Put the Candle Back

Yeah, so yesterday sucked. Everything is so based upon the physical. If I am feeling decent - not great, but not horrible either - almost anything is possible. I can run if I so choose (and deal with the pain afterwords), get stuff done around the house, push the many projects that all lay in patient (I trust) stages of completion, walk the dogs by the shore, or do pretty much whatever I please. After all I am free and retired. The world is now more oyster than obstacle. My soul is the only meaningful judge. But…..

When I am not feeling particularly good, when my chronic atrial fibrillation overrides the pacemaker’s noble effort to regulate an out-of-control heart rate, causing a plethora of nasty effects - demoralizing fatigue, pea soup like brain fog, spatio-temporal GPS displacement (where the fuck am I), numbness in hands and arms, hypotension, gastro-intestinal imbalance and hip inflammation, well, my quality of life heads south in a big ass hurry.

Yesterday, after the morning round of chores, I napped in the hope of easing out of A-Fib. My proven method, still in beta, is to lay down in a warm and quiet place, completely and deeply relax into a meditative state and count breaths until my heart rate sinks to the established lower range setting of 70bpm. Once this equilibrium is reached the pacemaker automatically emits a low wattage jolt to the atria in order to, hopefully, jump start its frequency into sinus rhythm. This is very much like a jam band drummer getting lost in the excitement of the improvisational experimentation and searching for a sign from a band mate (usually, but always, the bass player) in order to restore time signature integrity and get back on the beat. But….

Yesterday when the implanted device responded to the intended criteria and fired an electronic quasar into my heart, the resulting effect was more like an electromagnetic pulse bomb, a mini cardioversion. And it shocked the shit out of me, causing one of those bolt upright Gene Wilder electrostatic hair scenes. I am sitting up in bed, wide-eyed, heart pounding like something artificially implanted to fire the heart of a monster, and thinking well, THAT was interesting. I think I have it figured out.

Now I am laughing because I immediately, for reasons perhaps only understood by those deep in dementia or Mel Brooks fans, see the comedy in all this as I recite one of my all-time favorite movie lines.

PUT THE CANDLE BACK. It’s all about timing.