A new brand of toilet paper has made itself at home in our bathroom. It's called "Quilted Northern," as if it were especially designed for camping trips during the freezing rains and howling gales of late November in New England; just another item to add to the list of seasonal chores to be completed before winter arrives:
1. Retrieve woolens and heavy coats from storage.
2. Insulate the windows with thermo-seal.
3. Chop firewood.
4. Buy a family pack of Quilted Northern.
And, alas, winter is nearly upon us. Persephone has packed her bags and is preparing to make her way to Hades for half the year. Which is why, having missed most of the summer with my heart surgery, I'm going to recreate June by seeking the sun wherever it still shines.
So next week, rather than traipse around to the cardiologist's office or the rehabilitation center as usual, I thought I'd make an excursion to the Greek islands instead. After all, what can be better for your heart than tramping up and down zillions of steps as you attempt to find your hotel in a maze of whitewashed buildings clinging to the cliff side, especially after a grueling, stressful flight from Boston via London and Athens. Still, there will be a healthy Aegean meal of fish heads in sour yogurt and squid ink waiting for me, along with a glass of that Santorini wine they ferment from strange grapes that grow on circular vines in the volcanic ground.
Interestingly, toilet paper looms large in the legend of Greek vacations, although I'm sure they don't sell black market Quilted Northern at the local Agora. Toilet paper, it seems, cannot be flushed down the toilet, and must be placed in appropriate receptacles instead. Beware of Greeks bearing plumbing supplies, apparently! How odd that Athenian engineers could master the Doric column but not the plastic u-bend pipe.
Nevertheless, I refuse to allow such hygienic inconveniences to ruin my delayed summertime. I shall be soaking up the rays and sampling the moussaka regardless. And, obviously, I will not be too concerned with updating this blog for the duration of my vacation, either. So do not worry if nothing more appears here until October the tenth or so. I am not dead, but merely wondering what happens if you drink ouzo and then swallow a dose of Crestor on an empty stomach.
Hospital Nostalgia
Listening to a sample of patients outline their experience of our health care system, each account being uncompromisingly different than the others, I recalled the old Hindu parable about six blind men describing an elephant resulting in six descriptions of six very different beasts. Here was a menagerie of opinions: some friendly, some not so friendly, and some that were downright poisonous. Alas, since these various opposing viewpoints are so divided and dogmatic, any public discussion of the subject eventually descends into a cacophony of incoherent yelling that sounds more like feeding time at the zoo than a serious debate.
My own experience, by comparison, has been reasonably peaceful: a docile panda quietly chewing on a bamboo shoot in its Qinling cave. But then I have extensive health insurance, so I suppose I can afford to be philosophical. In fact, as post-operative time goes by, it might even be suggested that I've developed hospital nostalgia.
Whenever I'm passing Massachusetts General Hospital, for instance, I always feel compelled to stop in and say hello. It seems absolutely necessary that I should stay in touch with the place, as if the hospital were an old comrade whom I fought beside in a long and bitter war. I miss that satisfying degree of excusable self-importance and deep sense of personal value that invasive surgery confers. I miss the doting nurses, confident doctors and reassuring specialists in their white coats and pastel scrubs. I miss the spirit of purpose and determination that glides along the spotless corridors. But most of all I miss the science-fiction sights and sounds of modern bio-technology in motion. Anyone might imagine that an omniscient and infallible computer-brain was supervising every bed, supported by an ultra-serene, dome-headed staff wearing silver togas and hover-sandals.
M. G. H. certainly radiates an aura of a World's Fair "City of the Future": a perfectly landscaped amalgamation of international hotel, travel node, unisex spa and shopping mall, all connected by a gleaming spider's web of glass-covered sky-walks leading to an endless array of color-coded lobbies, vestibules and mezzanines. Consequently, visiting the hospital feels rather like a lengthy layover at Frankfurt airport (although they don't slice your chest open and fiddle around with your heart at Frankfurt airport, well, at least not anymore). But I'm sure that many malcontents simply consider the place to be a grubby bunker full of creaking wheelchairs and stone-faced staff. Some people are never happy, even if their health care is paid for with someone else's taxes or covered by a fully contributing company insurance plan. Personally, I'm just filled with gratitude that I'm still alive, so I don't complain.
