19 Years to the Day

 It's been 19 years to the day.

Massive heart attack, BAM! Out of nowhere! I add that little qualifier as I'd just had a work physical a couple weeks before. Full check-up. Heart, lungs, blood pressure, full blood work; everything came back excellent. Yet somehow the docs missed the ticking time bomb in my chest.

It was genetic. My father and his father before him suffered identical heart attacks. My grandfather wound up having 2 more before he snuffed it. Dear ol' dad made it to just shy of his 88th birthday. My own health has been a veritable rollercoaster ride since then. Prostate cancer, 2 strokes, blood cancer...it's always something. Hell, I just had a precancerous something-or-other cut off my face a couple months back.

I'm still here. Still kicking, albeit not as high or as hard. 

The heart attack sucked. I still remember it like it was yesterday. I was still self-employed. I worked crazy hours, plus I was still gigging pretty regularly. I wasn't merely burning the proverbial candle at both ends, I was heaving entire candle works into blast furnaces! Gal I'd sorta kinda been dating had caught a bug. I remember her complaining that it felt like a brick in her chest. I woke up that November 9th feeling just that and being rather cross about her giving me the bug. My day started by oversleeping. I felt exhausted. 70 hour week after 70 hour week takes its toll on ya. I only had one client that day, and Lord knows I tried to get out of it. The universe wasn't having it. I was stuck til 5:00. 

Having felt like death all day, I went home. I just wanted to go to bed. Again, the universe had other plans. When I broke out into a cold sweat and felt that ungodly ache in my jaw, I knew what it was. Off to the hospital I went. You can read that particular comedy of errors in my short story MINTY FRESH. I'll add here a section I've rarely discussed.

Being self-employed meant no health insurance. It was the GW Bush era. None of us had health insurance. My heart attack wiped out my savings. I was put in the CCU (cardiac care unit) for 4 days. $20,000.00 per day. What did it pay for? A private room and a cranky Israeli nurse who really didn't like me...at first. She found my sense of humor totally inappropriate, especially for the situation. 

I knew I was lucky to be alive. In those situations, I tend to be overjoyed and admittedly silly. She was horrified by some of the dark jokes I kept making. At one point, an announcement comes over the intercom. "Code brown, room 456 (or whatever it was), all available staff." For those unfamiliar, 'code brown' means just what you think. Someone was covered in their own excrement. Apparently, there was a lot of it. My little Israeli nurse got up to go assist. I barked, "Just where the hell do you think you're going?" She stopped in her tracks.

"You could go deal with that shit or stay here and put up with mine - which I'm being billed handsomely for - so take a seat lady." I gave her my usual wicked grin. I really didn't need her there at the moment, but I knew she'd been having a bad day, and as I reminded her, there was no need for her to get someone else's shit all over her nice, white uniform.

I was trying to be kind to her; in the only way I really could. Best of all, she understood it. Her and I enjoyed the rest of our time together. She even started laughing at some of my jokes, often adding that I'm a "very warped individual".

The heart attack changed my life drastically, as they tend to do. My wildest days were behind me. An uncertain future was in front of me. But life works out if you let it.

6 months later, Marina and I became a couple. We've been together ever since. Sure, we've had ups and downs, just like any other couple. But we're still here, still happy, and still together. I still make music - maybe not as much as I used to, but I still do it. I've written 5 books thus far. Along the way, I changed professions. OK, that ended prematurely - 2 strokes will do that. But like I said before...

I'm still here.

If I make it another 19 years, I'll have surpassed my life expectancy. Genetically, I've made it this far - I'll probably die in my late 80s or early 90s. I have an ancestor, Granma Kohler, who lived to 104. Heaven help me...that just sounds excessive.