Returning to work after a long absence is always a daunting proposition. This is especially true after surgery, since you can summon even less energy than usual when faced with the unedifying prospect of wasting another precious day of your life glaring at some unresponsive computer screen. Still, even this dull, thankless fate is preferable to that of doctors glaring at some unresponsive electrocardiograph machine while you slowly stop breathing and eventually flatline. You can't take it with you, as they say, and unfortunately that includes medical malpractice compensation.
Anyway, my first day back was mostly spent in the canteen, dutifully recounting a brief summary of my experience to interested and sympathetic colleagues. They kindly inquire how I'm feeling, explain that I was missed, wish me well and move away. Then the anxious office hypochondriac appears, demanding more exact and specific details, obviously concerned that he might suffer from the same complaint. He is followed by the weepy office sentimentalist, a puffy-eyed collector of Beanie Babies and ceramic Disney figurines, who seems to think that I should receive a Purple Heart for having surgery and the Congressional Medal of Honor just for cleaning for my own incision.
Although you should never milk your post-op invalid status at work, a small amount of heavy cream can be churned by exaggerating your infirmity from time to time. Guidelines concerning what you can - and more importantly cannot - be expected to accomplish during the day need to be set immediately. These should be as vague and as ill-defined as possible: pleading incapacity due to "aches and twinges" is a foolproof excuse for avoiding any tedious meetings and conferences that are scheduled.
Speaking of aches and twinges, I need to stop typing now and lay down in some shady bower. After all, I'm not getting paid for writing this, you know.
The Last Laugh
The cardiologist had described my cholesterol-caked arteries as being like a "ticking time bomb." Heart attack or stroke could have occurred at any moment, he claimed, his words prompting mental images of a cackling Death wiring sticks of dynamite together; his skeletal hands carefully setting the hands of some clockwork mechanism to detonate at the chime of midnight; then supernaturally strapping this device around my poor heart when I was unaware. Fortunately some angelic soul alerted the Earthly bomb disposal squad to my plight before Death could complete his fiendish plan.
Such idle thoughts, naturally, conjure further flights of morbid fantasy: did my astral self play its proverbial game of chess with Death, for example, while my physical body lay anesthetized upon the operating table? Probably not, as it happens, because I simply can't imagine myself speaking gobbledygook like "Rook to King's Bishop five," even in the supernatural realm.
Combined with a little paranoia, these daydreams continue through recovery: after all, successfully dodging Death's scythe on the first stroke doesn't mean it won't suddenly return later and cut you down on his back-swing. Perhaps Death is a golfer rather than a chess player, pitching and putting his way around the hospital: the heart disease hole is probably a par 4, and fortunately I got lost somewhere in the rough.
In reality, of course, since bypass surgery is virtually a routine procedure these days, there was only an incalculably small chance that the patient might die; only the remotest possibility that a cloaked and hooded figure might be lurking in the shadows of the operating room, hoping that someone will flatline sooner or later. Death must have much better ways to spend his time, however measureless and infinite his time is. Which means the operation must be pretty boring for Guardian Angels too, sent to merely keep an eye on things. 'Bring a book,' they are probably told. 'You can read by the light of your own beneficence.'
Ah yes, I can joke now but truth be told I was worried then. I suppose this is what is meant by the phrase "having the last laugh."
Such idle thoughts, naturally, conjure further flights of morbid fantasy: did my astral self play its proverbial game of chess with Death, for example, while my physical body lay anesthetized upon the operating table? Probably not, as it happens, because I simply can't imagine myself speaking gobbledygook like "Rook to King's Bishop five," even in the supernatural realm.
Combined with a little paranoia, these daydreams continue through recovery: after all, successfully dodging Death's scythe on the first stroke doesn't mean it won't suddenly return later and cut you down on his back-swing. Perhaps Death is a golfer rather than a chess player, pitching and putting his way around the hospital: the heart disease hole is probably a par 4, and fortunately I got lost somewhere in the rough.
In reality, of course, since bypass surgery is virtually a routine procedure these days, there was only an incalculably small chance that the patient might die; only the remotest possibility that a cloaked and hooded figure might be lurking in the shadows of the operating room, hoping that someone will flatline sooner or later. Death must have much better ways to spend his time, however measureless and infinite his time is. Which means the operation must be pretty boring for Guardian Angels too, sent to merely keep an eye on things. 'Bring a book,' they are probably told. 'You can read by the light of your own beneficence.'