My own experience, by comparison, has been reasonably peaceful: a docile panda quietly chewing on a bamboo shoot in its Qinling cave. But then I have extensive health insurance, so I suppose I can afford to be philosophical. In fact, as post-operative time goes by, it might even be suggested that I've developed hospital nostalgia.
Whenever I'm passing Massachusetts General Hospital, for instance, I always feel compelled to stop in and say hello. It seems absolutely necessary that I should stay in touch with the place, as if the hospital were an old comrade whom I fought beside in a long and bitter war. I miss that satisfying degree of excusable self-importance and deep sense of personal value that invasive surgery confers. I miss the doting nurses, confident doctors and reassuring specialists in their white coats and pastel scrubs. I miss the spirit of purpose and determination that glides along the spotless corridors. But most of all I miss the science-fiction sights and sounds of modern bio-technology in motion. Anyone might imagine that an omniscient and infallible computer-brain was supervising every bed, supported by an ultra-serene, dome-headed staff wearing silver togas and hover-sandals.
M. G. H. certainly radiates an aura of a World's Fair "City of the Future": a perfectly landscaped amalgamation of international hotel, travel node, unisex spa and shopping mall, all connected by a gleaming spider's web of glass-covered sky-walks leading to an endless array of color-coded lobbies, vestibules and mezzanines. Consequently, visiting the hospital feels rather like a lengthy layover at Frankfurt airport (although they don't slice your chest open and fiddle around with your heart at Frankfurt airport, well, at least not anymore). But I'm sure that many malcontents simply consider the place to be a grubby bunker full of creaking wheelchairs and stone-faced staff. Some people are never happy, even if their health care is paid for with someone else's taxes or covered by a fully contributing company insurance plan. Personally, I'm just filled with gratitude that I'm still alive, so I don't complain.
Lessons from the Past
It is never wise to investigate your own psychological quirks, but I have always struggled with a mysterious compulsion to save and collect cardboard tubes. The flimsy infrastructure of a roll of paper towels, for instance; even the little ones inside toilet rolls; and especially the sturdier variety of tube used to transport unfoldable posters and parchment through the postal system. I feel the pressing need to hoard them all. For some misbegotten reason, my mind seems to stubbornly maintain the childish notion that I could make something interesting out of them. But what?
The fuselage of a model rocket ship is pretty much the only object that suggests itself, and even then only after the cardboard tube has been wrapped in silver foil. But at my age I really can't imagine running around the living room, a home-made model rocket ship held in the air, shouting "zoom, zoom" and requesting permission to land on the sofa.
So I guess this cardboard tube obsession must be a memory trigger from days at kindergarten, when collecting cardboard tubes was essential for all boy's craft projects because rocket ships were the only things we made.
"What are you making today Stephen?"
"I'm making a rocket ship out of a cardboard tube."
"But didn't you make a rocket ship out of a cardboard tube last week?"
"Yes, but that was only a toilet roll tube. This one's made out of the sturdier variety of tube used to transport unfoldable posters and parchment, which means it can go to Mars."
Apparently a ghost synapse from my five-year-old self still wanders through my brain looking for things to do: a ghost synapse summoned back from its cellular grave by the sight of a cardboard tube. It could be worse, I suppose. It could be a memory trigger from childhood that involves urinating in public pools, for example. Not that I go swimming in public these days; not with a grievous and angry incision scar like mine.
But let us not dwell on the distant echoes of yesteryear. To paraphrase Saint Paul's famous epistle to the Corinthians: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things, and then one day I needed to have heart surgery." Indeed, and no doubt you are wondering what possible connection could exist between cardboard tubes and coronary artery bypass surgery. After all, it's not as if I am going to manufacture a larger than life model of my heart using cardboard tubes as the arteries, is it?
Or is it? I discovered this small model of a heart in an examination room while waiting for my cardiologist to arrive. Although intriguing enough to look at and photograph, it was a solid lump of plastic lacking any interactive elements; about as useful as a Mr Potato Head missing its stick-on facial features. What a pity, I thought, that its various components cannot be removed and reattached in order to demonstrate the ins and outs of specific surgical procedures. I could make a superior model, I decided, with a bucketful of papier-mâché, spirit gum, and several detachable cardboard tubes of assorted lengths and diameters.
