Greg Jungheim

News From Planet Cardiac

I can accept Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease as a diagnosis as long as those annoying four-times-a-day brochodilators do the trick and nobody utters the dread word "emphysema."

Then about three weeks ago the inhalers stopped working. I wake up in the middle of the night with a full-blown breathing crisis. My endurance for exertion drops to zero.

Affecting a denying and stupid mein, I buck up and carry on as if nothing in there is clearly telling me I'm about to die.

Driving a cab with power everything doesn't take much physical energy. In the cold Chicago month of May I take every extra chance to drive. On Thursday the fifteenth, my day driver is off and I decide to work all the busy parts of the day.

At nine a.m. I feel lousy and decide to make an appointment at the VA hospital. I pull into the musicolorcoded garage across Erie St and drive all the way up to the sky "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" twelfth floor.

Getting out of the car I'm struck breathless. I gasp my way into the elevator housing and try to inhale the fast-acting Albuterol. No can do. It just sends me into a coughing fit as well as a choking fit.

Just in case I think things are going to get better, my bowels and my bladder decide it's time to go. Oh man of will and self-control-- I stagger back out on the garage roof, whip out the hose and go--all the while squeezing the number two-ster with all sincerity.

It occurs to me, the figure I'm cutting--gasping and pissing on top of a garage. Nobody appeared to add embarrassment to a death scene nobody would script for a movie.

I choke in a second's worth of medicine which allows me two on the next try. I'm getting a little air as I elevator down. The VA emergency room is right across the street. I stagger in--"I...can't... breathe." is my apt introduction. The fact that I'm cyanotic is another clue.

Oxygen and shots ensue and realization becomes uncontrollable weeping. Next I'm an electric octopus in the cardiac ICU. I fantasize aliens have abducted me and installed this VAvirtual reality to ready me for their cruel experiments.

The days pass, the chest x-ray shows congestive heart failure. Hard to breathe when you're drowning in your own blood I dare say. The ekg and cardiac sonogram show a seriously malfunctioning heart, only working on one side.

Then comes the horrible coronary catherization up the leg artery. As usual it's the novacain injections that are unbearably painful (with all the blood-letting, I'm dying the death of a thousand cuts). God bless Demerol. By the time of the hot and nauseating dye injection I'm hors de combat.

That's when they tell me I had a heart attack-- a big 'un that closed off a major coronary artery and in the process killed twenty to forty per cent of the muscle. Two more arteries severely clogged. Didn't even notice it--a "silent heart attack" they say and I say I'll take that small favor.

The good news is they're not going to do a triple bypass.

The bad news is they're not going to do a triple bypass.

And, oh yeah, they uttered the dread word, emphysema.

Came home the day before yesterday with a bag fulla meds. Thank you taxpayers. That twelve days and beyond cost you more than you paid me for two years in the Army.

A couple of chaplains came by. A tall gaunt Liberal Lutheran and a squat Greek Orthodox-- nobody from any religion I used to observe. Told them both I was an atheist but I wouldn't object if they contacted the heads of all the major religions to organize a world-wide "Pray for Greg Day."

Now it's time to order the upgrade on the Will Maker and start destroying embarrassingly personal journal disks.

Other than that I have no immediate plans for an after-life.

Greg Jungheim, Po-ass/Art-ho is a retired copy liar/cab driver who resides at Senryu Sid Plaza on Chicago's Gold Coast. He is the ex-husband of two, father of two sons and grandfather of Tsar Nicholas. Check out Greg's Senryu Sid page here.