The following is a small journal of my thoughts and feelings after suffering an actual heart attack in early November, 2004. The newest entries are at the top.
03/14/05
I was talking with Laurie, the nutritionist at the cardiac
rehab place, today. I told her my theory about how my heart attack
proved the existence of God and that she hates me.
Laurie: "Well, now, I don't-- You think God is a woman?"
me: "Sure. I mean, she punished me for no reason and she won't tell me what I did wrong. How does that not sound like a woman?"
My head's still sore from the dope slap she gave me.
02/23/05
I've got great news for theists, not so great news for me. I'll get to that in a minute.
Today, I met with Dr. Wise, the cardiologist, who wanted to go over the results of my comprehensive blood work. According to the lab work, I should be in the peak of fitness.
Everything that was supposed to be low, was lower than it needed to be. Everything that was supposed to be high, was higher than it needed to be. My triglycerides were low, my LDL cholesterol was low, my HDL cholesterol was high. I didn't have high blood pressure and there were no other warning signs in my blood that I might have a heart attack.
So, with everything else ruled out, as Sherlock Holmes almost said, I have to believe in the impossible. See, I know what caused me to have a heart attack.
There is a God and she hates me.
I have got to go talk to someone.
02/14/05
It's about 2 a.m. and I feel like I'm, just possibly, about to die. Of course, it would have to happen just after I decide I'll be positive. Sometimes, I really do hate irony.
This is taking much longer to type than normal as I'm having a difficult time typing without making a lot of errors. My fingers keep shaking.
Alyse and the boys are sleeping. I'm afraid to go to sleep.
About three hours ago or so I was sitting on the couch reading, getting ready to go to sleep. Just making sure I was exhausted so I could fall asleep quickly. Same old routine.
Problem was that I started feeling my heart beat much louder and, it felt like, more forcefully. I took my pulse. About 80 or so. When I'm not working out, my pulse shouldn't be up that high, thanks to the beta blocker medication I'm taking.
My left arm and hand feel cold. I'm guessing it's because there's not enough blood getting down there. My hands are shaking.
I'm scared. Really scared.
I'm going to bed now. I want to lay there, next to Alyse, and try to calm myself down. I want to be okay. I don't want to die.
Later
Okay. I didn't die. That's good. And, yes, more irony, in that I thought I was going to die of a heart attack on Valentine's Day.
I went to bed a little while after my last entry and just lay there, listening to my heart beat, feeling it thud in my belly. I had tried taking a nitro pill just to make sure, to see if it would help any.
Nothing.
I kept falling asleep and then jolting myself back awake in a panic, sure I was going down for the last time. The last time I remember looking at the clock was somewhere around 4 a.m. So, as you can imagine, not a good night.
At 7 a.m. my alarm went off and I had to get the boys ready for school. I was tired, but much too glad to be alive to be cranky. I'm sure the boys were shocked at my relative good mood, considering how awful I must have looked.
When I went to the cardiologist's office for my normal Monday rehab, I happened to mention that I wasn't feeling all that great because of the evening's festivities. They immediately rushed me out of the workout room and into a patient room that had a full-scale EKG machine there, all 12 leads.
The nurse, Angela, took my EKG and said it looked all right. She then took the strip, grabbed the strip they'd taken when I first started and took it to Dr. Wise. While he was looking at the strips, I did a very subdued workout. About halfway through, Angela came back and said Dr. Wise told her my most recent strip didn't look any different so they didn't think there was anything physically wrong. It looked like I didn't, in fact, have another heart attack. Again, good news.
But it's all in my head. Not good news. Apparently I've got issues. No surprise there.
02/02/05
Groundhog Day is one of my all-time favorite movies. It stars Bill Murray and Andie McDowell and is about an obnoxious television reporter (Murray of course) who is forced to live the same day over and over again. Very funny, very touching. Very irrelevant to what we're discussing here, but, hey, it is Groundhog Day today so that sort of brought it to mind.
Yesterday, I was sitting down at my computer, getting ready to commit some more written assaults on common sense when She Who Must Be Obeyed called in from work. It seems as if people are starting to get our holiday newsletter, many of which SWMBO didn't mail out until mid January, and are somewhat astounded to hear I had a heart attack.
Most of those people, who have not checked out the full story here, assume that because I had a heart attack I must be some sad, fat, out-of-shape couch potato who never got any exercise. Sure I'll cop to some of that, but I was in the best shape in the last 20 years of my life. Anyway, SWMBO was talking to one of her friends about the newsletter and she said she didn't think so much of me these days as having a broken heart, so much as having a broken spirit.
