The Facedown With My Cheatin’ Heart

Which one of us will be left standing? (Hint: Neither.)

Thank you all for your lovely messages of goodwill! It’s true that, right after the installation of my pacemaker, I performed a little tap-dance in St. Michael’s Hospital – to the tune of “Singin’ In The Rain,” if you want to hum along. And yes, it’s amazing what a person can do while coming off a fentanyl and heroin anaesthetic cocktail.

But this may have given the impression that everything had been restored to normal, which was not exactly the case. As all who have walked this well-worn path know, the pacemaker controls the lower end of a paroxysmal atrial fibrillation episode – it keeps your heartrate from plummeting down into the 30s and your heart from actually stopping – but it doesn’t control the flights of fancy that take place when your heartrate soars irregularly up into the 160s. Those acts of heart escapism have to be kept under control with medications, or so goes the theory.  But how many pills are too many, and how few are too few? Tweaking is involved. Like Alice of Wonderland and the mushroom – a little more here, a little less there – you become your own guinea pig, though the heart does not always appreciate your efforts. Such as:

Me, to Heart:  I’ve had enough of this rowdy and disrespectful behaviour! You know I never liked roller-coasters! Or bungee jumping. Stop acting out at once, or else!

Heart: Or else what? You’re not the boss of me!

Me: Are you rolling your eyes?

Heart: I don’t have any eyes. I’m an effin’ heart.

Me: Such language! You were badly brought up!

Heart: So, whose fault is that?

Me: You’re grounded!

Heart: Sez who, bigshot?

Me:  Sez me!  (We indulge in this kind of 1940s noir gangster film talk. My heart, being of the exact same generation as me, understands it well.)

Heart: Try and make me! Watch this! (Heart rate soars up to 135 in a matter of seconds.)

Me: And watch THIS!  (Takes a fast-acting beta blocker pill.)

Heart:  You never let me have any fun!

 Me: You call this fun? You’re exhausting us! We are NOT getting enough oxygen! Just remember, you’re nothing without me!

Heart: Oh yeah?  I could say exactly the same. If I skip town, or too many beats, you’re a dead man walking. Or woman. Or whatever.

 Me: And without me, you’re a specimen in a jar.

 Heart: Wise guy, huh? (sinister laugh): Nya-ha-ha! Idle threats! (It does an Olympic-grade high dive, hitting 60 beats per minute in one second flat.)

Me: Okay, that does it. Nothing but broccoli for you from now on.

 Heart: Broccoli! Aargh! No!

 Me: (firmly): Broccoli, and lots of water. And no caffeine, alcohol, white bread, pastries, cakes, chocolate, aged cheese, white rice, processed meats, too much salt, or hot spices.

 Heart: (whimper, snivel) But we like those things!

 Me: Suck it up.

 And so it goes, or went. But with the aid of a helpful book called The A-Fib Cure (Day, Bunche, LaPLante), I think I may have gained the upper hand, fingers crossed. At least for now. (If you get this A-Fib book, skip the first bit where they scare the patooties out of you and go straight to the encouraging part.)This heart business has been going on for a while. I had an extrasystole diagnosed when I was twelve, though it didn’t mutate into A-Fib until recent years; nor did the condition pick up speed until a couple of years back; nor did it go totally haywire until some months ago. The condition is progressive. (Heart laughs sardonically: “Now there’s a cute use of the word ‘progressive’ for ya!”) (Me: “Go to your room!”) (Heart: “You are my room. Bwahaha!”) Here's one of my earlier Heart dialogues (from Two-Headed Poems, 1978):