Jack Heald

I am typing this post from my dad’s hospital room, waiting for him to be carted off to the cardiac cath lab for the insertion of several stents into his cardiac arteries.

(I talk like I know what the heck I’m talking about, but it’s an act. I live with a couple of nurses and have spent way too much time listening to them talk about my dad’s health issues; thus, I have absorbed some of the lingo.)

My dad’s heart is apparently not getting enough blood, which – according to the medical professionals I live with – is Not Good. The doctor caring for him, Dr. Nabil Dib, looked at the inside of his arteries in the Cath Lab on Thursday and found that the reason he feels like crap is because the arteries leading to his heart are mostly blocked. He had a triple bypass 9 years ago, but those <sigh> are also mostly blocked. This sucks for me; I cannot IMAGINE the level of Suck it is for my dad.

What blows my mind is that he would likely be dead if we lived somewhere other than America, or sometime other than now. The bypass done in 2001 likely kept him alive till now, and the procedure here is gonna have here in the next hour will likely make him feel 20 years younger AND keep him going for a while.

Imagine telling someone a hundred years ago that we are gonna fix your heart by shoving a tiny little tube inside your groin, snaking it up to your heart, inserting a stainless steel mesh tube inside your coronary artery and thus prevent a fatal heart attack. Oh, and the next day you’ll be walking around feeling like a million bucks.

Western aliopathic medicine SUCKS at disease prevention, but if you have a nasty, acute problem, western aliopathic medicine is just nearly magic.

This is Logan Ryan Heald. He is the first born son of a first born son of a first born son of a first born son of a first born son… and it may go back farther than that.

Logan Heald @ 9 1/2 months

He’s also the first Heald baby in generations without blue eyes. Now THAT is an accomplishment!

Of course I adore him – he’s my first grandson. I’m hoping his dad is a better dad than I was. Maybe that is one of the blessings of being a grandparent – you get the chance to love the child with a lot more experience than you had the first time around. I’ve always thought it pretty funny that God gives the job of parenting to the people least qualified to do it, but that’s how it is.

I have nothing profound to share here, just enjoying this photo. Oh, there’s more here.

My best-beloved is cardio-vascular ICU nurse. She works the 7pm-7am shift and has worked four of the last six nights, which means our schedules are exactly 12 hours out of sync with each other. She is also a marvelous cook; my friends are amazed I don’t weigh 400 pounds. Given these two facts, it should be unsurprising that we ended up at the midnight showing of Julie and Julia last night. She got to indulge her passion for food, and she’s up all night anyway, so what’s the big deal?  We had the theatre entirely to ourselves – there was no one else there. We enjoyed it. If you like Food Network, or like Julia Child, or just like Meryl Streep, you’ll probably like this movie.