And she was crying.
Which, of course, got me to crying, which got her to crying more, which You know the feedback loop.
Eventually, we managed to cut off the waterworks and sniffle our way to the end of the phone call and back to our days, but that got me to thinking.
Have I been too negative? Have I been focused too much on the bad parts of having a heart attack? (All right, so there's not that many good things about having a heart attack, but I think you get the point)
Oddly enough, considering who I am, I think the answer is yeah, I have been too negative.
So I've come up with a Groundhog Day resolution (you may want to do this yourselves): Be more positive.
Here's my stab at it. I'm getting to work out three times a week with trained professionals in a supportive environment. I've learned a helluva lot about nutrition and making tasty dishes that are still good for you. When some smart alec asks, "What's the worst that could happen?" I now know the answer and that's always good.
So, yeah, more positive. That's the ticket. Just as soon as I get done hating the physical therapists.
01/18/05
I have sailed into a dreaded place and found myself becalmed in the land of euphemism.
According to the dictionary I just used to make sure I spelled the word correctly, a euphemism is "a word or phrase used in place of a term that might be considered too direct, harsh, unpleasant or offensive."
Well, the cardiac rehabilitation I'm being forced to undergo is the land of the euphemism. No on there has had a heart attack. Instead, all us cardiac cripples have had an "event." Yes, an event.
Sample dialogue between two of the Chippy Rehab Techs (on whom more later) talking about a new patient they're getting ready to wire up to the portable EKG monitor all of us newbies have to wear when we're exercising.
Chippy Rehab Tech 1: "This is Harry. He's only two weeks out."
Harry: "Out?"
Chippy Rehab Tech 2: "From your event. You had your event two weeks ago."
Harry (who's -- hand to God -- completely bald) looked puzzled and then nodded. He understood the meaning of the euphemism.
Apparently the bald (sorry, Harry) truth is a bit too much for us feeble recovering heart patients.
I used to be like them. Oh, yes, I was a coward, a venal, yellow-belly coward. But I got better. In this one area, at least.
Right after I woke up from the stent implantation, I refused to call what I had just gone through a heart attack. In fact, I called it a wiffle. Yeah, I know it's an extremely dumb name, but that's what came through when I was recovering. So, perhaps there was a little brain damage from oxygen deprivation after all. Anyway.
I refused to call the heart attack a heart attack. I guess, by giving it a dumb name, I was trying to minimize what actually happened. I wouldn't let anyone else call it a heart attack either. Looking back, I think the best part of the initial recovery was seeing Alyse's face as she tried to talk about my wiffle.
Good times. Good times.
Over the weeks, though, I've come to understand that it's better to face things head on, rather than hide them in the shadows of euphemism. I had a heart attack. That's what happened. I didn't have a wiffle or an event. It was a heart attack.
And that attitude isn't going over well at cardiac rehabilitation.
Normally, I'm a bit of a cynic. And bitter. And I use humor to mask that hard shell from the world and make me at least a little palatable to the rest of the humans around me. The pets, however, get the full brunt of my bitter cynicism. So pity them.
The attitude in cardiac rehabilitation is all about sunny optimism. They let nothing dark spread shadows on the darlings of the heart. So they cardiac rehabilitation physical therapists are happy and cheerful and chipper and optimistic and supportive and helpful and always, always smiling. And it's driving me nuts.
I hate that I have to be there, surrounded by wounded old men and women. I hate that I'm twenty years younger than any other patient there. I hate that my life is circumscribed by what heart attack survivors can do. And then I get faced with the cheerful, chippy physical therapists and their smiling, open faces make me more bitter and engrave my frown more permanently into my face.
I do understand why the physical therapists are so damn cheerful. I really do. Heart attack survivors often are inflicted with a debilitating depression and the physical therapists are only trying to combat that. I do understand, but, by dog, I sure as hell don't like it.
12/07/04
A normal life. A normal fucking life. My new cardiologist, and God I still can't get used to saying that, just told me in our first meeting that, "There's every possibility that you can go on to live a normal life."
That sounds like good news until you think about it. It hit me right away. I might not live a normal life. Hell, he's saying the best I can hope for is to live a normal life. That's it. Not extraordinary. Not outstanding, but ordinary. Like that's the best it gets for me now and I might not even get that one.
