Guess whose surprise birthday I helped organize?

My own. Yes, my own.

Please allow me to start from the beginning. It's better that way.

My best friend of 15 years, Joy (yes, she's definitely a girl), had been planning a surprise birthday party for me for two weeks. Little did I know that I was really making life hard on her by rearranging my doctor's appointments. One of the things that really bites about being in your mid-30's -- well, any age, really -- and having a heart condition is that it tends to be a little unpredictable. It wreaks havoc on a social calendar, especially one as sparse as mine!

The lab had scheduled a stress test for me on my 37th birthday. Wasn't that thoughtful of them? Nothing says "we're so glad you survived that heart attack" more than hooking me up to a bunch of equipment and making me run on a treadmill until I wish God had taken me during the heart attack.

Joy figured that since my birthday was on Wednesday, then the party could be sometime this past weekend. So e-mails went out and plans were made by my closest friends to surprise me then. Well, I felt like crap on my birthday, so I rescheduled for this past Friday. More e-mails went out, plans were put on hold and contingency plans were planned.
I did the stress test and felt like I had just run a marathon and then had a Mack truck hit me. My mom drove me home and we hit the drive-thru at the Taco Bell on the way. I called Joy to let her know that I had not had to be admitted to the hospital, as I had feared. Then I hit the hay.

Saturday passed with me studying and relaxing some more. Joy called and asked me to a movie on Sunday with her and her 6-year-old son, Aaron. I agreed and I continued my studies. More e-mails were exchanged among my friends concerning the party. No one had my godparents' home or cell numbers!

Sunday morning, Joy called again. "How are you feeling?"

"OK, I guess... still a bit tired."

"No, Tom. That's not the answer I was looking for."

"Um...OK. I feel great..."

"Good! Look, I'm gonna go ahead and tell you this. I have been planning your surprise party and I need your help. So... Surprise!"

So, there I was, calling my best friend from high school, Frank, and my godparents to explain about my surprise party. Everybody, including me, had a good laugh over it. Joy even thanked me for my assistance! So did some of the others!

Joy, Aaron, and I went to a great time seeing Horton Hears a Who and then on we went to the birthday dinner.

All of them made it, except Frank: my good friend Tony and his lovely wife and daughter, my godparents, godsister and her boyfriend, and Joy and Aaron. We had a great Sunday supper at my favorite Chinese restaurant... and we got a free dessert. For two hours, we sat and joked and just talked, enjoying a good meal and good conversation.

My group typically discusses religion and politics with very minor versions of "fireworks" at the table. I am a conservative on both issues, being a political junkie and seminary student notwithstanding. But that night, no one brought up either issue. I didn't even bring up my usual serial killer talk, as I am a budding, though amateur, behavioral analyst... but that never came up, other than a passing mention as one of my interests.

Just good friends having a good time while eating good food. For that little window of time, I wasn't a heart failure patient with a lot of worry and frustration that he usually tries to keep buried and silent. I wasn't a seminarian trying to catch up his work from last weekend's hospital stay. I was just a man having a birthday party with his friends, opening gifts and laughing. For just a little while, everything felt normal again, and that may have been the best gift of all.

Time off for my new "hardware"...

Well, I have been "upgraded" with the addition of my implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD). The capable staff at the Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center gave me a wonderful experience and hopefully a more reliable rhythm. Everything was as expected, with some very minor incidents which were not quite enough to be called complications. The pain was much worse than I had ever imagined, though, and I will be taking some time off to get some rest and try to get acclimated to this "new" part.

Anyway, I'll be in touch.

Thomas the Real Tin Woodsman

On knowing the future...

I just finished watching Neil Cavuto's excellent program, in which he reported that a doctor supposedly can map out your genome, the whole of your genetic makeup. (I missed the actual interview, but saw his next-day analysis.) Since the human genome was mapped out none too long ago, I was anticipating this news of being able to "read" individual's codes. I doubt, though, that it is anywhere close to the accuracy that they claim. The main thing they claim to be able to tell you is when you will die, possibly to within hours of the event. But this also raises some really creepy issues.

