Back from watching a German film about the young Goethe and his romance with Charlotte Buff, who married someone else, and their romance was supposed to be the basis for his greatly successful novel--The Sorrows of Young Werther, which ends with the hero committing suicide. Apparently its publication resulted in a rash of suicides of young men across Europe.
My first visit to the cardiologist after the referral by my GP resulted in a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation. The doctor was very dramatic, showing me with his hands how the upper part of the heart normally pumped blood into the lower part, opening and closing his fingers--pow pow--pow pow. But then he showed me what my heart was doing--one pow, but then the fingers flickered and fluttered around, and there was no 'pow.' Very dramatic. Atrial fibrillation.
He prescribed new blood pressure medication, and added a blood thinner--pills that I discovered when I picked them up cost $750 for a three month supply. He told me that the thinner would reduce my chances of a stroke from 8 percent to 2 percent. And then, he told me, that after six weeks on the thinners, he would shock my heart, and there would be a good chance it would get back into normal rhythm. How long it would stay like that: well, he did not know. maybe twenty four hours, maybe 25 years--which would take me to 101.
But I had to have a stress test.
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