It’s 5am. I can’t sleep. Well, I’ve been sleeping most of the day and eve, but have awoken. I’ve been having weird dreams since the heart attack. Even weirder than before it, which were already dreams that soundly fell in the weird category.
I’m drinking a cup of rice nog, a treat we allowed ourselves to purchase for me at our favorite grocer, MOM’s Organic Market, when we were shopping this afternoon – a pleasant, but exhausting short errand. (First day off bedrest!) Everything is a huge calculation now. Even huger than before, when we were merely trying to buy fair trade, organic, non-GMO, non-fascist, non-homophobic, healthy options that we had a chance of getting the kids to tolerate without too much dinnertime drama or too big a robbery from their imaginary college funds. Cuz that was so easy.
“Conscience do cost” is an oft-repeated favorite line from The Wire that my husband and I pass back and forth at places like the market.
Now we have additional layers: How much fat is in it? Is it saturated? Unsaturated? Monounsaturated? Polyunsaturated? It doesn’t have any [gasp!] trans fat in it, does it? How much sodium? What’s the number not to exceed for the day, again? 1500mg? How much have I had already today? I think this grocery item passes muster. Oh wait! Does it have soy? Chickpea? Is it a green leafy vegetable? Those are straight out now – a challenge being a vegetarian. A non-smoking, non-drinking vegetarian who just had a heart attack. Whatevs.
The green leafies and a bunch of other vegetables are off the menu for a while. No more kale or spinach. The kids will be delighted! Apparently Vitamin K is antagonistic toward Coumadin, one of the anticoagulants I am taking to try to keep my blood thin enough to pass through my battle-damaged heart. When the cardiologist said the words “Vitamin K is antagonistic toward Coumadin,” I laughed. I pictured this little cartoon in my head.
I’m not really 5 years old. Yet several times I found myself giggling by the terminology used at the hospital. I’m not sure if we (ex)lawyers have such fun uses for words with commonplace meanings. I got such a look from cardiologist #5 when he was solemnly talking about the “serious insult” that was done to my heart, I felt the need to explain I wasn’t laughing about 1/3 or more of my heart maybe being dead, I just thought the word choice was… oh, nevermind.
He can think I am an idiot if he wants. I’m not supposed to let myself get stressed out by stuff anymore, right? Um, yeah. I’ll get right on that. Have you met me? Well, I guess in this case, since it’s a blog and I don’t know who on earth is bored enough to be reading, I suppose you haven’t.
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By the way, I have no idea why I drew the Coumadin carrying a purse. I’m thinking it must have made sense at the time.