First among them, do I really want to know the future?

On the one hand, I'd like to know. Who wouldn't? Knowing which decisions would be the best in advance would make all of our lives so much better. Things we can now only see in hindsight would be seen well in advance. I could have avoided my lackluster academic career, totaling my first car, and my heart attack, just to name a few things I'd like to remedy now. And I'd know what stocks were profitable and what to avoid like the plague. I would have also known to buy up as much of the Statler Brothers' music as I could, but that's strictly a personal thing for me.

But knowing all of this would take all the "fun" out of life. If you already know the end, why tell the story or play the game? Doesn't this ruin the whole concept of initiative on an individual level? While things are unknown, the future has yet to be written on these scenarios. On the upside, this would lead us to the path where we were most successful. No wasted effort sounds great. But it would also leave out something just as important, how to lose or accept bad consequences with dignity and grace. And could we really be proud of an assured victory?

Back to the genome, what if I could measure exactly how much time I had left to do some things that I have always wanted to do? For what little of me is obsessive-compulsive, this would be great. The downside is when other people get a hold of this information, which in this information age, is bound to happen. Insurance would be denied and certain employment would be unavailable to some, and all because of what these genetic markers tell the medical folks might happen to an individual. As a conservative, I think the government at every level needs to be limited and this field is just waiting for legislative action. Of course, this would be "for our own good" or "for the children," as they undoubtedly are going to tell us. Goodbye to equal protection under the law...

I guess the best remedy for all of this is that we should always remember that today's actions will most likely influence where we end up tomorrow. Treat yourself and others well. Remember to stand up for what you believe and do what you know is morally right. And never forget that you and those you love won't always be here, so solve disagreements and love them for who they are and in spite of it, not what you want them to be. Let the future happen on its own and let us do our best to make it better.

I'm getting new hardware!

I have finally admitted something that I have pretty much been denying for close to a year. Three different cardiologists have advised me to have a defibrillator placed in my chest. Since my November 2005 heart attack, I have subsequent congestive heart failure. Now this is not cardiac arrest, which is when the heart stops beating. Heart failure is more of not being able to efficiently supply blood to the rest of the body. My ejection fraction (EF), which is the amount of blood that the heart pumps out with each contraction, is about 30%, while the norm is 55 to 60%. So I guess this explains my half-hearted attempts at everything since the heart attack. (Man, I can hear your groans from here.) Since my EF is below 35%, I stand a much greater chance of dying from sudden cardiac death than the general population and the defibrillator will hopefully keep that from happening.

The above diagram is from Boston Scientific International's website. It is a pretty good approximation of the implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) that I will be getting and where the electrophysiologist will place it. All of this will take place during the first half of January 2008. Now I could have had this done literally the day after tomorrow, but I thought I'd let the whole holiday hoopla die down first.

Call me old-fashioned, but I still don't like the idea of having a device, whose sole purpose for existence is to electrically shock my heart, put into my chest. It would be different if it had a cool light or beeping noise like I had survived a Borg attack or was being used as a guinea pig for the advancement of bionics. Maybe I could have it supercharge my IQ or have a translator on it so that I could use it to speak foreign languages just by thinking of the words! Even a clock feature or a simple flashlight would be cooler than literally not doing anything until I'm getting ready to die. But I know that this isn't at all about it being cool or not, it's about saving my life. I just wish there was a bit more of a fun factor involved. Perhaps that's the part of me that will never really grow up.

To quote my favorite modern-day consulting detective, Adrian Monk, "See, here's the thing..."... this ICD will become, for all intents and purposes, part of me. I just find it a little unsettling to have a new "part." So far as I can figure, there are only four real reasons that I would ever have to have it removed from my chest.

