Dee Hathaway

There comes a time in your life, at least there does for some people (like me), when it doesn’t really matter how old you are. I know what you’re thinking… that I’m just an overgrown 14 year-old anyway. It’s true, but I say it doesn’t matter how many years you’ve lived on this crazy little marble we call a planet… what really matters is how long since you got a second chance, your second wind, since you found out what living was really about. And whether or not you realize what that means and do something about it.

For me, the first round of that second chance came on December 30, 2007. I remember that I had a latte for breakfast. I would have picked that tasty treat up at Circle K, probably while I was buying the Sunday paper. I remember that I had 2 bowls of Captain Crunch (I loveses the Captain!!) for breakfast, and haven’t had it since. I remember reading the comics, and suddenly feeling wrong. I didn’t feel bad, not sick, not unwell. I felt wrong. And I didn’t realize that I felt that way until today. But that’s the best explanation.

That would be the morning I had a heart attack. A nearly complete blockage in one artery, and partial blockage in another. I remember that morning so very clearly, everything up to and including the actual operation.

Most of my chronological life (so far) was lived before that day. And yet a majority of the moments that I remember with great clarity have happened since that day. If that doesn’t count as a second birthday, I don’t know what would. Of course, it could also count at long term memory loss.

As I’ve spent the past few hours/days/weeks trying to figure out how to talk to you about it here today. I think there are several things to which one might relate. I imagine it similar to surviving a disaster or childbirth, or being in love… something traumatic like that.

It’s similar in that you have to had been through it to know what it’s like. I’m sure you have things like that in your own life, where people might say “oh that’s so sad” or “I never knew”. But sometimes you will meet someone who can truly empathize, someone who will just say “well hell”. (dee swore!) There you have it.

so… that being said. It is also very personal. At least it is for me. (so what do I do? I put it on the interwebs.) I don’t know that I will ever be able to fully explain what happens in your head when you have the heart attack, (here’s what happens in your heart) but I will tell you that if your life really does flash before your eyes, it isn’t your past that you see, it’s the future. It’s the lost potential… the things you won’t ever be able to do and all the things you will miss out on. And you think “Is this really how I’m going to die? cuz this is a stupid way to die”.

It’s estimated that 95% of cardiac arrest victims never make it to the hospital. (and 65% of all statistics are made up!) That makes me truly lucky. And blessed. And meant for more.

I survived. And it was thanks to the mad skilz of a lot of people, especially one Dr Robert (excellent first name) Bear. I know it was just another day, another procedure in a day filled with procedures for him. But he saved my life. He saw a heart that was broken, that could not carry on… and he fixed it. He saved me!

One person was able to go into my heart and save my life. Give me a second chance. And (now that the test results are back, I know) restore me to my full self. To my full potential. To give me that chance to become the person I was destined to be and to travel the path I was meant to travel.

With my third second-birthday passing, and a new year coming, I am so very wrapped up in the events of this past year. It’s been an awesome year, full of changes and growth and firsts (and seconds, I like seconds too!). You have played such a major part in me becoming me, the new Dee, the person I was destined to be, and to travel the path I was meant to travel.

As with the actual myocardial infarction itself, I’m not sure I will ever be able to fully explain what a difference you have made in my life; what having you here with me on this journey means to me. Dr. Bear saved me… fixed my heart. Gave me that chance. Made me believe that I was meant for so much more.

And then so did you.

Happy Second Birthday to Me.  Happy New Year to You.  And may the next year bring Us everything we wish for!

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Maybe it’s the holidays.

Maybe it’s that today is the shortest day of the year.

Maybe it’s that it was so cloudy last night that I missed part of the eclipse.

Or maybe it’s that I spent most of the day at the doctor’s office for a Nuclear Stress Test. Oh ya. I’m gonna go with that one.

Oh don’t worry… this isn’t necessarily because there is something wrong with me. (well, not physically wrong anyway) Oh no… this test was because my doctor was astounded at how good of shape I’m in. And you know doctors… the decision was that if he couldn’t find anything wrong with me, we’d better do some more testing!

It’s been nearly 3 years since the infamous heart attack, and I have found so much motivation and reason and distraction this year; I felt it was time to take the doctor’s advice and make sure I was in good shape.

