Monitoring Mortality

Today, for the first time in the 32 years that Jerry's had an annual cardiac stress test,  I decided to go along.  Not being a cardiac technician, I didn't know what I could bring to the test but worry, carting it down a brightly-lit hallway into the exam room: worry and a copy of Newsweek  featuring a piece on Wendi Murdoch, who I've got to tell you is a piece of work.  The technician stuck pasties all over his chest, sorted out the wires,  dimmed the lights, and I watched Jerry run on a treadmill that got steeper and faster every three minutes. 

My immediate concern was that he'd keel over due to an abnormality that showed up in last year's test, which required a more complicated test  and a trip to Stanford for a second opinion,  but he did fine, plugging away in his Converse All-Stars, easily handling each steepening of the ramp.    A long trail of graph paper  emitted from the monitor, softly folding into pages on the floor.  The technician said cheerfully that she's done more than 10,000 treadmill stress tests,  and no one's ever collapsed.

At the end of the treadmill test, Jerry lay on a gurney, and another technician came in to do an echocardiogram.  On the screen, Jerry's  heart looked something like a conch shell, two pale folds toward a dark center, the whole works convulsing rhythmically.  Who knows what it means.   No one told him to stop taking a med that eases the stress of exercise on his heart, so the results may be meaningless.  Or we could take it as good news.  Next week's a follow-up appointment with the doctor. 

 At home, I reached for a poem by Jane Kenyon:

Otherwise

I got out of bed
On two strong legs.
It might have been
Otherwise. I ate
Cereal, sweet
Milk, ripe, flawless
Peach.  It might
Have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
To the birch wood.
All morning I did
The work I love.


At noon I lay down
With my mate. It might
Have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
At a table with silver
Candlesticks. It might
Have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
In a room with paintings
On the walls, and
Planned another day
Just like this day.
But one day, I know,
It will be otherwise."

That's the problem.