First, every five to seven years, the batteries will need to be replaced, which means that the metal "box" unit will be replaced but the wire will be left in place. The wire will need replacing about every fifteen years. The second reason is if there is, God forbid, a recall. The third reason is actually a two-parter. If it malfunctions, as in shocking me at wrong times, it will need to be replaced. If it malfunctions, as in it fails, I guess it might be removed by the people performing my autopsy. Finally, and least likely, if I somehow recover the lost cardiac function, it may be removed since I probably wouldn't need it.

Well, I'm getting it. I don't want it, but I just might need it. I'm praying that I never do.

Well, here goes...

OK, well... where to start... Man, I didn't think it would be quite this hard...

Everyone keeps warning me about this whole blogging thing, but I think it'll be fine if I put some of my thoughts out into cyberspace. "Don't put your real name on there or your home town," they said. Now, for heaven's sake, Winston-Salem has about 150,000 people now and too many Thomases to ever list.

And then I was warned about putting my pic out here. Oh, well, no one ever recognizes me anyway. Even some of my old schoolmates don't know me now, but they recognize my voice, even on the phone. I don't feel as though I have changed that much, but maybe I have.

And then there were statements about my saying I've had a heart attack and them wondering aloud how many heart attack survivors are this age and living in my town and how many of them share my first name? Because as we all know, the government publishes the names, ages, social security numbers, hometowns, marital status, educational records, books last read, and whether we are right- or left-handed of all living heart attack survivors on the Heart Attack Survivors Registry (that was established during the New Deal or the War on Poverty, I forget which, and was subsequently renewed by an Executive Order by Jimmy Carter when he was, as usual, not doing anything else productive). Victims (i.e., those who are not survivors) have to fill out several forms in triplicate well in advance of their fatal cardiac event or face having their names illegally listed among the survivors and that means a fine of $10,000 or having to listen to tapes of Howard Cosell singing for a few years, or both if you have a particularly cruel judge.

And, yes, I am just a tad sarcastic, and I have a dry sense of humor. But my sarcasm sort of points a funny and memorable point on my criticisms. I only criticize things I think need to be improved or just cannot believe.

In no particular order, things I cannot believe include, but are in no way limited to:

A) people who deny that radical Muslims want to kill us, even though they have repeated this time and time again;

B) people who think looking for terrorists in airports and airplanes -- despite the fact that, over the last 25 years, the overwhelming majority of hijackers have been the following: male, in their 20s or 30s, of Middle Eastern descent, and of the Muslim faith -- is an act of "racial profiling";

C) people who keep telling me Bill Clinton was never impeached because they cannot figure out that "impeachment" is the trial phase of "removal from office." "Removal from office" is just that; if an incumbent is found "guilty" during the impeachment, then he or she will be "removed from office." (For goodness sake, is this really that hard to understand? When the Senate convened to vote on whether or not to remove him from office, they impeached Bill Clinton. The process never got to the removal phase.);

D) people who use the words "irregardless" (because it isn't a word and "regardless" is!), "curriculums" (because if you're intent on using Latin, then use the correct form: "curricula" is the plural form), syllabuses (the correct Latin plural is syllabi"), and individuals who call themselves "alumni" (Unless you suffer from multiple personality syndrome -- and more than one of you... them... whatever... got degrees or got the honorary distinction -- it's "alumnus" for a man and "alumna" for a woman -- and "alumnae" for women.);

and, finally, (for now)...
E) people who think that all know all about me because I'm a male, or a little rotund for my height, or a Christian, or a Baptist, or a seminary student, or a Star Trek fan, or a conservative, or a Republican, or that I love listening to the Statler Brothers, (and Johnny Cash, the Beatles, Elvis, and "Weird Al" Yankovic), or that I watch TV a lot, or that I still actually read books and enjoy it immensely, or anything that else that "helps" them get a handle on me without even talking to me.

Wow, I got a LOT out this first go-round. Thanks for reading! And my political blog will be up soon as well!

God bless!

Signing off for now,
Thomas the Real Tin Woodsman