It’s called a Nuclear Stress Test (hereafter referred to as NST, or nasty) because they get your heart all stressed out and then shoot radiation into you. No really. “Don’t worry” they say, “it’s no more radiation than you’d get from an x-ray.” Ya, an x-ray running through your veins! But I’m a big tough guy (no really, I tore my toenail half off the other day and hardly noticed it!) so I was up for the challenge.

The NST was supposed to take 4 hours. A 4 hours test? Yes, a 4 hour test. So I loaded up a change of clothes and some foodages and a book and made sure my cell phone was charged up so I could play Angry Birds (oh ya). I figure if the Howell’s took 5 suitcases on a 3 hour tour, I could take a backpack for a 4 hour test (sing it with me… a 4 hour test)

The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed, if not for the courage of the fearless crew…

Sorry. Distracted.

I was called into the back at just a little after my scheduled appointment time and taken straight into one of the exam rooms, where I was tied to a chair and tortured. (just seeing if you’re paying attention). I had the I.V. put in and chatted up the nurse there. I was hoping that they could get some glamour shots of my heart, you know, with feathered hair. It was determined that nudie shots of my heart would not be appropriate, mostly because it would get my heart rate up too much.

With a little bit of the isotope in my veins, I was sent to the waiting area to let the stuff circulate. You wanna make the shortest day of the year seem longer? Go to the doctor’s office. :-/

I read. I played Angry Birds. I texted. I built a small bookcase. (well, I had enough time I could have). Finally I was called into a room and told to take off my shirt and lay on the table on my left side. I then had a bunch of sticky pads put on my chest and was attached to a beeping octopus. The lights were dimmed (no, it wasn’t really romantic) and the ultrasound started. Congratulations! It’s a boy!

I don’t know how long the ultrasound lasted, cuz I might have zoned out for a while. All the gentle whoosh-whoosh of my heart and the late, late night I had trying to see the eclipse caught up with me. I woke up to bright lights and assistant handing me a towel and telling me to clean myself up (how rude). And then back to wait in the chair some more.

After waiting a couple of days I was taken back into the room where they did the original I.V. (yes, I still had the tube in my arm) and was put in the big machine to have the pictures taken. Lay there and don’t move for 15 minutes. Hope you’re not claustrophobic (I’m not, I like close).

And I woke up about half-way through that process because I was snoring. Yes, I wake myself up when I snork. And I’m glad I woke up, because by then the machine had moved enough that I could see the monitors. It was pretty cool to see the pictures. If I can find one I’ll put it in this post. (oh look, I found one)

And then back to wait. and wait. and wait. And finally, after every other person had left, and over 3 hours after I arrived, I was called into a room for the stress test. “take off your shirt” they said. OK. Can do. Some people don’t like guys with chest hair. Sue (the nurse) whipped out a razor and shaved some crop circles on my chest. (I know!!!) It took her 2 razors to hack her way through to the bare skin. Then she broke out the sandpaper. Evidently Sue went to the Bob Vila school of medicine. Easy there Gepetto… I’m a real boy!

She finally got all the sticky pads put on the now roughed-up hairless spots and then attached a billion wires to me, put me on the treadmill, and told me that every 3 minutes the machine would go faster and the incline would go higher until I had another heart attack, or until I reached the desired heart-rate, whichever happened first.

13 minutes later, with the treadmill at maximum incline and with me running like Forest Gump, I finally reached the desired heart-rate. And had way exceeded the desired sweat-rate. (sorry Sue) Every couple of minutes Sue would ask if I could keep going for a couple of minutes. Pshhh. No problem. And then I heard Sue say “oh no”

What? What oh no? There is no “oh no” when you’re looking at my heart!!

Was I about to explode? Did they find a problem? Had my stent come loose and was working it’s way to my brain????

Even worse.

My shoe had come untied. So they called in the other nurse to put more radiation into my veins so they could get some more pictures. Meanwhile, Sue had put her hand on my stomach. Not to feel my awesome abs (you know, the ones I don’t have), but I think to steady me in case I stepped on my shoelace… but maybe to just be able to tell everybody “he flew this far!” should I actually step on the loose string.

Here’s your holiday picture of Dee. Sweating like crazy, running up a 16% incline at full speed with a shaved chest and half of Radio Shack hanging off my body, shoelaces flying in the breeze, Sue holding onto my tummy and another nurse shoving tiny x-ray machines into my bloodstream. Not my finest hour.

