A heart felt note

It's eleven 11 all even. I don't know what you kids did on your c'mas vacation but I had an amb'lance ride, an EKG, stuff shoved in my veins, a star wars view of interior and anterior chambers belonging to my achy broken heart and then, "O yeah. It’s the big One. I'm coming to you Elizabeth" moment. It would have been some serious shit except I already knew that I was gonna die one day. I'm almost as old as when my father bought the farm. It seemed in the normal realm of things. Before I headed down into that endless tunnel where they do the actual cuttin' but you know nuttin', I turned to my wife and daughter and son and repeated the words of Richard Holbrooke who said at this very point, supposedly: "Tell Hilary to get out of Afghanistan."

Ambassador Holbrooke would love to trade places with me. I had two friends who also died on the table. One can't help thinking about that prior to saying goodbye. But, I woke up c'mas eve with stitches all over my chest (they come out Monday) and a couple of tubes sticking out just below the severed sternum. They came out right then. "Hi my name is RV." I tried to be friendly. I was in an assembly line of post op patients at Maine Meds celebrated 1st floor where all they do is hearts. "Yeah, I'm just gonna yank these suckers and you'll head up to ICU." Well, that sounds positive I thought. And while he was yanking what felt like foot long pieces of garden hose from my midsection, I told myself: I am airborne. What must it be like for the poor schnooks who have never tested themselves in an endurance kind of way. That too did pass.
Disgusting hospital food never tasted so good. Ice water; even better. The nurses were fabulous and I was double timing around their station and down the hall with in 24 hours. I knew what I had to do to get out early and I did it.
I’m likely able to write this drivel because, uncharacteristically I called 911 in a timely fashion. My peops, if this happens to you, and you want to live, call immediately. Turns out as soon as they slapped the Oxygen to me in the truck out in my driveway, the heart attack stopped. Very little damage to the organ itself. Problem was tons of cholesterol blocking the blood flow. A no no that is now fixed.
Three weeks later I’m walking almost a mile a day. But other than that I don’t have to do squat. So I’m doing it.