamenetz writes about dreams. Maybe I should ask him what this means.

The PA at WVU was only worried that I get up to pee five or six times during the night. She doesn't think it's heart failure because I run several days a week, and that seems to be getting better. Maybe it's kidney failure or prostate problems. She wants tests for all of those. The cardiologist told me that  my heart works at 40% of what it should do. My father died of kidney failure (refusing dialysis) when he was a year and a half younger than I am now. And Medicare won't cover a prostate test.

So, the future doesn't look bright. My generation had too many people to start out with. They sent some of us to Vietnam to reduce our numbers, ignored AIDS for many years to kill off those of us who are gay men, and now that we are old, we are expendable so that the economy can reopen. Without the possibility of contracting or contracting again COVID-19, I still have plenty of medical issues that could end my life. I was able to answer most of the questions in a good way. I generally remember to take my meds, I can still keep track of money, carry grocery bags, remember most things, cook, clean (although I pointed out that we generally don't). I don't fall or feel dizzy. My goal now is to keep it all going as long as possible. I said the other day "If I can have ten more years of decent health, I'll be happy." Then I remembered that one of my grandmother's friends said that sitting around the lake in her Florida condo development more than fifty years ago. I guess that's where I am now.