Just before I turned into the Incredible Hulk (I’m just the so-so Hulk now), they finally had enough radiation pumping through me and let me get off the treadmill. I swear if they had asked “are you okay? no pain?” one more time I was gonna have to hurt someone. (I guess they don’t get a lot of healthy people who run on treadmills every freakin’ day… go figure).

The last bit was another round of pictures. Lay there in the dark and hold still for 11 minutes. But I didn’t sleep this time. I was mourning the loss of my precious chest hair. How would I ever work up a good chest lather in the tub without chest hair?

And, 4 hours after it all started, I was released. I could not get out of there fast enough. I think the most stressful part of the whole deal was… sitting and waiting for that long. I like fast. And I like to be occupied. Also, the partially shaved chest doesn’t thrill me. Not only because it looks weird, but it itches!!! Have you ever seen a partially shaved Moose? Well, it looks a little like that. You should see it (you really shouldn’t).

Thanks for listening (reading, whatever) about my NST day. I like that you listen so well (you are still with me, aren’t you? custom chest-haircut and all?)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go even out this shaving job. Can I borrow a razor?

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I’ve been listening to Christmas music quite a bit lately (’tis the season, ya know) and have noticed a recurring theme across a lot of stations/songs/artists.  There are some very common sightings in the ‘otherworld’ out there.  I’m not saying any of them are fact or fiction, I’m just saying there are a LOT of people who have witnessed the following.

* UFOs
* My awesomeness (that one has been proven to be a fact)
* Bigfoot
* Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster
* Mommy kissing Santa Claus

There are a whole lot of people out there who have witnessed their mommies kissing Santa Claus. While I’m not sure what that says about mommies in general, I gotta say… that Santa really gets around.  :)

After my workout at the gym today, I went over the stretching area to stretch (well what else would I do there?) and do you know what I found?  If you guessed people stretching you’d only be half right.  There were people there, but they weren’t stretching.  There were 2 guys wrestling.

Now I wrestled a bit in my younger (much younger) days (not to be confused with the wrastling I’ve done.  mmmhmmm!).  And I know that rolling around on a mat with another guy can be a masculine thing. In the right environment.  No really!  It’s a very old sport. It’s in the Olympics even.  And I think wrestling is much better done with a referee and some method of keeping score.

I’m not one who walks around with a chip on my shoulder (occasionally a bag of chip crumbs, but not chips), and I’m about live and let live, but I was a bit… concerned? amused?  I would have said something to the staff there, but one of the wrestlers was a trainer (or at least dressed like one).  At least they looked like they were actually wrestling and not just rolling around holding each other.  The ultimate point is (yes, there is a point) I kinda wondered if it were a man/woman instead of a man/man if it would have been tolerated in the gym.

But enough chit-chat; let’s get on to the point of the post (about time)

Do you remember my post about the new Dee?  (come on.. it hasn’t been that long since I posted!)  Well, this is sort of a continuation of that post, albeit a delayed one.  I do tend to take my time about some things.  I say it’s worth the wait (and it’s my blog, so we’ll just go off what I say, mkay?)

While I was driving home that morning, I saw a shooting star in the far Western sky.  It was one of those that just takes it’s time dropping across the sky and makes one go “oooh” and “awww” and “holy crap” even when you’re alone in the car.   Not that I would do that, but it would be understandable due to the awesome star-ness.   It was like the world had slowed down just long enough for me to witness that streak of light across the sky.  Being the wisher/hopeful romantic/daydreamer that I am, I immediately (no waiting there) started in on my list of wishes. And as I ended the list with my usual “and I wish for soon”, it occurred to me that I’ve even been wishing lazily.

Lemme explain (I thought you could use a little ‘splainin here).

It is my belief that if you wish to be thin someday, that you will be thin… someday.  And if you wish to have more money, you will probably have more money.  And maybe someday, long after you’re dead, you will be thin (I guarantee it!).  And maybe you’d find a quarter in the parking lot (yay found money!) and then you’d have more money.

But what if you wished to be thin now.  What if you wished to have enough money now. Saying “I am thin” while on the treadmill isn’t kidding yourself (or my too un-thin self, as the case may be), it’s positive visualization.  And being on the treadmill is being thin. Or at least the first step towards it.  It’s you taking control of what you want.