Ah yes, I can joke now but truth be told I was worried then. I suppose this is what is meant by the phrase "having the last laugh."
Good Fat Bad Fat
Like fairytale magic, cholesterol has its good side (high-density lipoprotein found in vegetables) and its dark side (low-density lipoprotein found in everything you actually want to eat). These two opposing cholesterol factions are constantly locked in mortal combat with each other, battling for ultimate control of the human bloodstream. Alas, unlike fairytale magic, the dark side usually triumphs in the end: the handsome Prince must wake Snow White with a cardiac defibrillator instead of a kiss; the seven dwarfs each require a triple bypass, all except Dopey who probably needs a quadruple and Sleepy who might even die on the operating table.
According to most nutrition experts, the best way to beat dark cholesterol is to simply not be an American. Unfortunately this is harder than you think, especially if you live there. You might think that you are confining yourself to a so-called Mediterranean diet, but in all probability those dainty little olives and lumpy yogurts have been marinated in harmful saturated fats (pronounced: saturated fatsssssss) by unscrupulous food processing factories.
This dark cholesterol epidemic is similar to the crisis of Global Warming: your body is being inflated to death by the over-frying of fossil cheese in millions of unregulated fast food restaurants; by an oil slick of sugary drinks polluting your bloodstream; and by chunks of processed meat product with a nuclear half-life of twenty million years. Your frequent bouts of belching and uncontrollable flatulence are enough to shake the Earth to its very core.
I've always imagined cholesterol as a big greasy balloon filled with rancid custard, but medical images suggest that it actually resembles tiny heaps of Venetian corn polenta: not what you would expect a merciless killer to look like. Yet cholesterol is a silent and deadly assassin, content to loiter in the arteries of its victim for years disguised as that vaguely unpopular Italian side dish, before finally emerging from the shadows to strike when the fateful hour arrives.
So how can we defeat bad cholesterol, you ask, when the odds are stacked so heavily against us. Of course, we could decrypt the hieroglyphics of the Food Pyramid: consume less low-density lipoproteins (things we actually want to eat) and replace them with more high-density lipoproteins (vegetables). We could even increase our daily amount of exercise by replacing our gleaming SUV with a rickety ten-speed and biking everywhere. And we do all of these things to a degree; but by far the least strenuous and complicated method is to cheat by taking drugs such as Simvastatin and Lipitor.
According to most nutrition experts, the best way to beat dark cholesterol is to simply not be an American. Unfortunately this is harder than you think, especially if you live there. You might think that you are confining yourself to a so-called Mediterranean diet, but in all probability those dainty little olives and lumpy yogurts have been marinated in harmful saturated fats (pronounced: saturated fatsssssss) by unscrupulous food processing factories.
This dark cholesterol epidemic is similar to the crisis of Global Warming: your body is being inflated to death by the over-frying of fossil cheese in millions of unregulated fast food restaurants; by an oil slick of sugary drinks polluting your bloodstream; and by chunks of processed meat product with a nuclear half-life of twenty million years. Your frequent bouts of belching and uncontrollable flatulence are enough to shake the Earth to its very core.
I've always imagined cholesterol as a big greasy balloon filled with rancid custard, but medical images suggest that it actually resembles tiny heaps of Venetian corn polenta: not what you would expect a merciless killer to look like. Yet cholesterol is a silent and deadly assassin, content to loiter in the arteries of its victim for years disguised as that vaguely unpopular Italian side dish, before finally emerging from the shadows to strike when the fateful hour arrives.
So how can we defeat bad cholesterol, you ask, when the odds are stacked so heavily against us. Of course, we could decrypt the hieroglyphics of the Food Pyramid: consume less low-density lipoproteins (things we actually want to eat) and replace them with more high-density lipoproteins (vegetables). We could even increase our daily amount of exercise by replacing our gleaming SUV with a rickety ten-speed and biking everywhere. And we do all of these things to a degree; but by far the least strenuous and complicated method is to cheat by taking drugs such as Simvastatin and Lipitor.
