Heart-to-Heart

I've suddenly become obsessed with having a better heart. I know it may be too late to be thinking about this but I'm determined that my desk job will not be the death of me - literally.

Even though my day started at 7:00, and I had a meeting from 9:00-12:00 and another from 1:00-1:30, and another at 2:00-3:30, and then some email and paperwork until 4:15, I took 30 minutes out to walk the company parking lot! I'm bound and determined to get some walking in each day. My goal is five miles each day.

Why all this concern?

While on a trip to visit my folks in California my dad had a heart-to-heart talk with me. (We still do this it seems. I don't really mind it much really.) Anyway, he told me he had to have the doctors "jump-start" his heart! What? Huh? Did I hear you right?

"You must be joking?"

"No, it's to reset the heart and fix the irregularity. It's either that or I get a pacemaker." Wow, I didn't know!

"It's an out-patient procedure." he shrugged, as if he just went down to the barber for a haircut.

"This works", he told me, "by stopping the heart and then jolting it back again."

Ouch! No, I get it. It's just, I never heard of such a thing.

"You'd better have your heart checked out. You should also have your cholesterol checked."

Yeah, well thanks, I'll get right on it.

I don't know if it's sympathy pain or what, but just this morning I felt a little tightness, a slight constriction. It's probably just lack of sleep.

Okay, that's it, I ain't messin' around. I ate oatmeal this morning, had just a little coffee, and drank lots of water. Then I took that walk through our company parking lot at noon. I'm serious.

When I got home tonight, I got on Ruth's treadmill and began reading the heart section in her YOU book by Roizen. (It's good but it's like reading a Dummies book. The cuteness wears thin after the first page.)

This has all been overwhelming for me. I even downed some vitamins my sister gave me last year.

Meanwhile, always, in the back of my mind, I wonder how my Dad is doing.

...dave
"Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts." -Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870)