It's Ironic

It’s ironic: Pansy always is better at taking care of herself.  But she’s in the hospital as I write this, and I’m running loose around town. 

I’m overweight.  

I don’t eat right.  

I don’t get enough sleep.

After an hour’s workout in the therapy pool at the Y, most days I spend the other twenty-three hours on my back or on my gluteus maximus in front of the computer.

Meantime, 

She keeps her weight pretty much in check.

She eats lots of fresh fruit, green salad, and very little meat.

She turns to a pumpkin about 8:30 each night.

She’s the handyman around the house, and I’m all thumbs.  So she’s up and down the fourteen steps in our three-level house fourteen times a day and all around the house and yard, tending her flowers, her hummingbird and cardinal feeders, and generally looking for things which need attention.

So, how come Pansy’s in the hospital while I’m here in front of the computer?

At times, she would feel an irregular heartbeat, and she would be dizzy.  After her general practitioner physician tried various things to locate the problem, she had Pansy do a stress test.  

That pointed to a slow flow of blood in the lower ventricle. 

That led to a referral to a cardiologist.

That led to an outpatient appointment at our hometown medical center (We don’t seem to have hospitals any more.  They’re all Medical Centers) for a heart catheterization. 

We went to the hosp -- er, Medical Center -- this morning, with the understanding that if the cath agreed with the stress test, Pansy’s stay would change from outpatient to overnight.

The two tests agreed, so the cath led to the insertion of two stents to override the seventy percent blockage in the right coronary artery (In this case RCA is NOT the brand of a television).

So now we’re reversing our roles: She's on her back for about twenty-three hours and I’m out running around taking care of things.  For today.  Tomorrow, she’ll be chomping at the bit to get back to her favored routine ASAP.

Otherwise, I’ve been making calls to our sons and their families in Chicago and New York City, letting them know what Mom has been going through and what we can expect next.  Also notifying my siblings ‘way out in Texas and friends and colleagues closer to us in South Carolina.

Vicky, wife of our son Jonathan in Chicago, is an obstetric nurse.  So when Pansy and I talk with them about things medical, we’re always eager to get her reading.  Vicky and Jonathan freaked out -- fearing something much worse than a couple of stents -- when they learned of Pansy's impending hospitalization.  I was on the phone with them and with our older son Russell in New York several times through the day and evening.

Pansy and I are at the age that we ought to expect body systems to start malfunctioning and needing attention.  Still .  .  .  reality may not set in until it starts happening to your one and only.

Robert Browning painted a rosy picture of later life in “Rabbi Ben Ezra” when he had the spiritual leader say, 

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made.

As we grow older, many of us find it difficult to declare “the last of life” to be “the best.”  But because I believe in the afterlife, I can affirm Browning's lines which follow:

Our times are in His hand

Who saith "A whole I planned,

Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!''

But without the hope of eternal life, that first assertion rings hollow.  The last of this earthly life may be the worst rather than the best.

By the way, Robert Browning lived to be seventy-seven, but he was only fifty-two when he wrote “Rabbi Ben Ezra.”  Who knows what his perspective would have been if he had written twenty years later.

In our present situation, the doc and the extended medial staff at the -- um -- Medical Center gave optimistic reports.  Everything went well.  So this should prove to be a brief stay.  For this, we give thanks to the medical professionals and to God.

As they were wheeling Pansy away to the operating room, I called out, “Take care of my wife!”  A male medical technician who had told me he is from the Bronx replied, “We are trusting her to His hands.”  I couldn’t see the Person he had in mind, but I said, “Yes, but I want Him to guide your hands as well.”

He did.


P. S.  Three weeks later

Pansy stayed overnight in the -- uh -- Medical Center.  When we got home, she stayed close in for ten days, resting most of the time while I played Mr. Nurse.  We went back to the cardiologist where they made more tests, this time on the abdomen and legs.  They kept us in suspense for another ten days before we made another trip to the office.  This time, we learned there were no serious problems: the abdomen is clear, and the legs have minimal plaque.  So they said, "See you in six months .  .  . for additional tests."  Of course.