bonokoski: the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart
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i am getting the distinct impression that the gods are out to kill me.
they’re just too persistent.
most of the latest episode is still a blur, but it is also the reason for my absence from this space since february’s family day.
suffice there something very wrong with a heart rate of 189 beats per minute. that’s right. 1-8-9.
it is so “wrong” the emerg doctor said that if i had waited another 15 minutes to call an ambulance, my obit would likely have been written and i would already be tucked away and forgotten under a patch of cemetery real estate on the outskirts of brockville, ont.
so it was life threatening.
when the ambulance arrived i was thoroughly drenched in sweat and lying feebly on the master bedroom’s bed.
i can barely recall the emergency department at ottawa’s civic hospital other than being briefly anaesthetized for a cardioversion — think electric paddles to the chest — that would thankfully shock the racing ventricles in my heart back to a normal beat.
by the time it was all over and i was again back home from the university of ottawa heart institute, i had three blockages in the heart opened up with stents and a defibrillator imbedded in my chest that will hopefully jolt me back to normal should the heart again go on a tangent.
then, as if i needed more maladies, i was back in the hospital with pneumonia a day after being discharged over the heart contortions.
sometimes you can’t win for losing.
in the meantime, i can’t legally drive for precisely six months to ensure safety if the defibrillator decides to short circuit.
i still feel like i have been punched out as if i were the heavy bag in the far corner of a boxers’ gym.
my legs, for example, still feel like 10-tonne weights.
now, i have been entirely open about the outcomes of my maladies, the most recent being my successful journey to defeat prostate cancer, and its 18-month journey of radiation treatments and later hormonal injections that had the successful objective of chemically castrating me.
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so telling this tale should not be unexpected.
as any long-serving newspaper columnist will tell you, it is never good to be off-line too long and losing track of the news cycle. it is particularly true when monitoring canada’s political news.
my brush with mortality began a day before ukraine was officially under siege, which left me out of several loops while doctors did their best to keep me alive and out of immediate harm’s way.
only in the last week have i gotten close of unravelling the various narratives and getting some perspective on today’s current events, fatigue being the worst enemy.
still, i have reached the point of being seen as tough as an old boot considering the marquee of maladies being fought at once — diabetes, a stroke, prostate cancer and the most recent heart wonkiness, an ailment and heart weakness that has followed me for the last 35 years.
suffice i’m lucky to be alive, all things considered.
my brain still remains a little cloudy, however, the predictable result of the four times i was fully or partially anaesthetized over a short period.
it’s like a fuzzy-headed hangover without the pain.
but, into the fray it is, knowing it likely won’t be terribly long before the gods actually get me.
until then …
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