I used to be able to spend decades not thinking about my own demise, although as a teen thoughts of mortality were a constant companion. \u00a0But in recent years, watching the death and dying of family members and friends, the mortality thing seemed to dominate absolutely everything else. \u00a0Still, ‘my own demise’ is a fairly abstract concept. \u00a0And it’s likely to stay that way. \u00a0A funny, expressionist painting I can’t quite get a handle on. \u00a0And that’s okay.<\/p>\n
But every once in a while, my heart calls my mind to attention.<\/p>\n
It seems to be happening about once a year \u2014 or at least that’s the pattern over the past four years. \u00a0Always in springtime. Always around finals. \u00a0Always inconvenient. \u00a0Always ignored until the last minute.<\/p>\n
With a great sweep of my hand, I push away the signals that something’s wrong and just carry on. \u00a0I ‘manage’ the situation. \u00a0I say I-can-handle-anything. \u00a0I can squeeze-this-into-my-schedule when there’s room for it on my calendar.<\/p>\n
It’s not fatal. \u00a0It just feels like it when it’s happening.<\/p>\n
It’s an electrical problem.<\/p>\n
Not uncommon at all, apparently, though I’d never heard of it before it introduced itself.<\/p>\n
It was a Saturday. \u00a0So. \u00a0Saturdays are lousy days to check things out. \u00a0Sleep on it.<\/p>\n
It was a Sunday. \u00a0So. Hm, still ‘something funny’ going on from yesterday, but Sundays, yikes, that would mean the ER. \u00a0No way. \u00a0Wait till Monday. \u00a0That’s the reasonable thing to do.<\/p>\n
It was Monday. \u00a0Oh shit, I have to give a Final Exam tonight. \u00a0I’ll get ‘this’ checked out after I give the exam.<\/p>\n
Monday night at the final (which begins at 7:45 PM and runs till 10:00 PM) \u2014 the first thing out of my mouth is:<\/p>\n
“Is anybody a nurse in here?”<\/p>\n
And still I didn’t get it checked out. \u00a0I gave the 2.5 hour exam, drove the 65 miles home and called the after-hours nurse. Who screamed at me to get to the ER. \u00a0She humphed a lot.<\/p>\n
Apparently I’m a minimizer rather than a maximizer.<\/p>\n
They didn’t believe I was in labor either, when I came in for each kid.<\/p>\n
I joke. I try to entertain the nurses. \u00a0It’s invariably at night, and I figure they could use someone sane being nice to them. There’s often all this screaming in the ER. \u00a0Demands. \u00a0Actual emergencies. \u00a0People really suffering. \u00a0People completely out of their gourd. \u00a0I want to take notes. \u00a0Wouldn’t this be a great fieldsite? \u00a0Or has it been done to death by TV?<\/p>\n
The nurses I’ve met in the ER at night just completely love their job. \u00a0They’re cheerful and delightful. \u00a0Focused and attentive. Reassuring and competent. \u00a0The doctors are distracted. \u00a0And they answer the phone every few seconds. \u00a0Apologize. \u00a0And do it yet again.<\/p>\n
The first two times \u2014 I got the same nurse. \u00a0She’d been a student of mine in MSR (Magic, Science and Religion), it turned out \u2014 and she talked my head off half the night, getting me her favorite doctor (the young one she was flirting with), instead of the one that I wanted (the old one, with the long Ashkenazi name). \u00a0How do you explain that to her? \u00a0Well, you don’t.<\/p>\n
My heart is kicking up a storm and she wants to talk MSR.<\/p>\n
I get a lot of nurses in MSR for some reason. \u00a0Maybe it’s because I start by saying, “This is a class about suffering. \u00a0About the measures people take throughout the world, to understand misfortune, and alleviate their pain…” \u00a0It took me years to figure out that that’s what I was teaching. \u00a0Framing the class like that brought on a nursing student deluge.<\/p>\n
So. \u00a0Last night in the ER. \u00a0I had taken all the right steps, and still the afib was out of control. The MD said they’d try to get me out of afib before leaving the ER, or at the very least tone it down a bit. \u00a0And suddenly I understood \u2014 there are people who live with a wacked up heart beat all the time \u2014 and it never goes away. \u00a0That feeling that your heart just can’t do this dance anymore, or not with any precision. \u00a0It’s freelancing. \u00a0It’s jamming on its own. \u00a0It’s dancing to the tune of a very bad drummer. \u00a0And this was me, always assuming the ER could just throw some cocktail down the tube, and I’d be right as rain.<\/p>\n
I understood finally what my electro-physiologist meant when he said I’m doing great! \u00a0I mean, how could this be great? \u00a0But there it was. \u00a0My heart responds to therapeutic measures like a champ. It just needs a reminder once in a while \u2014 apparently once a year around finals time at the end of Spring Semester \u2014 of just how very lucky a heart it is. \u00a0That it lives just down the hill from one of the top teaching hospitals \/ medical centers in the world. \u00a0That it has a strong union that fought hard for those medical benefits. \u00a0That it lives with someone wonderful who never fails to be right there at my side when it needs that ride five blocks up the hill to the ER. \u00a0That unlike in Libya, or Somalia, or Syria, the hospital is well equipped and not under siege.<\/p>\n
My heart has always been in very good hands.<\/p>\n
And so. \u00a0Last night. \u00a0With the cheerful nurses and the semi-distracted docs. \u00a0And the meds, And the ride. \u00a0And the care. \u00a0I said a little thank you to them all. For an infrastructure still standing. \u00a0For a system that still works. To unions who keep fighting. \u00a0Like when I thanked the Turks \u2014 Sometimes thank yous are in order for the care that we receive. The little things that keep our heartbeats steady from IVs shoved up our sleeve.<\/p>\n
The heart of the matter is health care, of course. \u00a0Not just ‘providers’ for those with strong unions or very wealthy kin. \u00a0Not just for the economic good times. \u00a0But universal health care. I teach in MSR that it’s when medical systems fail (or don’t exist) that people really pray in earnest. They appeal to higher powers. \u00a0Or do magical acts in desperation. \u00a0They seek answers for a failure that really wasn’t from the gods. \u00a0What we need, Marx said, for starters, is a sense of collective consciousness \u2014 going beyond gratitude for our own personal well-being \u2014 to thinking of us all. \u00a0That it’s only when we perceive ourselves united that collective action can follow. \u00a0I know, I know. \u00a0It sounds downright un-American, doesn’t it? \u00a0But maybe what we need to think about is not our own mortality or that of those we love \u00a0\u2014 but of our mortality rate<\/em> instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I used to be able to spend decades not thinking about my own demise, although as a teen thoughts of mortality were a constant companion. \u00a0But in recent years, watching the death and dying of family members and friends, the mortality thing seemed to dominate absolutely everything else. \u00a0Still, ‘my own demise’ is a fairly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[250],"tags":[518,517,519,515,151,516],"class_list":["post-3155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-atrial-fibrilation","tag-doctors","tag-emergency-room","tag-health-care","tag-msr","tag-nurses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3155"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3161,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155\/revisions\/3161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}