New Releases from Spoon and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Get Excited Now.

Spoon's next effort, Gimme Fiction, is to be released May 10 on Merge Records. It's about time, too, since I've nearly worn out my copy of Girls Can Tell.

B.R.M.C. is mastering their next, working title Americana LP, in L.A. with release scheduled for early summer. There were lots of rumors in the British music press about the band imploding. 'Course, the British music press is famous for its hyperbolic "news." Remember the Next Big Band, the Greatest Ever, called Gay Dad? Thought not.

Two more reasons to look forward to spring, just in case you needed any more.

Eric 2.0 (and Announcing the Respite From Navel-Gazing)

Not vegetative; just busy or lazy or both. Blazy, perhaps.

My catheterization procedure began with new baseline EKG readings, which means it really began with shaving spots on my chest. The EKG probes clip onto posts that are attached to me by plastic suction cups with some kind of superconductive adhesive. Hair, as you well know, is not conductive and must therefore be shaved away. Unfortunately, the nurses couldn't shave spots that had been shaved by other nurses: they needed to mark their territory in virgin, old-growth stands of chest hair. You will not see me without a shirt until I recover from this bout of mange.

Next I received a shot of lidocaine to my groin, where a nurse inserted a "sheath" into my femoral artery. The sheath maintains the opening in the artery and protects the tissue from all the wires that run up into the heart. I was also given some kind of relaxant that prevented me from caring where the wires went.

My narrow gurney was slid, feet first, into the imaging system. I couldn't see the entire device because the fluoroscopy camera, encased in a beige, steel box about two feet square and attached to a robotic rotator arm, was placed over my chest. My arms were held at my sides by metal guards. To my right I could see the leaded plexiglass shield that protected the doctor and his assistants. Down and to my left I could see a couple of the monitors they would be using.

The doctor injected contrast dye into my coronary arteries, making them much easier to see. But even with the dye, I could make out only a pulsing, ghostly image on the black and white monitor, except for the wire, which was a well-defined shephard's crook in all the haze.

Soon the doctor came up to my end of the gurney (it seemed as though he was working ten feet away from me when he was really just two feet from my head at all times) to inform me that I had three blockages that he believed he could open with two stents. He needed my permission to insert them. It seemed absurd at the time, although I understood why he asked. Like, what was I going to say? One stent now, one later? No, but thanks for asking? I wanted to comparison shop for stents on eBay?

So he inserted the first stent into my right coronary artery. As he did so, I watched the artery expand and grow like a tree in time-lapse photography. The blockage, probably 95% of the inner diameter of the artery, was near the top of the RCA. Afterwards, he came back up to me and bade me to watch the monitor while the "control room" replayed the images. "How do you like your new artery?" he asked. And it was like having a new artery. Imagine removing a dam on the Mississippi River at, say, Moline, Illinois and watching the water come down in New Orleans. Yes, it was that dramatic.

The second stent went into my 1st obtuse marginal artery which, as any child can tell you, comes off the left circumflex artery which feeds blood to the backside of the heart. I'm not clear on the precise placement of it, the stent which spans two blockages, but I remember the doctor explaining that this location was very narrow and difficult to reach.

Amazingly, I was in Cardiac Cath Lab #3 for a total of 45 minutes. Here's an updated map of my heart:



Stent #1 measures 3.5 mm by 10 mm; stent #2 measures 3 mm by 20 mm. I even have a user guide (and an I.D. card) for them.

After surgery, nurses pulled the sheath from my femoral artery. They installed a clamp on my leg -- a high-tech and sterile version of a woodworking clamp -- for twenty minutes to staunch any blood flow from the artery. Just before noon I was pushed up to 7th floor, B section, for further recovery and overnight observation.

Before I move on, I'd like to say thank you to Dr. Eitzman and his awesome team in the Cath Lab. You guys are personable and professional, and you rock.

Here's a little insurance irony for you: there are people who receive cardiac catheterization and are sent home the same day. They get the same attention on their "site" (that is, their groin) that I received. Except that I was kept overnight, you see, and every nurse needed to examine my groin. I'm not living some male fantasy here. I'm only pointing out that, for all the fuss about possible complications with my stents, they spent a lot more time on my groin. This is attention that other catheterizees didn't get.

