By John Carlson—
So it’s come to this: three sticky little round things per session.
If you’ve ever had a heart EKG, you are familiar with them. They’re the flat gluey suckers used to stick those wired doohickeys – as they are commonly referred to by those of us intimately familiar with advanced medical terminology – to your skin.
Make that, to the hairs of your skin.
Wearing those things is a fact of life down in cardiac rehab.
Cardiac rehab is where you end up at Indiana University-Ball Memorial Hospital after you’ve had a heart attack. Much to my surprise, I had one Memorial Day. This happened while lounging on our couch watching “Wheel of Fortune,” apparently after getting too excited about Vanna White’s letter flipping or the Nacho Cheese Flavored Doritos I was eating.
Anyway, as soon as you walk into cardiac rehab you pick up an electronic monitor. Then you schlepp off to the john, where you attach the monitor by pressing the three round sticky things to your torso before exercising.
On my introductory visit, my exercise was limited to a quick sprint around the rehab room.
OK, this is an outright lie. Mine wasn’t a quick sprint. If IU-BMH offered cardiac rehab for sloths and snails, both would have sped past me down there. As it was, even those cardiac rehabbers limping behind walkers left me in their proverbial dust, which was a shock. Possibly for the first time ever, it struck me what a dumb ass I had been back in my twenties and thirties for smoking countless Marlboros inhaled down to their nicotine-saturated filters.
If my old tobacco habit offered any compensation, though, it was that by winding up in cardiac rehab, I encountered cardiac rehab’s employees. People who know me know I hold Muncie’s hospital and its workers in high regard. The cardiac rehab staffers are industrious, caring, friendly folks. A couple kindly masked faces, Kelsie’s and Anna’s, were even familiar from when I’d spent some time there a few years back, the result of certain earlier heart, um, “flub-ups.” Then there was a new Anna, Jordan, and the kindly Cara, who had walked me around cardiac intensive care.
So that was nice.
Of course, no medical situation is ever absolutely perfect for a patient. You know how what goes up must come down? It turns out what goes on must also come off. This is particularly true of those sticky little round things after every rehab session.
The rub is, some of us are too darned hairy.
So, my sticking on those gluey little patches? It was a cinch. But pulling them off was costing me body hair, bad news when you’re as big a wimp as I am.
A nice young sympathetic lady named Daniela introduced me to the process of hooking up to, and then unhooking from, the monitor. In the course of our conversation, it was even revealed that we both graduated from the same nearby Christian college, Taylor U.
It was fortunate I learned this, because Taylor U is not a school where folks use coarse language. But back during my years there, certain uncouth kids popularized use of the phrase “rat sucker” as an expletive they figured they could get away with. While its associated image was an unpleasant one, it didn’t take the Lord’s name in vain, and was preferable to dropping a string of F-bombs. Nevertheless, school administrators took a dim view of the phrase. I’m not saying their objections ever made it into the Taylor handbook, like: “Students shall refrain from calling each other ‘rat suckers’.” Still, they ordered us to drop it from our vocabulary, hinting that otherwise we could eventually end up having some serious explaining to do to biblical dudes like Moses and Noah, and possibly even The Big Guy.
But last Monday in rehab?
While ripping off those patches along with my chest and belly hairs, I came as close to hollering a few choice “Rat suckers!” as I have since 1970. I was also tempted to drop some “Eeks!” and “Yikes!” in there, and maybe even a couple plaintive “Mommys!!!!”
For my young fellow graduate Daniela’s sake, however, I suffered in silence.
Meanwhile, subsequent cardiac rehab visits have gone well. It feels good to put some once-dormant muscles to use while taking steps on the road back to wellness. Besides, by now the skin where I first applied those three sticky little round things has been stripped bare as a baby’s tush.
Yanking the patches doesn’t hurt much anymore.
Other potential pluses: If I start eating my fruits and vegetables like I am supposed to, there’s a chance I may go from being a chunk-butt to a mere chunkette. And if I make full use of cardiac rehab’s multiple exercise machines, perhaps some day I can even lace up my sneakers and go outside for an actual walk.
But here’s one thing I can definitely say. Having stubbed out my last cigarette years ago, if I am ever remotely tempted to light up another one just for old times’ sake … well, I guess I’ll deserve what I’ve got coming to me.
John’s weekly columns are sponsored by Beasley & Gilkison, Muncie’s trusted attorneys for over 120 years.
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A former longtime feature writer and columnist for The Star Press in Muncie, Indiana, John Carlson is a storyteller with an unflagging appreciation for the wonderful people of East Central Indiana and the tales of their lives, be they funny, poignant, inspirational or all three. John’s columns appear on MuncieJournal.com every Friday.