And so it is with all the things we wish for.  Soon isn’t soon enough.  Someday is too many days away.  Let’s start moving towards the things we want, let’s start helping our wishes out by putting a little pressure on them. Those planets have gotten away with being lazy for Way too long.  It’s not enough for me to wish for soon anymore.  I’m not that patient.

I wish for now.

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I woke up this morning at about 3:30, which is unusually early, even for me.  The strangest part (as if 3:30 isn’t strange enough) is that I woke up with a sense of urgency.  No, not like that!  It wasn’t that I sat straight up in bed (although that seems to happen sometimes lately), it was that I woke up thinking that there was something I had missed… something I really needed to do. Something very important.

I ran over the usual list of things that cause panic.
Did I leave the iron on?
* wouldn’t matter, it turns itself off
Did I leave the door unlocked?
* not a chance, I never open the front door
Did I leave all the cupboards in the house open?
* psshhh! that would just be crazy!

After laying there for about an hour I decided to get my rear in gear and go to the gym. I did some ellipticalling and terrorized the guns for a while, but could not shake the feeling that I had left something unfinished. You know how when you can’t remember a word (like hypochondriac or ellipticalling)… how it’s almost there but you can’t quite bring it to the surface for a few days? It was like that.

I did have a minor distraction at the gym again today (and this sidetrack is related, so I don’t wanna hear about it). There’s one particular dude at the gym whose looks have been… puzzling… me for some time. I don’t know if you know this about me (c’mon. what don’t you know about me by now), but I’m kind of mean. And I’m a hair snob. Well this dude has a really lousy haircut… not quite a bowl cut (but pretty close), not quite a crew cut (too long) a little balding spot on top and a really long face. (and dude, if you’re reading this and wondering if it’s you… it is. shave it off and start over!) For weeks I’ve been trying to figure out:

1. why would anyone cut their hair like that?
b. could a monkey and a penguin ever be friends?
4. who does this dude look like?

Well, this morning it hit me. It was like I finally remembered that word I couldn’t place. I figured out who he reminds me so much of. You wanna know who?

Do ya?

Well I’m not gonna tell you. (Did I mention that I’m mean?)

And after I figured out that he looks like Beaker from the Muppets (I’m not very good at keeping things from you), it was like the dam broke (thank heavens I wasn’t on the dam road!) and I figured out what was missing, the very important thing that I had left unfinished. You wanna know what is was?

Do ya? (here we go again)

Well, I’ll tell you this time.

It’s me. I’m not finished. I am not as awesome, as whole, as complete, as together as I could/should be.

I have been through a tremendous amount of growth and discovery over the past year, and it has been an awesome journey. But I have been doing way too much slacking off lately. I could use the excuse that I have a whole lot going on, that I’ve been so busy with all the company from out of town or that I’ve just stayed up too late every night to get in shape for Black Friday. But the truth is I have lost site of why I started the new Dee in the first place. And this loss has affected my work, my workouts, and my attitude. It’s made me angsty and pouty and a little bit doubty. (even thought that rhymes, it doesn’t look good on me) You might have even noticed that it has affected my writing (that is, you would notice if I had actually written anything lately).  :-/

I still have my inspiration, my muse, my distraction… more than ever in fact. and I still have you! (that just seems redundant) But I seem to have forgotten the motivation, the thing that drove me googly in the first place. And that is the desire to be a better me, and to spend more time with people who make me better, and doing things that feel right and good. Don’t get me wrong… I still find myself to be completely awesome. I just have been resting on my angsty butt-cheeks for too long, waiting for things to happen. Now it’s time once again to turn up the heat and pump up the awesomeness (that’s a lot of awesome I know, but we are talking about me here so you have to expect that) and go get what I want. The only thing stopping me is… me!

I started making a list (surprise) of the ways to bring out even more of Dee (it’s okay… you can be scared).  You wanna know what I came up with?  You want me to stop asking you if you wanna know things?

Well you’re just gonna have to keep coming back for more to find out.  :)  Some of those things on the list you may never know about unless you’re really good at the stalking thing, because it’s tough to display attitude on a web site.   But most will be shared with you here through my ramblings and rantings. I think it’ll be a lot of fun and I am so happy to have you come along on the trip (we’re past due for a trip anyway).  Don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted along the way.   Be warned… I might ask you to help me out a bit from time to time; maybe you can drive if I get tired? (you know you want to)

So… you ready for more?

Then c’mon already!  Let’s go find out how awesome we can be!

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