When completed, and after being painted an appropriate shade of Valentine red, my lightweight plug-and-play model heart would be a perfect teaching tool: "To replace a defective artery with a new, disease-free artery you simply pull the old tube out and then fold tab A of the new tube into corresponding slot A of the new tube, and repeat the process with tab B and slot B, etc. Of course, you'll be working with real arteries so it will be a bit messier than this, but you get the general idea. Ooops. Oh no. My thumb has just accidentally crushed the left ventricle."
I'm not proposing that my cardboard tube model heart should be employed in an actual medical school, obviously, but for today's super-fat kids in kindergarten, well, it might give them some idea of what's in store for their cholesterol-soaked organs at some point in the future. How I wish I had been taught such important lessons when I was their age, instead of making stupid rocket ships.
The fuselage of a model rocket ship is pretty much the only object that suggests itself, and even then only after the cardboard tube has been wrapped in silver foil. But at my age I really can't imagine running around the living room, a home-made model rocket ship held in the air, shouting "zoom, zoom" and requesting permission to land on the sofa.
So I guess this cardboard tube obsession must be a memory trigger from days at kindergarten, when collecting cardboard tubes was essential for all boy's craft projects because rocket ships were the only things we made.
"What are you making today Stephen?"
"I'm making a rocket ship out of a cardboard tube."
"But didn't you make a rocket ship out of a cardboard tube last week?"
"Yes, but that was only a toilet roll tube. This one's made out of the sturdier variety of tube used to transport unfoldable posters and parchment, which means it can go to Mars."
Apparently a ghost synapse from my five-year-old self still wanders through my brain looking for things to do: a ghost synapse summoned back from its cellular grave by the sight of a cardboard tube. It could be worse, I suppose. It could be a memory trigger from childhood that involves urinating in public pools, for example. Not that I go swimming in public these days; not with a grievous and angry incision scar like mine.
But let us not dwell on the distant echoes of yesteryear. To paraphrase Saint Paul's famous epistle to the Corinthians: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things, and then one day I needed to have heart surgery." Indeed, and no doubt you are wondering what possible connection could exist between cardboard tubes and coronary artery bypass surgery. After all, it's not as if I am going to manufacture a larger than life model of my heart using cardboard tubes as the arteries, is it?
Or is it? I discovered this small model of a heart in an examination room while waiting for my cardiologist to arrive. Although intriguing enough to look at and photograph, it was a solid lump of plastic lacking any interactive elements; about as useful as a Mr Potato Head missing its stick-on facial features. What a pity, I thought, that its various components cannot be removed and reattached in order to demonstrate the ins and outs of specific surgical procedures. I could make a superior model, I decided, with a bucketful of papier-mâché, spirit gum, and several detachable cardboard tubes of assorted lengths and diameters.When completed, and after being painted an appropriate shade of Valentine red, my lightweight plug-and-play model heart would be a perfect teaching tool: "To replace a defective artery with a new, disease-free artery you simply pull the old tube out and then fold tab A of the new tube into corresponding slot A of the new tube, and repeat the process with tab B and slot B, etc. Of course, you'll be working with real arteries so it will be a bit messier than this, but you get the general idea. Ooops. Oh no. My thumb has just accidentally crushed the left ventricle."
I'm not proposing that my cardboard tube model heart should be employed in an actual medical school, obviously, but for today's super-fat kids in kindergarten, well, it might give them some idea of what's in store for their cholesterol-soaked organs at some point in the future. How I wish I had been taught such important lessons when I was their age, instead of making stupid rocket ships.
A Fate Worse Than Death
Having a blog is an embarrassing and often downright tedious extension of the self, rather like having smelly feet and asking your friends if they'd be interested in sniffing them once or twice a week. It is a particularly pungent form of electronic body-odor for which the only available deodorant is a link to the Onion website.