Byparse and You
No doubt you are asking yourself what will happen to this fascinating blog as my condition improves. Will I, you wonder, resort to smug reports about how vigorously healthy I am feeling these days. And will these posts be pompous lectures about exactly what you should be eating so that you can be as wonderfully fit as I am. Will I, you apprehensively enquire, provide links to endless photo-streams of the new me playing frisbee with a golden retriever, kayaking gleefully over cascading rapids and tossing elaborate salads in a sun-kissed kitchen. Well, the answer to these questions is yes. Yes I undoubtedly will.
Let's face it, I've suffered countless agonies and deprivations with my heart bypass surgery, and I claim an unequivocal right to act holier than thou if I so choose; to indiscriminately dispense my boorish nutritional wisdom into your undeserving head; to expect you, dear reader, to gratefully bookmark this page and thereby increase the hit count in case I decide to include advertising. After all, what good can come from my experience if I cannot recount it to a captive audience in gory and infinite detail, while possibly making a little monetary profit from it also.
Consider my painful and probably permanent incision scars. Observe the unappetizing harvest of legumes, roots and leaves that I am forced to eat. These are heavy burdens of mine that should be important to you too. I am the modern equivalent of some etiolated medieval hermit condemned to a gloomy, life-long curriculum of fasting and self-denial. I am the Western counterpart of a silent Hindu guru with wild hair and long, crinkly fingernails, washing his only pair of underpants in the Ganges while a excitable mob drapes him with rotting garlands. In short: I am the sort of person whose opinions should be heard, even if they are unbearably sanctimonious and misinformed.
Let's face it, I've suffered countless agonies and deprivations with my heart bypass surgery, and I claim an unequivocal right to act holier than thou if I so choose; to indiscriminately dispense my boorish nutritional wisdom into your undeserving head; to expect you, dear reader, to gratefully bookmark this page and thereby increase the hit count in case I decide to include advertising. After all, what good can come from my experience if I cannot recount it to a captive audience in gory and infinite detail, while possibly making a little monetary profit from it also.
Consider my painful and probably permanent incision scars. Observe the unappetizing harvest of legumes, roots and leaves that I am forced to eat. These are heavy burdens of mine that should be important to you too. I am the modern equivalent of some etiolated medieval hermit condemned to a gloomy, life-long curriculum of fasting and self-denial. I am the Western counterpart of a silent Hindu guru with wild hair and long, crinkly fingernails, washing his only pair of underpants in the Ganges while a excitable mob drapes him with rotting garlands. In short: I am the sort of person whose opinions should be heard, even if they are unbearably sanctimonious and misinformed.
A Jaunty Angle
You often see invalids like me wearing baseball caps when we're out in public; the brims pulled tightly around our foreheads, shielding our weary eyes from glimpsing the reflection of our anxious faces in any mirrored surface we pass by.
Concealed beneath such carefree hats, disguised as athletic men, we hope that perhaps Death will not recognize us the next time he comes knocking. Then again, maybe we just think of them as security blankets for our skulls, convalescent crash helmets providing protection from whatever else the world might suddenly decide to drop upon our heads. I wear mine in bed sometimes, simply because I forget to take it off.
There is also the sad, pathetic desire to look like a regular guy again, which, somehow, a baseball cap instantly bestows. This desire is particularly strong in anyone who's been wearing nothing but a pastel smock and an intravenous drip for the past three weeks. After all, a baseball cap suggests the sort of strapping fellow who wins cheeseburger eating competitions while drinking bourbon out of the bottle, not some puny heart patient nervously reading the nutritional information on s container of low-fat apricot yogurt. Which example of manhood would you rather represent?
Alas, I'm sure this baseball cap doesn't fool anybody. My shuffling gait, stooped shoulders and hanging head betray me for the fragile weakling that I am. If there were dunes of beach sand on the Emergency Room floor, then I'm sure even the hip-replacement patients would kick it in my face. Maybe I should switch to a huge sombrero instead, and pretend I'm just taking a well-deserved siesta all the time.
Concealed beneath such carefree hats, disguised as athletic men, we hope that perhaps Death will not recognize us the next time he comes knocking. Then again, maybe we just think of them as security blankets for our skulls, convalescent crash helmets providing protection from whatever else the world might suddenly decide to drop upon our heads. I wear mine in bed sometimes, simply because I forget to take it off.
