Health problems are a wake-up call

Even though my column doesn't show up in the paper until Wednesday, I usually write it Monday morning -- just kind of a brain-awakening exercise to prime me for the rest of the week. So last Monday, when I wrote my Thanksgiving column, giving thanks for my health -- such as it is -- I was a little premature. About 24 hours after I wrote about my recent high blood pressure diagnosis, I was in the hospital with chest pains. An EKG revealed my heart was skipping beats.

Scary? You betcha, especially since all I could think about was the turkey breast in the fridge that needed to be cooked, the relatives that needed to be visited and the stories that needed to be written.

And yet ... at the same time, I was thinking, "Oh, man. A couple of days, lying in bed, being waited on hand and foot ... how cool is that?"

It was so not cool. The nurses were amazing, the doctors were wonderful and the food was even edible (except the breakfast. They have an oatmeal that is the black hole of flavor -- just sucks any resemblance of flavor right down into its wallpaper paste consistency, where it is lost forever.)

At first, it was definitely spa-like. Nurses brought me drinks, my husband rubbed my back, my best friend brought me all sorts of pacifiers (Twizzlers and Dum Dums) to use for the oral fixation while the nicotine patch worked on the addiction end.

But about 2 a.m., I got a roommate. This poor woman had some kind of stomach virus and for the next four hours, I got to listen to sounds I haven't heard since my first frat party back in college. In two days, I'd gotten about two hours of sleep and by 5 a.m. I'd lost all sympathy and was ready to put her out of my misery.

The nurses finally found another bed for me across the hall and I was telling one of them the story.

"I was ready to put a pillow over her!" I wailed.

From the other side of the curtain, my new roommate whispered.

"I'll be quiet. I promise!"

Not only did my new roommate have a wonderful sense of humor, she was a "horse person" from Shelbyville, so we had plenty to talk about.

But a hospital is not where I want to be on Thanksgiving. A heart condition is not something I want to have at the ripe old age of 45 -- not when heart disease robbed me of both parents.

I got out of the hospital in time for a very quiet, laid-back Thanksgiving. The bad news: my cardiologist believes I have 20 to 30 percent blockage. The good news: he believes we can treat it with medicine, not surgery. I haven't had a a cigarette in a week and I've already lost 7 pounds.

One reason I'm a reporter and not a novelist is because I work better under deadlines. I have to have someone standing over me, cracking a whip and saying "Get this finished or else." When it comes to my health, I've been a "novelist" too long, trying to govern myself and failing. Too much weight, too many cigarettes, not enough exercise ... these were all problems I planned to resolve "someday."

Someday is here.

The last thing I want is the ultimate "dead" line.

-- Mary Reeves is a staff writer for the Times-Gazette. She can be reached at (931) 684-1200, ext. 215, or by e-mail at mreeves@t-g.com. This column is scheduled to print every Wednesday.