So there I was, flat on my back in the cool and darkened treatment room.
To my left was a glowing monitor that in moments would be reflecting the interior of my heart pumping. It was the first time I’d experienced the joys of an echo cardiogram. That’s the procedure to determine whether the valves and blood flow seem normal (or perhaps as abnormal as my walnut-sized brain).
The technician, who had spent years performing this examination based on the flow of sound waves through tissue, reached over and rubbed a dab of cool gel above my heart then used her left hand to begin slowly running what appeared to be a microphone around the area above my heart.
Turned my head, I watched the screen to see my very own 11-ounce organ precisely pumping in steady rhythm. This was the first time to see that I really do exist in this strange place we’re conditioned to call our world. I quickly lapsed into what I can only calla semitrance-like state as I studied one valve of my heart opening and closing. Perhaps my fascination lay in finally stopping to realize that the invisible pulse I take for granted is the reason I can even witness what it does on my behalf about 72 times a minute, or about 2.5 billion times over the course of my existence.
My thoughts turned to a realization that this organ has been fundamentally responsible for every action and thought I’ve experienced in 67 years. That means every joy, passion and heartache. It’s continued relentlessly pumping through the decades as I pushed its limits in high school, earned degrees and watched my son and daughter born.
There is a reason we humans consider the heart as the seat of our emotions. Even the Little Prince exclaimed, “It’s only with the heart that one can see rightly.”
After a few minutes staring at the screen, I asked the technician an obvious question that, oddly enough, she said no other patient had asked. “So, I wonder how can anyone watch this marvelous machine functioning of its own accord without believing a greater power lies behind such a marvel?”
She smiled. “You know,” she said. “I began to believe in a greater hand during my classes when I learned about the tiny node at the top of the heart that mysteriously generates electricity from some source, an energy that sets all the body’s electrical activities into motion.” That pacemaking little nodule is known as the sinoatrial (SA) node, by the way.
Then, for the next 15 minutes or so, things in the exam room got downright philosophical. I asked whether she’d learned during her professional training just what (after four weeks of human heart cells organizing in the womb) suddenly triggers the initial electrical spark that sets the cells into motion and the body to further forming by circulating its blood supply.
She said that mystery also fueled her belief in a creator.
In other words, the fact that any of us is alive depends upon this little energy-producing lump (that I believe I’ll label God’s Pacemaker) for me remains one of my body’s profound mysteries. But, of course, neither am I an electrician nor cardiologist.
That steady ka-thump in my chest is created by the four valves inside continually opening and closing, she said as I kept watching that monitor. Because a heart contains its own electrical engine of sorts, it can continue to beat outside the body as long as it is supplied with oxygen.
I don’t know if you’ve ever laid still and watched the valves of your heart steadily open and close, over the course of a day forcing some 2,000 gallons of blood coursing through 60,000 miles of vessels.
But if you have that opportunity one day, it’s definitely an experience in self-awareness and awe like no other.
One expensive rental
Delbert Raymond Price summed it up as well as any opinion columnist earlier this month when he said he’d thrown his life away over a rental car.
The truth is, after being slapped with a 30-year prison term for keeping a rented high-dollar Mercedes Benz for seven months without making a payment and causing lots of damage in the process, he became the natural recipient of his own bad choices.
Seems life really does have a way of attaching consequences to our decisions and actions. I usually say if you plant corn, you don’t expect to harvest anything but corn.
Price harvested his bushel after upgrading from a rented Hyundai to a Mercedes in Orlando, Fla., then driving back to Springdale, where months later he stood before Circuit Judge William Storey. That was another bad day for Price, who is considered a habitual offender, with a sentence of 30 years (24 years suspended) and restitution in the amount of $8,756.
Not one for mincing words, Judge Storey explained just how a bovine chomps on cabbage. “Mr. Price,” Storey said, “you need to take a different approach to things. You’ve been involved in the criminal-justice system for a long time.”
The way I read it, Price, now 45, will have until retirement age, where he won’t need as much as a cheap rental car … much less a Mercedes.
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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.
Editorial, Pages 15 on 01/14/2014