Our plan, using the term plan very loosely, was to return to the Mississippi Delta after the Memorial Service and wander around listening to Blues and eating Barbeque. But first, Michele wanted to go back to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art to see a show on the influence of Superman and Wonder Woman on culture. We had driven from Memphis to the retirement community of Fairfield Bay, first across the rice-growing area of the Arkansas Delta, and then into the Ozarks.

After spending a couple of days with the Hoenigsbergs and Hilsenraths in Fairfield Bay, we drove through more of the Ozarks to Bentonville, the home of Crystal Bridges. The light was flat with the temperature was still dropping down to freezing at night, and the Ozarks looked poor and uninviting.

To be continued….

Michele and I are near the small town of Fairfield Bay on Greers Ferry Lake in the Ozark Mountains of northern Arkansas. We have joined a gathering of the Hoenigsberg and Hilsenrath families who have come together to say “Goodbye” to the family’s patriarch, Manfred Hilsenrath, who we know as Michele’s cousin Fred. Fred was one of those truly unusual people who is loved and touched by everybody who meets him. He was born In Germany in 1929 and came of age in a Romanian ghetto camp in Ukraine. His journey from there to being married to Eleanor, a woman he was madly in love with, in a beautiful home in the Ozarks, via Saratoga California, is both emblematic of the postwar Jewish journey and particular to him. Yesterday, at an event that was nominally a Memorial Service, each speaker – fighting off tears as they talked about their connection to Fred – wove a tapestry that was a celebration of an extraordinary life. A life that exemplified hope, triumph over adversity, the power of connection, and the power of passion. I am aware that I am an inlaw in this family, but the warmth and love of the family are all-inclusive just like Fred and Eleanor.

Steve had the echo yesterday and his heart is strong. They are traveling to Arkansas and he will have the reboot when they return. In case you all were wondering like I was. Karen Amy on Facebook.

I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t put this out myself – so, Thanks, Karen – but it was a sort of no news thing. I had what my cardiologists calls a stress test in which I got an ultrasound and a reading of a radionuclide – I don’t really know what that word means either – isotope injection of my resting heart, then walk on a treadmill programmed with a standardized protocol that increases speed and grade every three minutes. When I’m whopped, they repeat everything. The whole procedure is interesting the first couple of times and mildly uncomfortable thereafter. The isotope is injected through an IV in my hand – while I’m on the treadmill – and I can feel it enter my body, which is slightly creepy.

Then, nothing for a day because the isotope readings take a little time to decipher. I usually take a default position that everything came out fine until I hear otherwise so the phone call saying my heart is strong didn’t change much. Of course, saying my heart is strong is not exactly the same as saying that everything is fine; it is sort of like saying a car works great except for the constant backfiring. The good news is that I am healthy enough to try a reboot and, if that doesn’t work, an ablation. 

Meanwhile, my cardiologist has gone skiing and Michele and I have gone to Arkansas for a Memorial Service for her Cousin Fred.

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I got diagnosed with Atrial Fibrillation yesterday. Again. I was going to Cardiac Rehabilitation and walking across the parking lot to the gym at Sequoia Hospital left me out of breath and, I have to admit, panicky. Worse, my blood pressure was up and the oxygen level in my blood was low. I kept telling myself that I was OK, it was just a residual from my cold, and that being in Sequoia Hospital was probably one of the best places I could be, they could test me, find something like a thorn in my leg which they could easily remove, and send me on my way completely fine. Ahhh, the joy of magical thinking. Long story short, the nurse at the gym didn’t find the magic thorn so she sent me to my cardiologist, across the parking lot, where she had a tech give me an EKG.

I was sort of relieved that it is Afib and not a heart attack but, as reality sinks in, I am starting to get bummed out. Afib is not a good deal either. Now they are thinning my blood – at $380 for a month’s supply! they sure know they’ve got us by the short and curlies – because the worry is a stroke caused by a blood clot formed by the blood not going smoothly through my pump. In a couple of weeks, they will give me a stress test and then if all goes well, they’ll stop my heart, wait a few seconds, and then reboot me. It is a lot scarier for Michele because I’ll be out, but it is pretty safe (it always works in the movies and usually in real life). In the meanwhile, I feel punk but not panicky.

Over @NatureisScary, somebody posted the picture and heading above. Some of the comments made me laugh out loud:

He’s already getting eaten did you really have to bring up his economic status too?
Why tf would you be a goat on the island of Komodo? …It said he was poor, he probably couldn’t afford to move.
You just assumed the goat’s financial situation because it’s brown??
Why was the goat making itself accessible? Goats shouldn’t look so tasty around predators! I blame the goat.
So the rich one escaped?
I bet you would have blured out his face for his dignity if he was a rich goat but no, the poor have no value in your eyes!
My thoughts and prayers are with the goat. Sending light.
That is not how goat yoga is supposed to go.
“Impoverished goats have nothing to lose but their cha-a-a-a-ins” -Karl Marx

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