It seems quite common, atrial fibrillation, that is. Or A Fib as it’s jocularly known. A fluttering of the heart, et cetera. So what do you do? It saps your energy, plays hockey puck with your thyroid, wearing no helmet or pads. Wait until it sits in the penalty box? Sometimes that works. The penalty is paid and your chest-thumper returns to normal, awaiting its next highsticking or skate-slashing and other such hockey horrifics.
But often it doesn’t work. The first step in the procedure, leading up to a pacemaker, is called a “cardiac version.” The docs put you out, then pound on your rib cage as many as three times to see if the pounding can restore the proper thump THUMP thump THUMP. The docs do not go beyond three.
I am happy to report that this writer needed but one and now he is no longer an A-Fibber. Does that make him an — A Liar?
There are those who say the writer has no heart. Does this prove them wrong?
There’s also this little thing about the thyroid, whatever it does, I’m sure I don’t know.
It seems the pill leading up to the cardiac version, may lower the thyroid’s level and jack up the cholesterol to boot. The writer has never had a cholesterol problem, slathers everything with Hellmann’s, egg salad this a.m., devours eggs (what’s the price these days, O Dear Beloved Chairman?), and now takes a daily pill to salve the thyroid, bringing it back up to its healthy level, while smashing the cholesterol into the plastic wall behind the goalie.
The writer has two lunch buddies, the three of us, besides other maladies, have thyroidism. An ex-wife joshes us three old white dudes sitting around comparing thyroids.
A friend tells at lunch yesterday for the first fifteen minutes all four talked about their aches and pains. I said Only for the first fifteen!
I was looking for my kaibigan — Tagalog for brother-friend — recently. Instead found his husband Jimmy who told me that Rodney had an aneurysm, but was recovering. What I know about aneurysms is that they don’t recover well, if at all. My great love Sarah had one and she was rushed Medevaced to Hartford Hospital. The doctor emerged and said her brain was “unrecoverable.” I said, Dr. I know what the word means, but what do you mean? He said that her brain shows no activity.
A word about Rodney who can’t be 50. A Chicagoan, Marquette-Jesuit-trained as are we all, he headed to New York to pursue an acting career. We lured him back to Chicago to play the lead in my play THE ROMANCE OF MAGNO RUBIO, which is all Filipino, as is Rod. His family had never seen him act before.
At the curtain call he came out weeping. He had given a magnificent performance and there was his grandmother sitting in the front row, weeping as well. The audience went nuts. I don’t know if they knew the backstory, but appreciated what they saw.
I had hoped to find Rod, hale and hearty, thinking to enlist him in directing an all-female MAGNO, in which he had expressed previous interest.
Now he is “recovering”, Praise the Lord. As the Filipinos put it, ‘Sus, Maria, ‘Sef.
May we all recover. And what about repentance? Shrove Tuesday, also known as Pancake Day, with Lent on its way. I need the ashes. Thump THUMP!
Lonnie Carter is a playwright, Obie winner and his signature play is “The Sovereign State of Boogedy Boogedy.”
Sidney Poitier