Heart Burn

My brother-in-law Jairo says that my heart got welded today. Basically, that’s a good way of putting it. I’m still surprised at how fast everything went. I asked my cardiologist to set me up with a surgeon. That happened within a week. Monday I met Dr. Argentina. Friday I got a call that I was scheduled for Monday, today, and now I am home with my heart welded.

I met some interesting people. Danny was the talkative nurse, filling the time in the OR before the surgeon came in. He’s been to all my haunts, Huatulco, Escondido, Monte Alban, Mitla, even Tule. He took local buses to all the right places to buy black pottery, green pottery, rugs, alebrijes—quite the shopper, apparently. Those of you who live in Mexico know what question comes next from everyone else standing around… but is it safe?

My doctor was Dr. Colombia, but I never got to talk to him. Instead Dr. Danish chatted with me, wondering if I were Danish, because Anne Marie is a common Danish name. I guess Dr. Colombia was a get-down-to-business sort of guy, because he never said anything more than his name. I asked him where he was from, got a reluctant, one word answer, and that was that. Danny and Dr. Danish took it from there.

They said they were giving me a sedative, but I never felt it, and I was wide awake for the two hour procedure. First they froze a spot on my neck and another in the groin. (The nurse who had swabbed me said she was doing both groins. Robert wondered if that can be plural. How many of those can one have?) My heart was cooperating very well, offering its own episodes of tachycardia without being induced. But they had their own system, firing systematically through twelve spots on the heart, from the outside in. They caught my bad spot on the very first try. Right on the outer part of the heart. Left side. Next they poked a needle through the middle of my heart and got a soldering iron in there (actually a glass bulb that heats up) and welded that spot shut. Danny said that it was like holding a hair over a candle. Poof, and it was gone. He said they could see the open pathway on the monitor, the culprit of all my visits to the Bald doctor, and then the next second it was just gone. You could tell he got satisfaction out of that. Job well done. My take on it is that my heart was being extra cooperative that day. Just for him because he reminded it of home. Tule and tacos and all that.

Speaking of which, did I tell you that Thursday night last week we went out with Former Hostess Mom and Hostess dad to eat Guatemalan Mexican tacos? The Guatemalan owners say they have to learn to cook Mexican because it’s what Canadians expect. He says they keep coming in asking, “Hey, you got any burritos?” He says, “No, but I have Mexican tacos.” “Ok,” they say, “I’ll take those…but when will you have those burritos?”

After the Mexican Guatemalan tacos (which were excellent, by the way, and the name of the joint is Holy Guacamole, at the corner of Bunting and Welland, and you can buy real corn tortillas there, and they’re gluten free), we went to see Room. I hope it wins lots of awards. It deserves them.

After the welding job, the doctor said he was going to do a little test. He neglected to warn me he was actually giving me my old friend, that heart stopping medicine! Great! Last chance you’ll be getting to strangle me again. Good riddance! In celebration, my heart did this fancy jig, spasming all over for a few seconds before settling down to be normal from now on. I guess it's me going "AHHHHH!!!" Danny showed me the ECG. It was one crazy mass of up and down lines all over the page. He said this was weird and entertaining but fine. Whew. Glad to make your day.

So after lying flat on my back listening to Freakonomics Radio for 5 hours (did you know that there is not actually much of a gender pay gap? The real difference in pay comes in the fact that moms often take part-time or flexible jobs that pay less) and trying not to squirm from the back pain because that would open the ever-so-slowly clotting groin wound and add another hour to the wait time, I got up and went home at 8:30. Robert enjoyed wheeling me downstairs. I’m woozy. But I’m home. Welded shut. Fixed (anybody hear any chickens?). Sometimes heart burn fixes things.