Dry Martini: A Broken Heart Can Be Mended

This post is only about running in the sense that I am a runner who spent the better part of a week not running a single step, even though I wanted to.

After we wrapped up Commencement at the college where I work, I flew down to Jacksonville, Fla., and then drove 90 minutes to her house out near Madison. Yes, I know Tallahassee is closer. It’s a long story — and one that involves how airlines plan their routes in a way that doesn’t concern itself with my needs, which is always a scintillating topic of conversation.

The next morning, mom and I woke up even before dawn’s crack to get her to nearby Valdosta, Ga., for a heart catheterization, the procedure where they get a look at your ticker via a vein in your leg. At most, we thought, she’d need a stent or two. She really didn’t feel all that unwell, just super tired and had had a funky blip on a stress test, which can happen when you’re in your 70s. Still, it was best to get it checked out.

I though this would be the day’s only waiting room.

About an hour after the procedure started, we were all in a recovery room, where a very kind PA explained that Mom needed to have a triple bypass sooner than soon. Which was, at best, a surprise.

Heart disease in women can be a sneaky bastard. Frequently, as one of the nurses explained to me, women tend to feel more or less fine until they drop dead. My mom’s blockages had been caught before too much damage was done to the surrounding heart tissue. Had she waited too much longer, she likely would have had a heart attack in her backyard, which is a good 45 minutes from a decent cardiac care center.

The upside is that that didn’t happen. The downside was pretty much everything else.

All of a sudden, my time in Florida no longer had an end date. While “when I get to go home” was near the bottom of my list of concerns, the fact remained that I’d packed and planned for 48 hours away from home. I hadn’t brought any running gear. Or knitting. Or near enough summer clothes. Or sufficient clean underpants.

These complains about stuff tell you nothing about how it feels to have a loved one going in for unscheduled open heart surgery, especially when you haven’t had anything resembling a decent night’s sleep for a few days in a row. Decisions become about a thousand times more difficult, as does talking in complete sentences and eating. To say nothing about the crying.

This corridor and I spent a lot of quality time together.

My mom went in for surgery the next day. The biggest surprise was that she wound up with five bypasses (I didn’t even know that was a thing you could do, either) rather than three. Not that those extra two bypasses make much of a difference once your chest has already been cracked open. I mention it simply to remake the point that we do nothing halfway in my family.

The surgery itself, however, is not the hardest part, mostly because there’s not much anyone who isn’t on the surgical team can do. The hardest part comes after, when the healing has to begin.

For the first few days after, I would drive 3.2 miles from a nearby Holiday Inn Express every morning to the hospital. I could have run it, frankly, and called it a 5K. I passed dozens of women  who were squeezing in runs before the day got too warm. I had zero desire to join them — and not just because I had zero clothes in which to do it. It just seemed like it would take too much additional thinking. Besides, even at 9 a.m., the outside already felt like a giant’s sweaty armpit.

Once I got to the hospital, I’d sit in Mom’s room and do what I could to lessen her suffering. Which wasn’t much, frankly, because the only thing that can truly do the trick is time, although a well-stocked pharmacy helps.

There’s a courtyard in the middle of the heart center. When it would get overwhelming, I’d go hang out with the hydrangeas.

Then I had to come home, both much sooner and much later than I would have liked. Someday, I learn how to be in two places simultaneously. Today is not that day. Tomorrow is not looking good, either.

Mom has a long way to go until she’s back on her feet. She’s currently in a rehab center, which seems to be where she should be right now. We’ll see what the next week brings.

Five miles felt like 50. Did it anyway.

I ran an easy five miles the day after I got home and took delight in being able to do so, not just because I had my favorite shoes and sports bra but because my body would let me. If nothing else, my Mom’s crisis has given me a whole new appreciation for taking good care of your heart .. and lungs and legs and spleen and all of the other stuff that makes a body work. It’s not about the races, even though they can be fun, it is about one foot in front of the other for as long as you are able.