Fixing Broken Hearts

Written by RJ on January 13, 2014. Posted in Discovery

My heart history is not good. In fact, it sucks. My dad, his dad and my mother’s dad all died from heart issues. Congestive heart failures and a heart attack. To top that off, I have had a heart murmur since i was nine as the result of a misdiagnosed strep infection that turned into something called rheumatic fever. That disease is so obsolete these days. I remember having check-up a few years ago and an intern was shadowing my doctor. She was amazed to meet someone still alive who had rheumatic fever. I felt like a dinosaur.

Dr.Cobler didn’t like the looks of my heart’s aortic valve which is the one damaged by the strep infection. There is a lot of scar tissue in that thing and it doesn’t close or seal all the way. That lets blood seep back into the heart chamber that is supposed to be in my circulatory system. The result is a loss of stamina, energy and shortness of breath from time to time. They do annual sonogram type testing on me so that can measure any worsening of the valve’s condition. She didn’t like the last look so she scheduled another one for six months instead of 12. I had that last week and went today for my follow-up to see how I was.

The point of this post is not about my broken heart. I will finish that part of the story though by reporting that Dr. Cobler felt better about the latest echo test and said it actually looked better than the last one. I will someday require a heart valve replacement, but it looks like I can wait a little longer for that.

The point of this post is the conversation I had with Dr. Cobler at the end of my examination. Mind you, she is very busy and always seems to be rushed. Under normal circumstances, the actual time spent with Dr. Cobler is somewhere around 7 minutes, tops. She is very efficient and thorough, but there is little time for extra conversation. Today I pushed that a little bit.

Six months ago when Dr. Cobler voiced her concerns about my heart valve, I kept everything to myself. Coleen was very sick and I was very consumed by that. There was no reason for Coleen to know about my doctor’s concerns so I didn’t say anything to her or anyone else. I barely thought about it myself. I also didn’t say anything to my doctor at that time about Coleen’s condition. Everything was between me and myself. Coleen never knew about Dr.Cobler and Dr. Cobler never knew about Coleen.

I was nervous before seeing my doctor today because I had no idea what I was going to hear. The news was better than I thought it would be but I still have a chronic situation that is serious and will not get better. I will ultimately need open heart surgery. But that aside, before Dr. Cobler concluded with me,I opened up to her. They are always interested in what’s happening in the patient’s life that might be causing stress or a change in lifestyle so I told her that I was no longer working and that I had lost my wife. Dr. Cobler immediately put her schedule on hold, expressed how sorry she was, and listened to me. I told her about Coleen and I being in love and her being sick and me losing her. I talked about my journey in and out of stress and grief. I brought up how special Coleen was and how I was being helped by a reiki practitioner and a massage therapist and other people I keep meeting as I go.

Dr. Cobler was very interested in what I had to say. When I mentioned my feelings on men stifling their emotions and keeping things inside, she commented on how bad that is for their physical being as well as their mental state. She was intrigued about reiki as a healer and how I was progressing through my loss. It wasn’t like she set aside time to have lunch with me, but we had a pretty good and unrushed conversation about death and healing. I felt very good about that.

I felt good that she listened and was interested in what I had to say. I think I might have told her some things that she was not aware of. That’s hard to do with a doctor. Not only are they very intelligent but sometimes seem reluctant to accept information from outside their networks of mainstream. Like what I was talking about. Because of my conversation with Dr. Cobler and her reaction to it, I left her office with a reinforced sense of purpose and commitment. I felt like I got through to her on some level. I felt like another little piece of my message was developed and delivered to someone significant. Someone else who could make a difference and who would look good as a member of my network.

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