I am so very depressed right now.
I know I'm forty. I know my life is probably more than half over right now. I know all that. But, still, deep in the dark recesses of my brain, I still have this idea that I'm a young god. I can lift anything, roll huge boulders over and (almost) dunk a basketball or at least hang on the rim for a while.
Now, not so much. Now, post heart attack, I have to be careful. I must strictly watch what I eat. Now, I must not over-exert myself.
Yeah, I'm whining. I know that, too, and I'll get over it, but, for now, it's all a bit much.
12/02/04
So, here it is, almost a month out. Almost a month since the
morning that my heart tried its level best to kill me. Almost
a month since I had a heart attack.
I'm writing this in the hopes that I never have to write or talk about this again. I've gone over it and over it, processing every little detail and telling it to people again and again. I've got it down to a nice little story. Amusing in parts, scary in others and, if I do say so myself, pretty darn compelling. It's almost as if by turning what happened into a story, I'm trying to distance myself from what happened so that it becomes unreal, not the most real thing that ever happened to me.
But it's not a story. I didn't make it up. I really did have a heart attack. I almost died and there was only one thing I could do to stop myself from dying.
It started the morning of Nov. 5, 2004. It was a pretty typical Friday for me as of that fall. I sent Rich, Ben and Rocket off to school and then sent myself off to the Siskey Family YMCA to work out. I did my typical workout, thirty hard minutes on the stationary bicycle and then some weights.
On that day, I weighed 202.4 pounds. Possibly the least I'd weighed since I was in eighth grade so I was feeling pretty good about my health. What wasn't to love? Hell, I could even see a few abdominal muscles again. It wasn't a six pack, but I could sure see a couple of cans left in the holder.
After the workout, I went to a Harris Teeter grocery store to pick up some odds and ends for various dinners over the weekend. Sure, I shopped for the week already, but, as Alyse will be only too happy to tell you, I tend to go back to the grocery store a lot during the week. I need to make better lists, she tells me. Well, she won't have to worry about me going to that Harris Teeter again, let me tell you.
As I'm paying for my few groceries, some salad fixings and a six pack of low-carb beer, I start to feel a little bit funny, almost as if my entire body was humming. It felt almost like I had inhaled some nitrous oxide. My arms and legs started buzzing and I felt light-headed. My vision was starting to narrow into a long, dark tunnel and things were starting to sound as if they came from somewhere very far away.
Now, at first, I wasn't all that worried. See, I'd had stuff like that happen before. Normally, when I got to feeling like that it was during a workout, when I'd maybe exercised too much too fast. I had had something like this before and it always passed. This time I thought it was odd because these feelings weren't happening during a workout, but, rather, about fifteen minutes after I finished. Still, I thought, nothing to worry about. I would just go wait it out in the car and then I'd be all better. No big deal.
I sat in my car and the feelings just got worse. It started to feel as if I couldn't breathe. I counted my breaths and took deep ones, but it made no difference. I took shorter, more shallow breaths to make sure I wasn't hyperventilating. Still no difference, but I wasn't worried. I'd been through this kind of thing before. My vision started to darken and I sort of greyed out. Not really blacked out because I don't think I lost consciousness, but things got really fuzzy there for a little bit.
I sat, slumped over the steering wheel of my Toyota Sienna in the Harris Teeter parking lot and almost died. Looking back, that's probably when I was in the most danger. If I hadn't come around, that could have been it for me. No more of my father-in-law's spaghetti, no more good beer, no more football, no more kids, no more wife, no more life. However, there's apparently a special force in the universe that looks out for idiots. Suddenly, I could hear again. My vision came back and it felt like I was getting oxygen again.
That was about 10:15 a.m. I know this from the fact that that's when Alyse called me on my cell phone. I thought the episode was over and I wasn't too concerned. I told Alyse I almost passed out and blamed it on working out too hard. She was concerned, but not very, since I didn't seem all that worried. I hung up and decided to continue with my errands.
I drove up Providence Road back toward the Arboretum shopping center. As I was driving, my arms and legs started buzzing again. They felt as if they'd gone to sleep and were trying to wake up. If you'll recall, parts of your body go to sleep when they've been deprived of oxygen for a while because the flow of oxygenated blood has been cut off. Still, the idea that my extremities weren't getting any oxygen because my heart wasn't sending around the blood, well, it never entered my mind then. All I knew was that this was a Bad Thing. These feelings had never hit me, gone away and then come back.
