Picking up Victor from Duke Hospital this morning - he needed IV antibiotics for his CF. He's a trooper.

Um...the battery was dead on the van today. Called AAA, got it charged, left it running to recharge. Forgot it for SIX HOURS. ADDiva moment!

Worked in am with my organizer Erica to clean GardenSpirit garage and voila! Started rearranging the INSIDE too. Ah, my distracted mind...

OK, making sure this ping.fm thing works -- thanks Tara M. for leading me out of the updating woods!

Obama and the revival of hope

I admit it - my cynicism about politics had reached a point
of disgust, even with my own party. So I hadn't paid much attention
to the Democratic Convention in Denver. We all knew the outcome.
It was all a bunch of hype to me. Especially coming on the heels of
the Summer Olympics - how could a political convention
compete with a $40 billion extravaganza?

But Victor had the TV tuned to CNN, so we stayed up to watch
Obama's historic acceptance speech.

For the first time in (literally) years, something stirred inside me.
Could it be ... hope?
It was hard to tell, the hinges were quite rusty on the door to that rare state of mind.

But it felt familiar somehow.
Yes, it might be ...
It WAS hope!

When Barack Obama finished his speech, I wished I
had been at the convention, packed like a sardine into a
stadium that was over capacity. I wished I had been in the presence
of the man who inspired in me the idealism I adopted in the 1960s.

The news has been so bad for so long. Oil wars.
Gas prices. Staggering debt to China. Food. Mortgages.
And my shame at the behavior from the White House has
forced my public patriotism underground. Even my normal
"Queen of Positivity" attitude has flagged lately.

But here in my own family room, a man of integrity (!)
and authenticity (!) and power moved me to tears.
A man from my own home state of Illinois - the
land of Lincoln, my childhood hero.

And so this morning, I know this is true:

We MUST elect this man president.
We MUST.

If he can rouse me from my jaded apathy, he
can lead our country to a place of respect again.
That respect will come not only from outside this country's borders.
I believe he can renew our nation's self respect -
something we lost along the way and need so desperately.

So - OK this is unfamiliar territory for me - I beg you
to do whatever is in your power to help elect this
man.

We need him.
I need him.
Hope is, as it turns out, a renewable resource.

NSR is the sweetest acronym I know

NSR.
Normal sinus rhythm.
It means Victor's heart is beating regularly. Slower. Normally.

And that makes my heart glad.

I've heard from many of you, wondering how my sweet Victor is doing these days. And I am happy - ecstatic actually - to report that he's actually ... better!

Bless his cardiologist who refused to give up on his theory that the entire cardiac weakness was the result of Victor's heart growing weary of beating reeeeeeeeally fast for a reeeeeeeeeally long time.

I was skeptical.

Now I'm a believer.

We're lucky that Miracle-Man suit still fits Victor to a T.

Whew.

I know this reprieve may have a limited life. Things might get worse. But why focus on THAT? I want to pay attention to the 98 percent of life that IS working. And there's a lot of positive stuff going on.

Thank you for your concern. Thank you for your prayers, your healing energy and your warm thoughts.

They helped. A lot.

Healing a heart

There is an enormous gap between my last post and this one. And a good reason for it. So what IS that reason?

1. I have been busy? Yes, but that's not the reason.

2. Life has gotten in the way of my writing? True, but that's not it either.

3. I've been reluctant to post about Victor because I'd like to post good news and it hasn't been all that good....Now that rings more true.

Honestly, he's doing fine, considering the situation. A quick factual update: after months of trying to get his blood thinner to the right levels - it was up a little, down a lot, up a bit, then down - the docs finally did a cardioversion (shocked his heart after administering a lot of meds to regulate the rhythm) in late December.

I was amazed at his heart rate - it went from 120+ with lots of meds on board, to less than 80. A huge improvement. I was happy as a little lark - to have the procedure over, and to have his heart back in "normal sinus rhythm."

Until last week. On Tuesday night, when I was at GardenSpirit hosting the monthly Meetup group for ADHD adults, his heart retreated to its old patterns ... 120 heart rate, back to atrial flutter again.

Damn. Sorry for the language, but....damn.

And today we find out that the new heart medication is reacting with one of his antibiotics for cystic fibrosis....and one of them has to go. To complicate matters even more, the same heart med is suddenly unavailable to the pharmacy. Pfizer has simply stopped shipping it. What in the world??

Next step? Figure out meds, but more importantly, move ahead with an even more scary procedure, radio frequency ablation. I read about it long ago on the 'Net - the doctor goes in with a skinny little probe and essentially kills off parts of the heart that might be sending the wrong electrical impulses to the atrial part of the heart.

Sounds awful. Sounds dangerous. Sounds like a last ditch effort to save him.

I'm all for saving him. I want him around a long time.

After such a nerve-wracking January 2007, this news isn't the best. I am exhausted, frankly. Trying to be optimistic. Trying to live normally. Trying to breathe and be grateful for each day.

I am grateful, trust me.

I am also greedy. I want more days. More nights. More longevity and hugs and sweetness and love.

A neighbor and good friend who lives at the end of our street lost his wife two weeks before Thanksgiving 2007. I spent some time with him recently and he told me that Nancy's body just wore out from the onslaught of drugs and transfusions and procedures.

I suspect that's what will happen for us. Victor has been so strong for so long. He fights the fight better that anyone I know. And yet, none of us get out alive. We all die. He will too.

I refuse to accept it in the near future. But how the heck much longer can he bounce back? My own heart hurts thinking about it...