Hope in an amber bottle

Victor has always been a poster child for the pharmaceutical companies. He's what doctors call "compliant." He takes his meds every day, at the appointed time (sometimes it's a bit ridiculous to stop everything so he can pop his 7 pm vitamin), he never misses a dose and on Sunday nights he faithfully refills his weekly pill dispenser.

It's a many-hued assortment - a virtual rainbow of chemicals that work this way and that (but not at cross purposes!) to keep him humming along. With the heart ailment, a new array of colors, sizes and doses were added. It's a handful. More medication than I would care to take. I avoid pills like the plague.

But it's not my life that has been prolonged for years by inhalable antibiotics and their ilk. And now, Victor's life may again be revived by a stiff cocktail of pills that look pretty much like TicTacs. They work differently, though. Quite differently.

The most recent doctor visit, a sure bet for hospitalization and heart monitors, yielded instead a 90-day trial of stronger drugs. After all the drama, we are now in the "wait and see" pattern.
What's the prognosis? Who knows?

All I know is that Victor's question never would have crossed my mind. Not while we were sitting in the cardiac intervention unit, not later at home. But Victor piped up instantly: "Does this mean there's a chance the condition is reversible?" I thought he had lost touch with reality, that the cardiologist would pooh-pooh him and pat his shoulder.

Instead, he nodded. "Yes," he said. "We've had folks on the transplant list who were able to go home without surgery." It hit me like a cold wave of froth. Hope. Amazing hope. Lighter step hope.

Reversible. What a wonderful word. There are no guarantees, of course. The future could look just as grim as it did before the appointment. I don't care. Victor believes he's feeling better. And though we have weeks and weeks before we actually find out whether he IS better, I am living life as though he IS.

Still going to keep that appointment to get the finances in order. Still going to update the wills. But that's what regular people do anyway, right? Right?