Something about my EKG is freaking medical people out.

[NNadir]

Twenty-seven years ago, after an EKG, and echocardiogram, a stress echocardiogram, and finally an angiogram, my cardiologist at the time - not the most pleasant guy in the world, truth be told - told me that every time someone took my EKG, they were going to freak out and send me for all kinds of tests, if not hospitalize me. (This actually took place after two hospitalizations, one involving a stay in an ICU.)

So I just went through my third or fourth - I can't remember how many more - stress echo.

Now I just tell this story with every EKG freak out, and nobody gets excited, but they do get "concerned," with far more class than Susan Collins could ever muster.

However in the most recent freak-out my general physician did tell me that I'm older now, fatter now, with (managed) high blood pressure (why, oh why, do I ever post in E&E here) and that my EKG had "changed," and I should get it checked out.

So I went again.

A good time was had by all; wonderful nice techs, a very friendly and warm cardiologist. I got to get injected with a lipid formulation of the greenhouse gas SF6 as a contrast agent, got to talk a little about the chemistry of the gas.

"Looks good," the cardiologist told me. (Usually they don't tell you on the spot, but this is the first one where a cardiologist was in the room.)

I do have - I learned about 3 or 4 years ago when I'd developed a murmur - a mild mitral prelapse, this from a "normal" (non-stress) echocardiogram but no big deal.

I should lose weight, and I probably should stop talking about energy, engineering and climate change, especially in E&E.

But a good time was had by all.

Life is wonderful and then you die.

I will die - as my angiogram physician told me in a deadpan example of bad bedside manner, adding, after a pause, "but almost certainly not from heart disease."

Again...

A good time was had by all.

Life is wonderful and then you die.

[tblue37]

1. The version I learned was "Life's a bitch and then you die." Your version is much nicer. nt

[OAITW r.2.0]

2. A common shared life experiencce. We get born, then we get died. nt

[NNadir]

5. Some years ago, my sig line here was this, from the greatest Democrat of the 20th century:

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

It's from Eleanor Roosevelt.

I think I used to believe that "life is a bitch" thing, until I understood that you cannot really, really feel blessed without failure and adversity and disappointment in yourself and in others.

People my age can fall into quoting Bob Dylan:

(She knows) there's no success like failure, and failure is no success at all.

If I have one concern for my youngest son - not my oldest, who knows better - is that everything in his life falls together without much struggle. I don't want him to suffer, but I also don't want him to be oblivious either. He has a powerful intellect, but I'm not entirely convinced that for all of it, he can really see.

It is true that many wonderful things happened to me, but I surely they would not have been anywhere near as sweet without all those times that life truly seemed like a "bitch."

If you see things this way, life is beautiful.

I am old; I am weaker; the mechanics of my life don't work as well, but I can see farther and deeper than I ever thought I could, and I realize that my mistakes mean every bit as much as my successes in defining my vision.

[magicarpet]

3. Well,.. could you at least hang around until November 3 ?

There after you can Rapture yourself if you are so inclined.

[NNadir]

10. In New Jersey, we get mail in ballots. As soon as it comes, I'm voting, and hand carrying it...

...to the Board of Elections in my county.

Last year, coming back from dropping my son off at Oak Ridge for his internship, I stopped at the Antietam National Battlefield.

The ranger during a talk told us about a soldier's body from the battle that had been unearthed in 2008. Modern forensics said that he was 19 when he died.

You think about that, the soldiers who died before knowing the outcome, the uncertainty with which they died, and it makes you feel sad, or makes me feel sad at least.

If there is one thing I want to see before I die, it's Trump, Barr, and cohorts in prison. That's something for which life is worth living.

[magicarpet]

12. .

[Ohiogal]

4. I hope you have good insurance!

I’d hate to think what I’d have to pay for all those tests on my El Crappo high deductible insurance.
Glad everything is OK.

[NNadir]

7. Reasonable insurance...it's a little painful financially, but livable.

My EKG would have possibly prevented me from having insurance pre-Obamacare.

[justgamma]

6. My son wrote a poem in high-school

one of the lines was "as we quietly live towards death." So true.

[tblue37]

8. Life is, after all, a terminal disease. nt

[Dave in VA]

9. Life is a Terminal Disease

Many years ago in my youth, I had this as a bumper sticker on my car. Got many funny looks.

[NNadir]

11. I said as much in a Eulogy for my Mother-in-law fairly recently.

Our mortality does, in fact, make our lives more precious.

[Enterstageleft]

13. What do the doctors know?

For 45 years I've told people, "sex is the leading cause of death". When you get that argument about cancer, heart disease, accidents, etc. I remind them, if you aren't born, you won't die.

The last time I had a physical my doctor told me "you have too much blood in your alcohol stream".
I told her it's only been like this for 3 1/2 years

[WheelWalker]

14. I could tell you about my cardiologist, but would rather tell about my new

ophthalmologist. Twenty plus years of POAG, now with cataracts as well, and this bright young doctor out of Duke medical school convinces me to have the cataracts removed and to let him implant micro stents for my glaucoma. I agree to schedule same. Then he remarks, "So, you're one of those who sleeps with your eyes open, did you know that?" "Of course," I replied lol. "If you lived with teenage grandchildren, you would, too."

Life is what it is, and then you die.