By the time I pulled into the Arboretum parking lot, figuring that if I greyed out while I was driving down a major road it might be another Bad Thing, I was starting to get a little worried. I thought, maybe I was dehydrated and needed some water. I pulled into a parking space in front of a Roly Poly sandwich shop.
Stepping out of the car was a nightmare. I couldn't seem to hold my head up straight and my legs almost didn't hold me. I leaned on my door to shut it and then staggered into the restaurant. There was a guy behind the counter.
"Hello," said Counter Guy. "How are you doing this morning?"
"Actually, I feel like crap. Would you please get me a glass of water?"
"Of course," he said. "Would you like bottled water or water from the tap?"
Well, if I'd had any strength at all, I would have leaped over the counter and choked the life out of him. I guess we're both lucky I wasn't strong enough right then.
"I don't care. Just give me some water. Please." See? Even in extremity, I was polite.
Counter Guy went to the Coke machine and got me a glass of water and brought it to the table where I was slumped. He set the glass of water on the table and I tried to lift it up. Tried, right? It was almost too heavy.
My arms and legs hummed and my brain felt like it had decided to take a vacation without bringing the rest of my body along. Rather like college, only not nearly as much fun. I picked up the water glass and thought about renting myself out as a water sprinkler, I spilled so much water from the shaking hands and arms as I brought the cup to my lips. I drained the cup and tried to breathe.
Something was wrong. I knew that. Something was badly wrong, but it couldn't be a heart attack. I had no pain in my chest. No pain in my left shoulder or radiating down my left arm. I didn't feel like an elephant was sitting on my chest. I just couldn't catch my breath. I tried alternating my breathing again from long to short and it didn't help. I got up to throw away the cup and almost didn't make it back to my table. I dropped into the seat and then I saved my own life.
I pulled out my cell phone and called 9-1-1. Since I recovered, all I've heard from people is that they can't believe I, a man, called for help. Well, screw 'em. Something was wrong and it wasn't getting better. See, there's a thin line between strength and stupidity and I thought I was in danger of falling face-first over that line. I might be an idiot sometimes, but I'm not stupid. I made the call at 10:55 a.m.
"Hello, 9-1-1 police, fire and medical. Which do you require?"
"I need an ambulance. My name is Richard Jones and I'm in the Roly Poly sandwich shop in the Arboretum shopping center. I don't know what's wrong, but I -- Hello? Hello?"
My cell phone had dropped the call.
I called back.
"Your call is important to us so please don't hang -- Hello, 9-1-1 police, fire and medical. Which do you require?"
"My name is Richard Jones. I'm -- Hello? Hello?"
My cell phone had dropped the call. Again.
I wasn't going to let Alltell kill me. I got Counter Guy's attention.
"Excuse me," I said. "Please call 9-1-1. I need a medic right now. There's something wrong. Please."
Counter Guy nodded his head and set down the phone on which he was taking sandwich orders and headed into the back. I heard him back in there talking to someone, but I couldn't make out the words. I thought he was telling his manager to call somebody, but I couldn't be sure. Then, seconds later, Counter Guy comes back out and picks up the phone again. I distinctly remember hearing him ask the person on the phone, "Are you sure you want pickles with that?"
All right, I thought, I guess I'm not that big of a deal. Since I'm obviously taking up Counter Guy's valuable time, I'll just wait outside and hope the medics show up. I think it's a bit obvious by now that I wasn't thinking all that clearly. I tried to get up out of the chair, but I didn't make it. I slumped back into the chair, my left arm flung over the back and lolled my head over my left shoulder. I don't think I passed out, but the next thing I remember is seeing a fire truck and an ambulance out the window.
Then I was surrounded by burly men in white shirts and more burly men in blue shirts. I can't really remember what they said, but the next thing I do remember is them helping me up onto a stretcher and having them lift up my shirt to fit me with EKG leads. Then they slipped an oxygen mask over my face. I remember thinking this was going to an awful lot of trouble for something that probably wasn't all that much. The emergency medical technicians lifted me into the back of the ambulance and one of the fire department guys got in to drive the ambulance.
