WALKING ON THIN ICE

my screen-saver heart got worse yesterday.  once again my lady love is lying against my chest when she says, “you’re heart’s stopping again.”  i listen, count… it beats 5 times, stops 1 beat,,, beats 5, stops 1.  so i drink a lot of water, which seemed to solve my problem the day before, but for the next 5 hours it sometimes beats 3 and stops, sometimes 16 or 66 and stops. never hits 100 unbroken beats. once i thot it stopped for more than 1 beat, but that could have been faulty fingers.  believe me, this kind of stuff messes with your mind, raises adrenaline worry levels which cloud logic.  i know one of the symptoms of too much coffee is an arrhythmic heart, and since i figured it was the coffee, i decided to wait until this morning.  i’ve been drinking two pots of coffee lately, and i’ve been making it stronger, and i’d stopped drinking water.  plus i eat a lot of chocolate and cookies.  i’m pretty stupid for a smart dude.

this morning i’ve counted 100 steady beats twice and 50 steady twice with no skips at all.  i’ve stopped coffee and i’ve stopped sweets.  have a coffee withdrawal headache.  will keep monitoring myself throughout the day to see if time and tiredness make a difference.  will also find a doctor for a checkup.  and in case of emergency, our hosts 5 minutes up the hill are willing to drive us to the emergency room.  figure it’ll take 3 days to get over coffee psychologically and physically. 

i’ve quit all my old vices, was down to coffee and grass when kathy came along.  i’m now in my 6th week without grass - the longest period since 1970 - and i’m in my 1st day without coffee.  i will find grass again tho - my abstinence is due to circumstance, not choice.  i need some sin in my life, otherwise i’ll start sporting a halo and white wings, and who’d ever believe that.

just counted my pulse again - another strong steady 50.  this checking my pulse to see if i’m still alive has its humorous aspects.

o dear, just lost some of the humor factor here - walked up the hill for water and now i’m in screen-saving heart mode again… 20-30 beats and a stop.  so we’re busing into pula, and walking to the emergency room.  need data.  my head can’t afford sitting around without knowing.  if this is causing me this much mental turmoil, god knows what it’s doing to kathy.

go figure - my pulse stops every 10-20 beats on the way to town, then we get off and walk to emergency room - and my heart decides to beat right.  they gave me an ekg and said i was fine, not to worry, continue life as before, not to worry about the skipping beats unless it gets down to a constant 5-skip.  they found the programmed timing envelopes for my heart beats to be a bit wider than normal.  don’t know what that means.  hard to talk when they had so-so english and we had less than so-so croatian.  the emergency room, the ekg, and the doctors’ consultation cost us $33 u.s., or 200 kuna.

what with the throat cancer, the nose polyps, and the arrhythmic heart, i’m putting kathy’s worry circuits thru hell.  that’s what happens when you buy used husbands, especially the older crankier models.  i’m going to be even crankier now having given up coffee and chocolate.  but at least my heart’s back to the meat beat manifesto.

i know what’s wrong with my heart… it’s been cold and selfish for so long, that now it loves and cares for kathy, it’s confused - it keeps forgetting its beat count.

starting day 2 of no coffee…. takes the joy out of the morning.  reality’s forcing me to become my better self.