Synopsis

To recap, this is what has been happening:

A year and a half ago, I went to the cardiologist for a routine checkup. At that time, everything was hunky-dory. The heart valve causing the heart murmur was closely looked at and determined to be just fine. The doc said that the valve was in “racing form” for a good long time. Apparently, though, I failed to check the oil, because about six months later I started experiencing some odd symptoms, not real bad, but enough for Nana Pam to notice a change in my “performance” (if ya know what I mean).

Now, Nana Pam is a hypochondriac. But over the years of living with me she has learned that, regardless of any of her symptoms being real or imagined, I simply don’t care, that I truly am the apathetic and self-centered doofus I successfully pretend to be. So, to compensate, Nana Pam has become a “Hypochondriac-by-Proxy” -- if she reads about a cure for an ailment I ain’t got, I should try the cure anyway to ward off the ailment I ain’t got.

And so it was about these particular symptoms. Nana Pam thought I had, or didn’t have enough of . . . well, you know, she was thinking I had . . . Low T.

Hey, it’s nuthin’ ta be embarrassed about -- a lot of men my age have . . . you know . . . Low T.

And long story short (no pun intended, by the way), she thought I should . . . you know . . . . “do” something about it.

So, I went to the doctor - not the cardiologist, but my general practitioner - just for a checkup. He politely listened to the symptoms, and, being a good doc, informed me that, with the heart condition and the sleep apnea, before he prescribed something for . . . uh . . . you know . . . Low T . . . I needed to go see a hormone doctor, an endocrinologist, just to make sure. And then he said, “What does your cardiologist say?”

So, on I went to see the hormone doc. And he set me up on this regimen, see, and did all these tests on me, and after a couple of months, concluded that my testosterone levels were indeed slightly down. But so was my adrenaline level. And my thyroid function was down. And my pituitary output was off. In fact, virtually all my hormone levels were down. Taken alone, none were really serious, but all of them taken together seemed pretty odd. And then he said, “What does your cardiologist say?”

And all the while the symptoms kept getting worse and worse. I couldn’t keep my mind focused, I was irritable and short-tempered, there were times I couldn’t even work or drive, I was always short of breath.

So, I took the not-so-subtle hint and made another appointment with the heart doctor, which just so happened to be a year after the previous appointment.

Well, what started as a routine checkup with the cardiologist soon turned into a day I won’t forget. The doc found that the heart valve had closed off to less than half what it was a year earlier, resulting in a loss of adequate blood flow to the rest of the body and making the heart work harder than it should. That was what was causing all the other symptoms.

So, I told him to give me a pill for the problem and I would be on my way.

And after looking at me like I had two heads said, “You don’t understand. Within the next few months you have to have surgery to repair your heart valve, otherwise it’s kaput for you.” (He didn’t really say that, but you get the gist).

That was just before Nana Pam and I were leaving for a romantic trip to the Appalachians for our anniversary. But, as soon as she learned about the real situation, she opted to remove the “romantic” from the trip and we went to eastern Oklahoma instead. She figured that if I was going to die along the way, the kids should be within driving distance so they could enjoy the spectacle, too. (Did I mention that one of the symptoms was also a sort of paranoid cynicism?)

Anyway, when we got back from the vacation, I got scheduled for the first test to get ready for surgery. And I fully expected the testing to go on for a few months, and that I would have the surgery sometime in the late fall at the earliest. But, with each test, they kept finding crap, and the next thing I knew I had surgery scheduled within the week.

So the bottom line is this: The heart surgeon told me that the operation is to be this Thursday, May 14th. And he explained in detail what he was going to do, how he was going to do it, what type of pliers he was going to use on my heart, and his latest golf score.

And as we say in Oklahoma, “It’s OK, could be worse.” (Talking about his golf score, of course)