That was when I discovered four little words you never want to hear a medic who's working on you say to an ambulance driver. Tom, the medic, looked at the driver and said, "Lights and sirens, please." They wanted me to get to the hospital fast. That, I remember thinking, was not a good sign. Tom asked me my name and then proceeded to keep calling me Robert the entire trip. I think he was doing it to keep me engaged so I would keep correcting him. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt since he helped save my life. His partner was named John. Halfway through the trip I realized his partner was named John Bobbitt.
"Not that one," John said. "I'm the other John Bobbitt."
As we were driving to the hospital, me feeling like crap, Tom gave me some sub-lingual nitro. That is, I had to slip a nitroglycerin pill under my tongue. Now, I'm the living embodiment of a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I knew people were given sub-lingual nitro when they were having a heart attack, but it didn't register. At least, not until Tom was talking on his walkie talkie to the hospital.
"I've got a 39-year-old white male with an ongoing MI," he said.
"MI? Myocardial infarction?" I sat up on the stretcher and tried to take off the oxygen mask. "I'm having a heart attack? I can't be having a heart attack."
Tom forced me back down onto the stretcher and told me to relax. Easy for him to say, he wasn't the guy having the heart attack. I tried to stop thinking. Thinking was only getting me more upset, but I kept getting bad omens. John tried to give me IVs in several sites, but couldn't get any blood back out of the needle. Normally, I've got great veins that really stick up. Problem was, you see, my heart wasn't beating well enough to be moving any blood along. At one point, my blood pressure was 80 over palp, which I think is short for "He's dead, Jim."
Tom looked at me and asked me if I was terribly attached to my shirt. Well, it was a Gator shirt commemorating the team's 2000 SEC championship. I told him if it would make his work easier, just cut the damn thing off. Yeah, I was worried.
As we approached the hospital, I realized I had to let Alyse what was happening since it looked like I wouldn't be home when the boys returned from school. John used his cell phone to let Alyse know I was in Presbyterian Hospital and I was in critical condition. Again, another bad sign. I was not a happy camper.
Again, I think I might have lost consciousness or something because I remember talking to the doctors and nurses in the ER, babbling and making bad jokes as I do when I'm nervous, and suddenly Alyse was there. I thought she must have been working at the hospital since she got there so quickly. Apparently I looked like a right mess as her face when she saw me was, well, it was kind of scary.
Alyse, being Alyse, made sure I was in competent hands and then set about arranging for everything to be taken care of. She asked when the boys would be home from school and then called our friend and pediatrician, Kerri Jaeckel, to ask for help. More time passed, but I'm not sure how much because the next thing I remember is seeing Kerri walk in. Just before the nurses closed the curtain around me, I saw Kerri rush up to Alyse and give her a big hug. That got me really scared.
The docs kept pumping blood thinners into me, as well as fluids to increase my blood pressure. I lay on the table and couldn't stop shaking from the cold and the fear. My limbs moved like someone had hooked me up to a car battery.
The cardiologist on call, Dr. Cox (can you see a pattern there, Dr. Cox? John Bobbitt? Me being a Dick?) told me they wanted to do a cardiac catheterization and it should stop the heart attack. Did I consent? Hell, yes, I consented. Dr. Cox told me I would be conscious for the procedure and that rather calmed me down as I wouldn't be passing out never to return.
Before I was taken away, I begged Alyse not to call my family until after I had the cath. I didn't want them to worry when there was nothing they could do. My mom lived in Florida and my dad and sister in Texas and there was no way they could get to North Carolina in time. As I found out later, she ignored me.
I don't remember the trip to the cath lab. I do, however, remember some male nurse whipping out an electric razor and beginning to shave the hair around my groin. I was making some sort of joke about this and he remarked, "Remember, I am holding a razor to your balls before you finish that joke." I loved that guy.
Dr. Cox walked in and told the nurses to put me under. I panicked.
"Wait," I said. "I thought I was going to be awake for this."
"You will be," Dr. Cox said. "This is versed so you won't remember what happens."
"But, I will wake up," I asked. "Right?"
"Of course," he said and that's the last I remember. Versed is a wonderful drug that destroys your short-term memory so you feel the pain and then immediately forget what the pain was. Good stuff.
The catheterization procedure consists of this: the doctors insert a tube into your femoral artery, which is the major artery taking blood to your leg. This takes place in the groin area, so that was fun. The tube gets snaked into the heart where it goes to the appropriate vessel and the doctor does what needs to be done.