I had to lay on my back for six hours following the procedure. I don't think I've ever been so happy to sit upright. The next morning at around 11 Julie wheeled me out to the parking structure and drove me home.

That's it. I feel great. Julie and I can now resume our evening walks, although we've spent more time indoors on the treadmill because of inclement weather.

Now that I've finally got this out of my system, I look forward to writing about something other than my physical condition. Whew.

Tomorrow I Get Roto-Rootered.

I received a package from the cath lab with instructions, a booklet about the procedure and a booklet called "Living Wills and Durable Power of Attorney". What a subtle reminder that even the most routine procedures can go wrong. I didn't read it, of course, because that ain't gonna happen.

However, if I should end up in a persistent vegetative state, I want everyone to tell the hospital to pull the plug. :-)

Midlife Crisis Update (#3 in a series)

Okay, so I was having these chest pains, right? I agonized over doing something about them, then finally drove myself to the ER. The medical professionals took me seriously enough to shave spots on my chest and stick EKG probes to them. They gave me nitro tabs to dissolve under my tongue. The tabs didn't do any good, but it sounded just like what they do on E.R. They tested my blood for the enzymes your heart produces when you have a heart attack, but they didn't find any of them.

Okay, so it wasn't a heart attack. But they kept me overnight for observation. As my cardiologist put it, "You have too many risk factors for us to let you go home." I was aware of those risk factors, but thanks, Doc.

I had a restless night's sleep. No matter how nice the nurses are they still have to wake you up and do stuff to you. If I dozed in the wrong direction, one of my monitor probes would come off, causing an audible alarm in my room and at the nurses' station. Then there was the (male) nurse who came in after midnight wanting to talk about music. His favorite adjective was "quality," as in "It's quality stuff," regarding any band he liked a lot. Can't remember which bands he liked, however.

In the morning I took a heart stress test: first, an ultrasound of my heart at rest, followed by an ultrasound of my heart racing at 155 beats per minute. It's dobutamine, a devil drug, that caused my heart to race as I lay perfectly still for high-quality sonograms. Trust me, it's the most out-of-control feeling you'll ever have.

The stress test came back normal. But because I have all the classic risk factors for heart attack, as my cardiologist reminded me, and I still have chest pains, I took a different stress test this week. Verdict: there are areas of reduced blood flow in my heart, which implies blockage. This Friday I will have a heart catheterization to learn what the hell's going on in there.

My hope is that the docs will find a blockage, put in a stent, watch me overnight, then set me free to enjoy my newfound stamina and my new life.

Which now includes diabetes. Thanks to the ER blood tests, I learned that my glucose levels were way far out of whack. My physician and I are working on an aggressive plan to control it, but I need to get the chest pains out of the way first.

In case I needed another reason to feel decrepit, and I didn't, my opthamologist informed me that I have the beginning of cataracts. My vision isn't cloudy, thank you very much. But my lenses are now on notice that they're replaceable if they don't stop this ridiculous degradation. I mean, what right do they have, anyway?

So, to wrap up, heart-> diabetes-> cataracts. All I need to do now is install a compass on my dashboard to complete my transformation into a really old fart. And a walker. I need I friggin' walker. With a built-in glucose monitor, blood pressure cuff and halogen headlights.

Really, I'm only 43. Really.

Change Is in the Air, Folks.

Expect to see a new layout with archives and permalinks and comments soon. Or, as soon as I can get to it. But you know I love you, right? Right.

Midlife Crisis Update (#2 in a series)

I've been in competition for the position of "unit administrator," a.k.a. office manager, for a department in the College of Engineering. I was the Last Man Standing for this troubled department; the department has eaten up and spat out three office managers in five years. Unfortunately, I don't have the financial cred to be given the job, so the department re-posted the job. Twice. They extended the period for accepting applications to 2/2/05, and then extended it to 2/18.

Message to Eric: we like you, sort of. But we think we can find someone who walks on water for the low, low salary we're offering.

I'm thinking that my future, for the time being, lies outside the U.