When Does the Dance Stop? The kvetch begin?

My life is a commercial for one or another NSAID that will, perhaps, soon prove to be dangerous ... or, at the very least, has 'been reported to cause death,' as they are prone to say.*  

'Do you have atrial fibrillation without heart valve involvement ... we Docs call it a-fib because it's so cool.' Oh! Those docs are so .... so cool. I had one tell me not to really worry about an 11% chance of "a silent stroke or better" for a certain procedure that his hospital would love to do to me. I was supposed to think that 11% is a small number, a little probability. And it is. If I had an 11% chance of losing $5, I'd be 'cool with it,' too. But if one has an 11% chance of sliding off some iced mountain pass, it is best to sit on one's ass .... at home.

Any case, I woke up yesterday in a-fib, spent the day in a-fib, and woke up, today, in the same place. Once or twice a week for 5 years, now, I travel through this strange country. For many of us Playing in the Last Quarter, atrial fibrillation is one of the unwritten 'benefits' that comes with life's contract.

Ah! but we danced. We did. Marsha got her Chloe-Fix (= time spent with #6 grandchild and our oldest child [who didn't spawn till his early-mid forties] and his wife) and we visited Chloe's Mom and Dad, too. Did I mention that?

Got home early and did some gardening and then worked on a talk I'm giving Down South in a few days on why people in my field seem to hate each other -- particularly when they get into cybergroups. I do feel the mischief, familiar to me as it is, coming on! I do suspect that the audience might explain to me -- in dramatic detail -- why we don't like each other. Even got to pause to cry a bit during a tribute to Andy Rooney that M was watching.

Could there be a better day? OK, ok! My Resting Heart Rate is usually 40 beats and steady and today it was bouncing from the mid-70's to 160 something -- quite on its own schedule. (What to say? The Old Guy or his heart, at least, "ain't got no rhythm).  But the Sun WAS shining, the sunroof WAS open on "Little Beast," my car, Chloe was shyly figuring out if maybe and after all there could be room for both Grandma AND Grandpa, and ... people in the stores we stopped into were in a good way.

Shew!









* I have a strong interest in ancient religious writings and have been long-impressed with the manner in which the Writer of the Old Testament plays with the Ancient Hebrew. In the story of Er and Onan and the same hot widow, Tamar, that they left behind, the Writer uses a similar construction: va'Ymisuhu .... and "He made him dead."