I woke up in the recovery room, I'm told, but that whole time is a blank. The next time my memory cleared, I was in the Cardiac Critical Care Unit, another place I can't recommend highly enough that you do not go. I was wired up with a 12-lead EKG that was hooked to the cardiac monitor on the wall behind my bed. Once the anesthesia wore off, I felt, God, I felt great.
The buzzing was gone from my arms and legs. I could breathe again and my head was clear. It was a veritable miracle. I was smiling when Alyse walked back inside the room from where she'd been talking to a nurse.
Eventually, she showed me the x-rays Dr. Cox had taken of my heart during the catheterization procedure. The x-ray was timestamped 12:15 p.m., so it had been less than one and one half hours from calling the medics to being on the table getting cured. Damned good time.
So, according to Alyse, what had happened was this: For some reason, a plaque in my right coronary artery had fractured. A fractured plaque isn't as slick as is a normal plaque. So a blood cell stuck to the plaque. Then another. Then another, and pretty soon a clot formed, completely occluding my artery, thus depriving the heart of blood and oxygen it needed to pump effectively.
Dr. Cox went in and made me a cyborg, part man and part machine. He implanted a Taxus stent after he sucked out the ruptured plaque and the blood clot. The stent, a small metal cylinder, is placed in the artery to prevent it from collapsing again and the clot-preventing drugs with which it is infused slowly leak into my blood.
But all that was beside the point. The point was that I felt great. Once the clot was gone, my heart began to beat normally and my blood began to flow again. I was ready to leave right then and there. But, ah, no. Not going to happen. For one thing, I'd just had doctors cut into my femoral artery and I needed to give that time to seal up so I wouldn't start spurting blood out of my leg and bleeding out.
For another, I was tethered to the wall by the cardiac monitor and I sure didn't want to rip the sticky leads from all the hair on my chest. I had to remove the leads eventually and that was when I found the two large pads adhesed to my lower left chest and my back and I got scared all over again. They were shock pads, see. So if my heart stopped, they doctors could quickly hook up a defibrillator and shock me back to life. It was that close.
I'm extremely glad I didn't know about the defibrillator pads until after I was out of danger and in the cardiac step-down unit. Once I was in the step-down unit, I had the luxury of remote telemetry. The most important part of that was that I could go to the bathroom by walking to a toilet, instead of using a bottle in the bed. You've not lived until you had to scooch yourself up in bed, without lifting your right leg, arranged yourself correctly and then used a bottle without spilling anything on the bed. Boy was I glad that was over.
Eventually, eternally, two days after my heart attack, I was released from the hospital. Both my dad and mom were in Charlotte by then, determined to care for me, both by getting the best medical care they could wring out of my doctor and by making sure I didn't overdo it when I got home. My sister, Leslie, was also there and, along with Alyse, kept me down. It was really a case of keeping a brother down.
Since then, well, it's been all right for the most part. Physically, that is. I don't feel any different now than I did on 9 a.m. Friday Nov. 5. Of course, an hour after that particular point in time I had a heart attack, so take that for what it's worth.
The problem, see, is the mental. I can't really go to sleep very well. If I don't go to bed absolutely exhausted, I lay in the bed, my mind racing over nightmare scenarios. What if it happens again? What if I don't get to see my kids grow up? See my wife grow more beautiful as she ages? What if I never read the last book in my favorite series? From the big to the little, it all goes racing through my head. So I stay up as long as possible and then collapse into bed, hoping for a quick exit of consciousness.
Then there's the fact that I can feel my heart beating. I could always feel it, but now, it seems like my heartbeat is a constant accompaniment to my life. I feel the thud of the heart as it sends blood surging through my body and the rethud as the body parts accept the good blood and send back the bad. I'm feeling it right now as I write this and I almost can't stand it.
My worst time came a couple of days ago when I was waiting in line at the drive-through lane of the bank. I heard a siren dopplering up the street closer to me. My breathing quickened and my hands started to shake. I almost couldn't hear the bank lady as the fire engine raced by, closely followed by an ambulance. And I'm not sure I'll ever go into a Roly Poly sandwich shop again.
So what have I learned from all this? Not all that much, really. No big spiritual revelations, no philosophical conundrums solved. All I really know now, really know, is that I never, ever want to die. Since that doesn't seem likely, I'll be trying to live life to the best of my ability. Love my family and friends. And maybe one day, a couple of years down the road when I've recovered mentally and physically, I'll be allowed to talk about politics again. But I'm not sure Alyse will be ready for that after the hell I put her through during the 2004 election, so maybe not.