The Thin Thread

In A Silent Way / Miles Davis

_______________________

John Fraim

That’s the thing about life. You never know when you’re about to feel the end of it seems close somehow. Much closer than before. Quicker than a roulette spin in Vegas. 

The day had gone as well as it could after a record snowstorm in Columbus, Ohio and much of the nation. A great swath from Texas going NE three hundred miles wide. Much of the nation under siege from one of the largest snowstorms in history. 

It had been another day of cabin fever for my wife and me. We’re both retired. There’s only so much you can watch on Netflix. I watched the snow fall the first night of the snowstorm from our backyard porch. In the largest flakes I could remember seeing. Checking it again a few hours later, the snow looked like it had added a foot to our round table on the patio.

I had had a few glasses of wine but was not feeling all that well. Different from what I normally feel. Yet I insisted that I take Steph up to our local restaurant. We have spent time at the place as it’s only a few blocks from our home. Tonight, we sit at the bar and I order (for the first time at the place we’ve been coming to for ten years) a shrimp cocktail. My stomach has felt queasy all day and shrimp cocktail seems the only thing of interest. The two glasses of wine come and then the shrimp and the Steph’s chicken sandwich. I was feeling worse and said I wanted to head home. 

Steph got a box for her meal and we headed home on the downtown street of town with four foot high snowbanks on both sides. Something we hadn’t seen in the ten years we’ve lived here. Almost like nature was mad at us. As if it was imposing some type of punishment on us.

* * *

When we got home, I went to our bedroom and turned on the TV to watch our nightly mix of TV. Usually, a Netflix movie mixed with a cable news channel. Maybe a classic movie on TCM. We had the usual news channel on tonight and I watched for a while and then turned on my right side as I experienced more pain in my left chest area. It was not the first time. This had happened about six months ago and my doctor sent me for a stress test. The results were not bad for a person my age. I saw a cardiologist one time but that is all. 

I had felt the pain for a few days now. Really bilateral but mostly on the left side of my chest. I laid on my right side as the pain increased. Then I remembered, the Nitro pills my doctor had prescribed for me. Take these when a situation like this arises. I put one under my tongue. Then, another a few minutes later. The pain decreased a little. I called my doctor on his private line. He was on vacation in Florida and back in the office on Monday. I told him my symptoms. Told him I took two Nitro tablets. And still, the angina pain in my chest. He said I should go to the emergency room of the nearest large hospital to us in Columbus.

* * *

I listened to my daily radio program on my Bose earphones. But my chest was pounding. Steph had gotten ready for bed. Taken a sleeping pill in fact. 

Suddenly, I sat up in bed. Was all these symptoms or “signs” or “signals” of a heart attack? I had some symptoms in my heat pain and nausea. Steph asked what’s the matter.

“I’m calling 911,” I told her.

She looked at me and realized this call was needed and went into the bathroom to get ready for the ordeal ahead. She is such a trooper. So much like her mother. 

The ENT guys arrived in a few minutes after my brief conversation with the 911 operator. Both in their 20s or early 30s. In a minute, I was hooked up with a number of patches. My heart monitored by the procedure. I was laying on a cot in the back of the ENT vehicle they wheeled me into. One of the two ENT guys was with me in the back of the vehicle. Such a solid person. Maybe his late twenties. If only a few percent of our kids were like this guy I thought to myself.

There were constant questions about descriptions of my heart. I can feel we’re on part of the cities’ outer belt and then slowing down and getting off on the street the hospital is on. 

As we began to go to the nearest large hospital with an emergency room, the analysis by the ENT team was PVC or an irregular beat in one’s heart. 

* * *

They wheeled me out in the emergency room of one of the largest hospitals in Columbus. I could walk but I was on a cart from the ENT vehicle. I was wheeled down to one room and then helped onto a bed in the room by the ENT guys. Soon, it seemed I was the “symbolic” Queen Bee. The attraction of many others. A monstrous hive with many approaching you. Without any consent. 

Yet this precious consent is lost in hospitals. In emergency situations. It’s lost in all parts of culture and society today in this emergency. All great emergencies in life make one face the thin thread between life and death. The more we realize this, perhaps the more we live life to its fullest extent?

* * *

The room is maybe ten by fifteen. I’m on a cot with all types of wires hooked up to me. Blood is being withdrawn from an IV in my left arm. Steph sits in a chair in the room. It’s 10:40 pm. She wishes she had not taken that sleeping pill. The chair does not make the greatest bed.

All types of wires are hooked up to me and monitored on the TV channel and down at the nurse’s stations. Steph is such a trooper who keeps upright after the sleeping pill. 

We meet our doctor on call tonight.

We wait.

And wait.

All the blood tests taken and the chest x-ray after the experience tonight.

I get nervous. Why so long to figure out the tests? Cancer is discussed with Steph. I am feeling there might be something on the X-Ray. I’m a perpetual negative thinker about my own medical issues. I have a medical condition called OCD. Much anxiety in my view of life. A target for social media?

* * *

The doctor comes back with the results of all the tests. Pretty much normal and able to be released tonight. My anxiety level greatly decreases. The doctor at the hospital has a referral to a cardiologist in her group. I think it would wait until this Monday when I see my local doctor. It’s only been ten years with him as a doctor for Steph and me. 

We are released from the hospital. A referral to a cardiologist. I talk to my younger brother about all the above tonight. I tell him about all this that has happened to me in the past day. We have a good conversation. A long conversation. He offers his usual realistic perspective of the situation. His perspective from 30,000-feet. A dumb term that is supposed to mean we are to expect serious journalism above all the BS of these days.

From the proverbial 30,000-foot perspective as they always say on cable news channels. But my brother hover above the smog filled landscape of popular culture. 

* * *

The meaning of this ripple in the similarity of life? It’s daily stream of Netflix movies and all the other stuff that would work (somehow) together to build a new day. Was the threat of a heart attack I experienced an event that set off another self in my psyche. The continual hypnotic spell of the daily culture. Isn’t this a major question we are dealing with here? A moment in our lives when we come face to face with death. Which takes us out of our normal trance state and puts us into a unique group of people. I’m one of this group and wonder if there are others out there who feel the same way.

What might one call this group?

Rallied together not by any political affiliation but by similar experiences in life.

More coming. Write johnfraim@mac.com to comment.