There is also the sad, pathetic desire to look like a regular guy again, which, somehow, a baseball cap instantly bestows. This desire is particularly strong in anyone who's been wearing nothing but a pastel smock and an intravenous drip for the past three weeks. After all, a baseball cap suggests the sort of strapping fellow who wins cheeseburger eating competitions while drinking bourbon out of the bottle, not some puny heart patient nervously reading the nutritional information on s container of low-fat apricot yogurt. Which example of manhood would you rather represent?
Alas, I'm sure this baseball cap doesn't fool anybody. My shuffling gait, stooped shoulders and hanging head betray me for the fragile weakling that I am. If there were dunes of beach sand on the Emergency Room floor, then I'm sure even the hip-replacement patients would kick it in my face. Maybe I should switch to a huge sombrero instead, and pretend I'm just taking a well-deserved siesta all the time.
Practical Matters and Other Problems
"Just use your common sense," nurses would tell me, when explaining the intricacies of dressing my own incision: "Just use a tiny amount of Bacitracin on the cotton swab, not too much, you know, just use your common sense."
Alas, I've never considered common sense to be one of my strong suits. I'm more of a "snippets of esotric but ultimately worthless trivia" type personality: more interested in the mythical Seven Labors of Hercules than the seven chores that really need to be done around the house.
Being too ashamed to tell the nurses this, I deceptively nod my head while they provide detailed and important instructions, as if even the most complex of surgical operations are mere routine tasks for a patient of my infinite experience, dexterity and courage.
"This is easy. I can do this no problem," I boast. Meanwhile, deep inside my foolish, reckless psyche, many anxious and desperate neurons are screaming for instructional booklets, step-by-step diagrams and in-depth how-to videos.
Standing in the bathroom later, equipped with a box of gauze pads, tubes of unpronouncable ointments and sticky medical tape that doesn't stick very well, I am all fingers and thumbs. Do I apply the Lollapaloozadrine first, or the Awopbobalooboppazone? And exactly how much of each should I apply to which gauze pad? What if my incision becomes infected because an escaped toenail clipping disastrously manages to attach itself to the swab with which I am cleaning my incision? The stakes are high and no nightmare scenario can be ignored by the man who has no common sense.
Alas, I've never considered common sense to be one of my strong suits. I'm more of a "snippets of esotric but ultimately worthless trivia" type personality: more interested in the mythical Seven Labors of Hercules than the seven chores that really need to be done around the house.
Being too ashamed to tell the nurses this, I deceptively nod my head while they provide detailed and important instructions, as if even the most complex of surgical operations are mere routine tasks for a patient of my infinite experience, dexterity and courage.
"This is easy. I can do this no problem," I boast. Meanwhile, deep inside my foolish, reckless psyche, many anxious and desperate neurons are screaming for instructional booklets, step-by-step diagrams and in-depth how-to videos.
Standing in the bathroom later, equipped with a box of gauze pads, tubes of unpronouncable ointments and sticky medical tape that doesn't stick very well, I am all fingers and thumbs. Do I apply the Lollapaloozadrine first, or the Awopbobalooboppazone? And exactly how much of each should I apply to which gauze pad? What if my incision becomes infected because an escaped toenail clipping disastrously manages to attach itself to the swab with which I am cleaning my incision? The stakes are high and no nightmare scenario can be ignored by the man who has no common sense.
Escapism
When the four walls of your convalescent room have finally revealed all their cracks in infinite detail; when only unappetizing lozenges of browning melon remain in that fruit basket by your bedside; when all those dog-eared biographies of sixties popstars have been half-read and then discarded on the floor; when time has been completely and utterly killed, given the coup-de-gras at least ten times and you have jumped up and down on its grave like an insane trampolinist ... then you just might be bored enough to watch a little "sword and sorcery" themed Sci-Fi Fantasy epic on cable or DVD. I know I am.
Whether they are called Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, most Sci-Fi Fantasy epics follow the basic King Arthur storyline: a flawed hero and his rag-tag band of misfits embark upon a thankless quest for some magical piece of flea market ephemera. He is a sort of bearded JFK figure who eats with his hands. His men look like the Rolling Stones in ill-fitting suits of armor. They face many deadly trials and perilous tribulations on their quest, which they usually solve by simply hacking angry monsters to death; fiery dragons and one-eyed giants who were previously asleep in pitch black caves, minding their own business.
