ARTS & FARCES internet

On one of my last book tours in the early-mid-1990s, I spent a few weeks in the San Francisco Bay Area. My rental car was something called a Kia. I had never heard of this kind of car before, and it was a total piece of crap. Turn right and the car emitted a wild screech; turn left and it was an ominous rumble. Parts actually fell off of this car, and that’s kind of how I’m feeling these days.

Last Monday, I broke a tooth and a pretty big chunk came out. Ah, I thought, no open heart surgery for me. But a quick call to the dentist said that as long as it didn’t hurt, it could be taken care of post surgery. Several days later my wife, Karen, broke the exact same tooth.

I’ve been having problems with a combination of dehydration, low blood pressure, and severe anemia for the past week-and-a-half or so. This is the same thing that happened last May. Last time I resolved it by weaning myself off almost all the medication I was taking. I don’t have that luxury this time.

Yesterday I saw my primary care physician for my pre-surgery check-up. Everything seems fine and she’s going to lobby on my behalf with the various specialists to help get me through the valve job.

She also told me about the mass found in one of my lungs during the CT scan I had during my last hospital stay. She says it looks benign and at two centimeters is about half the size of anything to which they start paying attention. Nonetheless, she’s put it on my healthcare problem list and they’ll watch it. She attributed it to CT scans now being used so regularly that things they never saw before are now regularly revealed.

So here’s the schedule as I begin my final approach to the valve job:

• Dialysis as an outpatient at my home dialysis center at 6:30AM on Monday 21 March
• Admission to the Nasseff Heart Center at 11AM on Monday 21 March
• Pre-surgery heart workup and additional tests, pokes, and prods at the Nasseff Heart Center from 12PM until who knows on Monday 21 March
• Open-heart surgery and complex mitral valve repair/replacement at the Nasseff Heart Center at 7:30AM on Tuesday 22 March

You can follow my Twitter account, @mfraase, for updates. Refuse to use Twitter? No problem, my most recent tweets are over there in the right column.