In fact, the very existence of your blog is a dirty little secret that most people would prefer to remain undisclosed. Your blog is an Internet version of Mr Rochester's mad woman locked in the attic; an online equivalent of Dorian Gray's deteriorating portrait; an HTML simulacrum of ... oh I could go on and on - this is a blog, after all - but I think you get the picture.
Of course, as far as embarrassing and often downright tedious blogs go, writing a blog about your own health problems must be the lowest of the low. Surely it is a monstrously selfish act to burden your loved ones with the responsibility of reading interminable paragraphs about clogged arteries, blood pressure fluctuation, cholesterol pills and hardcore constipation. Even the most thrilling of thriller writers would fail to make an electrocardiograph session sound interesting. Consequently I don't simply tell people I have a blog about heart disease, I break the news to them as gently as possible:
"I have some good news and some bad news."
"Okay. Well, give me the good news first."
"I'm pleased to say that my creative juices are flowing again."
"Great. That's awesome. And so what's the bad news?"
"The bad news is that they're flowing into a blog."
"Oh. Gosh. I'm sorry to hear that. That's terrible news."
"Yes, I know. Believe me, I feel really bad that you have to read it all the time."
There are alternatives to blogging, obviously: social networking sites, for instance, are eponymously not as misanthropic as owning a blog. The mercifully brief format of Twitter might be ideal for disseminating important reports concerning my condition: "Experienced new twinge just now. Calling hospital #pain #anxiety #etc."
Or maybe even Facebook could provide a convenient forum for uploading pithy updates about cholesterol contaminated foods, combined with graphic pictures of my incision scar: Vlad the Impaler Likes This, and so on.
But, alas, mine is an old-fashioned and self-important intellect. My ego needs to stretch and unwind, requiring adequate elbow room for its longueurs, semi-colons, extended metaphors and patronizing allusions; and only the unlimited storage space of a blog will suffice.
So I am left with but a single hope and aspiration, only one excuse: that some fellow heart patient seeking comfort in his darkest hour will read these words and think: "The surgeon will be cracking my chest open tomorrow and attaching my heart to a machine, but at least I'm not a loser blogger like this Baldwin person."
In fact, the very existence of your blog is a dirty little secret that most people would prefer to remain undisclosed. Your blog is an Internet version of Mr Rochester's mad woman locked in the attic; an online equivalent of Dorian Gray's deteriorating portrait; an HTML simulacrum of ... oh I could go on and on - this is a blog, after all - but I think you get the picture.
Of course, as far as embarrassing and often downright tedious blogs go, writing a blog about your own health problems must be the lowest of the low. Surely it is a monstrously selfish act to burden your loved ones with the responsibility of reading interminable paragraphs about clogged arteries, blood pressure fluctuation, cholesterol pills and hardcore constipation. Even the most thrilling of thriller writers would fail to make an electrocardiograph session sound interesting. Consequently I don't simply tell people I have a blog about heart disease, I break the news to them as gently as possible:
"I have some good news and some bad news."
"Okay. Well, give me the good news first."
"I'm pleased to say that my creative juices are flowing again."
"Great. That's awesome. And so what's the bad news?"
"The bad news is that they're flowing into a blog."
"Oh. Gosh. I'm sorry to hear that. That's terrible news."
"Yes, I know. Believe me, I feel really bad that you have to read it all the time."
There are alternatives to blogging, obviously: social networking sites, for instance, are eponymously not as misanthropic as owning a blog. The mercifully brief format of Twitter might be ideal for disseminating important reports concerning my condition: "Experienced new twinge just now. Calling hospital #pain #anxiety #etc."
Or maybe even Facebook could provide a convenient forum for uploading pithy updates about cholesterol contaminated foods, combined with graphic pictures of my incision scar: Vlad the Impaler Likes This, and so on.
But, alas, mine is an old-fashioned and self-important intellect. My ego needs to stretch and unwind, requiring adequate elbow room for its longueurs, semi-colons, extended metaphors and patronizing allusions; and only the unlimited storage space of a blog will suffice.
So I am left with but a single hope and aspiration, only one excuse: that some fellow heart patient seeking comfort in his darkest hour will read these words and think: "The surgeon will be cracking my chest open tomorrow and attaching my heart to a machine, but at least I'm not a loser blogger like this Baldwin person."
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