The Music of a Heartbeat

In a week's time, I'll undergo (yet) another carotid stenosis; I'm thinking of it as a belated birthday present to myself in the hopes (probably somewhat forlorn) that I'll have more natal anniversaries. I'll have to let you know how that works out, assuming it does and I remember.  These are words from the first time I had one done. 

Yesterday afternoon I went for my semi-annual carotid stenosis.It's another reminder that there are just so many sunrises and so many Springs, meaning me and some very clever person with a wonderfully complex machine from Siemens and warm gel to smear on my neck, measure I have no idea what. 

I listen to the sounds of my own blood rushing through my arteries (I do know the difference, you know) and hope it continues to sound like the ocean crashing onto the shore and watch the monitor for waveforms and splotches of color, sometimes dark blue and other times bright yellow and vivid red, knowing no matter how keen I am to know what the colors mean, I'm too afraid to ever ask.

In all these sessions with all the watching, waiting and conferring is the awareness that there's no medication I can take to reverse the process. That's a joke, actually. After I had had four Transient Ischemic Attacks, I was so terrified the surgeon could have told me to drink my own bathwater and I'd have asked if I could use a straw. Fear of death is probably the most powerful reason to live there can ever be. 

Our local hospital has Diagnostic Medicine, and other outpatient services tucked away across town in a renovated failed Ames Department Store near Interstate 395. Seated across from me was a young woman in what looked like hospital scrubs, holding a small child, a baby actually, of perhaps six months or so on her lap. He, not she, was the customer for whatever other imaging equipment now is sprawled across what once was the hardware and ready-to-wear departments. Adds new meaning to clean-up in aisle seven.

He was extremely well-behaved as if I were an expert with our babies getting ready to celebrate a 37th as well as a 31st birthday in the coming days, for one, and weeks, for the other. He stared at the world, bounded by the waiting room walls and ceiling with an eagerness and intensity I no longer remember but truly admire. 

It was a moment for rubber-necking, his, and reflection, mine. He, even if he lives to be one hundred, will never remember me, and I, should the same fate await me, shall never forget him. I see a man without a problem.

-bill kenny