ONDAY,AUGUST 16,2004
OFF THE HILL
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN 3D
Hole hearted Pondering your mortality at 21
By Kevin Kampwirth, Jayplay writer
Illustration by Scott Drummond
was 15 years old when I found out I had a hole in my heart. This isn't some lovelorn expression of teenage angst; instead, a prolapse, as it was explained to me, in the mitral valve that is responsible for carrying blood out to the rest of the body. It's nothing life-threatening or even all that debilitating — easy loss of breath is about the only noticeable side effect — but it is something that requires periodic checkups to make sure everything is running smooth.
Problems can sometimes arise, however. Last August, I began experiencing pain in my chest from time to time. I brushed it off and really didn't think about it because they were relatively mild. After four months, though, they were still occurring and started to get worse. My footproof remedy of "just don't think about it and it's go away" wasn't working, so I decided I should probably do something.
Instead of just going to Watkins Memorial Health Center for a checkup, I made the rather large tactical error of mention what had been going on while talking to my mom. Now my mom, God bless her, is the most worrisome person on the planet. Long story short, I get a call from my cardiologist in Chicago the next day who recommended that I go in and get a heart ultrasound to make there's no fluid building up around the heart.
Let me paint a little picture for the purposes of authenticity. There I am shooting pool at Louise's West on a Friday at about five o'clock. I'm a few bees deep, lining up my next shot, when my jean pocket starts to vibrate. The 847 area code on the caller ID lets me know it's a Chicago number, and I
smartass comment thinking it's one of my buddies from back home. I'm pretty surprised when its the voice of good old Dr. Darwish on the other end of the line, and he's hitting me with this bit of information. I hang up the phone, line up my shot and, for some reason, miscue it terribly. Pool didn't seem very important right then. My friend who I was playing with wondered rather explicitly how I could miss such an easy shot. I had no answer for him.
If there ever was a time in my life when things went from so fun to so
Could it kill me? Could I be standing there drinking a beer and the next thing I know be face down on the dirty, sticky barroom floor?
not fun in a matter of about 11 seconds, that was it. Now, I didn't really know what fluid around the heart could do to a person. What I did know was that it didn't sound all that cheery. Could it kill me? Could I be standing there drinking a beer and the next thing I know be face down on the dirty, sticky barroom floor
clutching my chest? My thoughts were running away with me, but how could I not think about it?
After getting a hold of myself I realized that still I lived with the pains for this long, a few more hours, or even days, probably wouldn't make that huge a difference. I tried my best to put it out of my mind the rest of the night. It didn't work.
The next four days of pondering my mortality while I waited for a diagnosis, were just that: four days of pondering my mortality while waiting for a diagnosis, which should pretty much speak for itself. Being a person who usuily never worries about much, this was a somewhat foreign frame of mind and I didn't enjoy it at all.
Wednesday did come, however slowly, as I found myself lying shirtless on a hospital bed in a small.
dim-lit examination room at Lawrence Memorial Hospital at 4:30 in the afternoon. I lay and watched the monitor positioned next to the bed on which I could see my heart beating. I wanted to shut my eyes for a little while, but the cold gel on the metal tip of the ultrasound ward that a tattooed technician was gliding across my chest kept me awake. After 20 minutes he said that everything looked fine, but he would have to send the results to my cardiologist just to make sure. I left feeling relieved.
The next day my pocket vibrated with an 847phone number at about 3:30 in the afternoon. I picked up.
salo hello, and listened. After a minute or two, I hung up, smiled, if only to stop myself from crying, and went to find a pool table. I had a feeling that I wouldn't miss the shot this time.
— Kevin Kampwirth can be reached at editor@kansan.com
8.19.04 Jayplay
15