There will be a token love interest: a dainty narrative afterthought with doe-eyes and alabaster skin. But our busy hero generally prefers spending his time drinking mead with bearded fighting men and consulting gloomy wizards, so she's left to walk her domesticated snow leopards around the empty castle by herself. Another night in with endless needlework and a fat lady-in-waiting who snores. It's not very chivalrous if you ask me.
Meanwhile, back on the quest, the hero and his friends have encountered an obstacle.
"We must cross the icy Ocean of Slurp before nightfall."
"But we are infantry, not seafaring men."
"It matters not. It is our destiny."
"Yes Lord"
Oh God, how they drone on and on about their dreary destiny all the time. There is also far too much subservient, class-conscious grovelling for my liking. In fact, the entire genre of Sci-Fi Fantasy seems to be dominated by especially pompous, priggish, self-regarding aristocrats. The closest it ever gets to a proper, modern Democracy is an unelected and highly secretive "council" of hooded and lugubrious elders who shuffle about inside the roots of some ancient tree making fatuous decisions about the future of Elf Land.
It is amazing that not even a hint of progressive political activism appears in any of these films and TV shows. There is no long-haired Hobbit preaching Marxism or spotty gnome plastering his woodland bedroom with posters of Che Guevara. Honestly, if I were writing these scripts I'd include an armor-clad, broadsword-wielding Lenin rising from his dreamless sweep and destroying the old order. Of course, this means that my hero would eventually be followed by a troll-like Stalin and his murderous five year plan to collectivize the Shire farms, but at least it would change things up a bit.
Anyway, I suppose it is time to turn the TV off and change the dressings on my own scars now; these deep wounds inflicted upon me by the Dark Lord Cholesterol but mercifully healed by Gandalf the Wise Surgeon. May the power of Bacitracin be with me.
Whether they are called Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, most Sci-Fi Fantasy epics follow the basic King Arthur storyline: a flawed hero and his rag-tag band of misfits embark upon a thankless quest for some magical piece of flea market ephemera. He is a sort of bearded JFK figure who eats with his hands. His men look like the Rolling Stones in ill-fitting suits of armor. They face many deadly trials and perilous tribulations on their quest, which they usually solve by simply hacking angry monsters to death; fiery dragons and one-eyed giants who were previously asleep in pitch black caves, minding their own business.
There will be a token love interest: a dainty narrative afterthought with doe-eyes and alabaster skin. But our busy hero generally prefers spending his time drinking mead with bearded fighting men and consulting gloomy wizards, so she's left to walk her domesticated snow leopards around the empty castle by herself. Another night in with endless needlework and a fat lady-in-waiting who snores. It's not very chivalrous if you ask me.
Meanwhile, back on the quest, the hero and his friends have encountered an obstacle.
"We must cross the icy Ocean of Slurp before nightfall."
"But we are infantry, not seafaring men."
"It matters not. It is our destiny."
"Yes Lord"
Oh God, how they drone on and on about their dreary destiny all the time. There is also far too much subservient, class-conscious grovelling for my liking. In fact, the entire genre of Sci-Fi Fantasy seems to be dominated by especially pompous, priggish, self-regarding aristocrats. The closest it ever gets to a proper, modern Democracy is an unelected and highly secretive "council" of hooded and lugubrious elders who shuffle about inside the roots of some ancient tree making fatuous decisions about the future of Elf Land.
It is amazing that not even a hint of progressive political activism appears in any of these films and TV shows. There is no long-haired Hobbit preaching Marxism or spotty gnome plastering his woodland bedroom with posters of Che Guevara. Honestly, if I were writing these scripts I'd include an armor-clad, broadsword-wielding Lenin rising from his dreamless sweep and destroying the old order. Of course, this means that my hero would eventually be followed by a troll-like Stalin and his murderous five year plan to collectivize the Shire farms, but at least it would change things up a bit.
Anyway, I suppose it is time to turn the TV off and change the dressings on my own scars now; these deep wounds inflicted upon me by the Dark Lord Cholesterol but mercifully healed by Gandalf the Wise Surgeon. May the power of Bacitracin be with me.
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