Abe Lincoln, Intelligent Apes & Nearly Choking to Death

OK sports fans, ignore that TEST post that went up earlier today… 1st you should know by now I NEVER post during the day, and 2nd I never post ads or spam type stuff. So we had a little malfunction there and it should be all resolved now. IN my defense I’m on a lot of medication….

Speaking of medication you know what we haven’t done for a while – that’s right kids a medical state of the union address… and now on with the show –

4 score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth… son-of-a… wrong  address – for some strange reason I’ve been channeling Lincoln all day…. I think something is wrong with my antenna, but hey – no need to bring erectile dysfunction into this…. I don’t need to tell you about my stovepipe hat fetish…  come to think of it, that sounds a bit phallic as well…. So ummmm, let’s just keep moving..

Because I had been in this crazy Afib/Flutter pattern so long – my breathing was becoming somewhat “laboured” – here’s how bad it was getting, the exertion of just breathing was getting me out of breath…. fast rimshot. Ok not quite that bad but it was darn close. There was almost no movement that didn’t cause me to breathe a little bit heavy. It was incredibly bothersome – And just a bit scary, to think maybe this was it, this was how things were going to be from now on…. probably not, but….

So the cardiac surgeon scheduled me for a PFT, which is a Pulmonary Function Test. Sounds harmless enough right, I mean I’ve been breathing for years, there’s no reason I shouldn’t ace the test. So I show up at the hospital with no idea what to expect, already that’s, in most cases, a bad idea – that’s how people “accidentally” lose kidneys.

After checking in, a relatively pleasant nurse comes and takes me down into what I can only assume were the literal bowels of the hospital. Seriously, some of the folks down there clearly haven’t seen sunlight for years, they had those weird white eyes like the survivors who lived underground in “Beneath the Planet of the Apes.” I was only reminded of that because many of the gurneys were being pushed by monkey-men – they hadn’t yet learned to speak but you could see an eerie intelligence in their eyes, many of the one not currently pushing a gurney were riding large white horses to and fro….

So with each level we went down we were descending further and further below sea level, well below, the air got noticeably colder and there was an unholy dampness that did afix itself to mine countenance, twere but the merest of… sorry we were so deep I may have gone back in time.

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OK I guess it was probably really like 2 floors down, but oh, the fear was palpable. It was actually a testament to how little was thought of lungs and people with difficulty breathing – yea Ok good plan, let’s make the people who visit the hospital because they are having trouble breathing walk stairs – genius. Probably part of the new program that sees all quadriplegics forced to work in the kitchen. Idiots.

Finally we reached the core of the earth and we entered her little room, she said I would have to loosen some of my more restrictive clothing… hello – “Dear Penthouse, I never thought this would happen to me but…..”  Turns out she was on a completely different wave-length then I was…  after mumbling an embarrassed apology and navigating an awkward silence, I took off my jacket – but opted to keep the scuba gear on that was keeping me alive and my head from exploding due to the incredible pressure at this depth.

There were a number of, what could only be called contraptions, strewn about the room. I was informed that we would become intimate with a number of them before I was released. Oh goody. There was also a computer roughly the size of (my favourite unit of measurement) a Buick Skylark. Probably had the computer power of a small digital wrist watch but none-the-less seems up to the challenge of running the chitty chitty bang bang contraptions.

The first test got underway with me sitting in this – I guess you’d call it a chair – but that’s only for want of a better, more descriptive word. Maybe a flanged, magnetic, hoister harness would be more accurate. I began to tingle almost immediately in my under satchel. Not the kind you’re thinking of, it was because circulation had almost completely ceased in my lower extremities.

and that’s when she…. OK well I’m going to wrap it up there for today, #1 this is already pretty long and #2 it’s a cliffhanger ending…. tune in tomorrow to find out if I lived or died…. cue music.

Have a Great Day