Matters of the Heart

My dad had a heart attack when I was 12.

I don't remember much about it, except that I was terrified when he was in the operating room undergoing triple (quadruple?) bypass surgery, and the doctor saying that if his heart hadn't been so strong in the first place, he would've been dead immediately. He was only 44 at the time. Being so young, I didn't realize that 44 was WAY too young to be running around having heart attacks, so now when I think about it my palms get all sweaty and I have to count my breaths so I don't have a panic attack. (I know it's useless to panic about something that happened 12 years ago, but I can't really choose what I freak out about so shut yer pie hole.) Since then, my dadda has been on a steady diet of turkey, chicken, veggies, pills the size of horse tranquilizers, omega-3s and stress tests. Even with all the preventative care and regular surveillance, he had another heart attack two years ago, just a couple weeks after I'd moved back to the area. I remember that one clearly. One of the stints they had put in 10 years before had collapsed. Luckily, my dad recognized the feeling and immediately told my step-mom, who immediately yelled something like OMG GET YOUR ASS IN THE CAR and brought him to the hospital, who immediately transferred him to one of the best cardiac hospitals in Michigan, which happens to be about a mile from my house. My brother called me while I was at work, and I, of course, went into panic mode. We all spent the next couple of days in and out of the waiting room, not showering, taking turns sleeping, trying to find my little sister who had gone to a concert in Wisconsin and badgering the poor nurses to go check on him but you'd better not wake him up because omg he needs his rest! Thankfully, he beat the widow-maker again, and he's back to working construction and eating turkey and making music and giving his grandkids sugar before sending them home to their parents (haha, brother and sister!). We've been extremely lucky.

My family has a terrible history of heart health. My dad's mom passed away from a massive heart attack, a couple of his brothers and sisters have undergone heart surgery, he has had two himself, and my mom's mom has had a couple of "minor" heart attacks. With that shitstorm of naughty naughty tickers all pointing in my direction, you'd think I'd be a maniac about my own heart health. Not so much. Instead, I think about my step mom in that waiting room, crying and wringing her hands and pacing and praying that her love wouldn't be taken from her. So, I'm crazy about Roan's heart. He's 30, he's got a bit of a spare tire, he eats red meat like he's a dinosaur and when he comes home from work he plays video games for hours. I'm so scared of losing him to something stupid and preventable, like sleep apnea or a heart attack or a zombie apocalypse or an intruder or a meteor strike, that I spend a lot of nights staring at him when he sleeps to make sure he doesn't stop breathing or his brain doesn't get eaten or he doesn't wander off into traffic while sleepwalking. He knew all about my batshitcrazy before we even started dating, so it's not my fault that he has to deal with it now. I drive him nuts. But for as much as I obsess about it, I don't actually DO anything about it. I don't cook at home, mostly because I'm lazy (also because I have a tremendous fear of leaving the stove on all night and burning the house down), but because we rarely agree on which of the 5 things I can make we should have. I don't exercise aside from the miles I walk at work everyday, so we don't exercise together. We drink beer and watch baseball and get fat. And that terrifies me.

He's not the one with the awful predisposition to have a defective ticker. Maybe, if I motivate myself to get healthy and get moving, it will inspire him to get moving along with me. Ugh.

Oh, and my dadda just celebrated his 56th birthday! We let him eat a steak. And birthday cake.

Ramblin'

I used to travel all the time. There were a couple of years that it was a rare occasion when I didn't have a packed suitcase in my car or a plane ticket in my hand. The first (and only) year I owned my little Lucy- a black Toyota Yaris (shut up, judgers, you didn't know her)- I put almost 34,000 miles on her. Side note: don't buy a brand new car when you're 19. It'll screw you over FOREVER and your mom will have to swoop in and play superhero and replace your windshield and omit the fact that you once hit a bear when she needs to sell it back to the loan company. I love driving through the desert and the mountains, but Kansas can kiss my butt because, seriously, how boring can your state get?! I once flew on the 4th of July and saw the fireworks from above. And it was awesome. If I'm in one spot for too long my feet get itchy. I've gotta go! I've gotta move! There's an adventure to be had and I need to have it!

...not so much anymore.

Maybe it's because I'm in a stable relationship (whoa) and I don't feel like I need to run from anything, or maybe I've just pushed my desire to go go go to the back of my mind, or maybe I actually like living in Upper Michigan and don't feel the need to go anywhere else, OR maybe it's because plane tickets out of here are like $10,989,976 plus your first born child PLUS you have to ride in a rinky dink plane with like 15 other people that totally reek of BO. Seriously, it's not fun. If it weren't only an hour-ish flight to Detroit, where I'll either have to haul ass through the airport to a terminal at the opposite end of the building because I've got 15 minutes between flights or I'll have a 6 hour layover, so I'll get drunk and make some new friends that I'll only remember talking to when I flip through my camera and see the pictures of us doing shots of what has to be Jager while an airport security guard looks on suspiciously in the background, I'd pop a tylenol or two to knock myself out. I'm a medication lightweight.

I may have developed a slight fear of flying. Gulp.

When did this happen?! When I went back to San Diego last fall for a friend's wedding I almost missed my flight out of here because I couldn't find my St. Christopher medal. I'm not even religious, I just need to chew on it during take off or the plane will skid off the runway in flames. I even have St. Christopher tattooed on my arm, but I will not set foot on an airplane or train or boat or zeppelin or hot air balloon or bicycle without that medal. It sounds silly when I say it. I can't fly without that medal, Roan! Now help me look for it or I'm not going! Or I will go without it and you'll feel really bad that you didn't help me look for it when you're at my FUNERAL! So for the next month, that medal does not leave my neck. I have a ticket to Boston to see my friends there for the first time in two years and I refuse to let myself reach critical bat shit crazy levels about the flights there and back. I'm focusing on my time there.

These are the people that welcomed me to a city I moved to on a whim, where I knew not a single soul. They made my time there hilarious and unforgettable and full of music and laughter and love and flaming bowls of 10 kinds of booze (omg Chinatown!) and $10 manicures and they made me feel at home in a city where the walls of the people are hard to get through. People like them are the reason I started traveling in the first place. I won't let a stupid fear of a stupid airplane falling out of the stupid sky ruin this for me. I won't I won't I won't. So move over, future new best friend at the airport bar, the first round is on me. I've got a long flight.