Hearts on Lent; or, What I had for lunch

I had an Amy's Black Bean Burrito.

Total Fat: 8g

Saturated: 1g

Trans: 0g

Cholesterol 0mg

Sodium 580mg

Carbohydrate 44g

Fiber 4g

Sugars 4g

Protein 9g

Vitamin A 10%DV

Calcium 8%

Vitamin C 40%

Iron 20%

Years ago I'd eat a peanut butter and honey sandwich for lunch. I'd often make them for myself but just as often I'd be late for work and would rush out the door with nothing. My girlfriend at the time left our apartment later than I did so I'd call her and beg her to bring me something. Eventually she got tired of being treated like a mother. The day when she showed up at work , brown paper bag in hand, and told me off is very fresh in my mind. I'd felt like an asshole before, and I've felt like one since but that dressing down has really stuck with me.

This started a long period where I ate a bag of chips or a chocolate bar to tide me over until I got off work. When I changed locations I used to run down the street to McDonald's or A&W and get a burger and fries, but often I just wouldn't eat anything.

Slowly I began to change my habits. I found that not eating during the day was wiping me out to the point that dinner didn't revive me. I began to buy frozen dinners to eat at work. Then I met the LUC.

I never ate a lot of meat, I certainly never ate it at home as I have no idea how to cook it. The LUC is a vegetarian and I gave up meat without any real regret. My frozen lunches became veggie and that was that.

A month ago I went for a full physical. The coming baby provoked an unusually adult response in me and I figured it was time to get myself a GP and have a once over. I told my new doctor my whole medical history, depression, and colitis, and heart arrhythmia...OH MY! I gave her my family history: alcoholism, diabetes, and my father's fatal heart attack at a very young age.

She poked, prodded and listened. I was sent for blood tests and an ECG (Electro Cardio Gram). The blood results didn't surprise me, "My cholesterol is a little high? Well, I coulda told you that!" You see, despite my veggie status I still ate a lot of chocolate bars and cheese. Ah cheese! I don't have the writing skills to describe how much I love a good sharp Cheddar.

What did surprise me was the abnormality she found on the ECG. It appeared that I had Left Ventricle Hypertrophy, a thickening of the wall of my heart. This is usually caused by high blood pressure, but also can be caused by athleticism or be congenital. It can be serious and is an indicator of an increased risk of a sudden fatal heart attack.

I went of an ultrasound of my heart. I'd done enough reading to know that what I saw on the monitor wasn't a worst case scenario, but even to my untrained eye my left ventricle's wall was much thicker than the others.

It turns out that I have mitral valve prolapse, which is a fancy way of saying that one of the valves in my heart doesn't close properly. This isn't a big deal apparently, they estimate that up to 18% of young women have this problem. But it appears that this is causing the wall of my heart to thicken, basically my left ventricle is working too hard because it also has to pressurize the atrium. If this isn't fixed it could continue to grow until there's no space left to pump the blood. Mind you, this my interpretation of what's going on, I could be talking out my ass.

Now I wait for an appointment with cardiologist. I do very poorly in an absence of information and I'm struggling not to worry. I'm pretending this is training for having a teenager. Eventually your kid goes off on their own more and more and you have to simply hope they're ok. A situation that's not good for a worrier like me. Especially one with a bum heart.

I'm going to have an Amy's Black Bean Burrito for lunch again today.

Total Fat: 8g
Saturated: 1g
Trans: 0g
Cholesterol 0mg
Sodium 580mg
Carbohydrate 44g
Fiber 4g
Sugars 4g
Protein 9g
Vitamin A 10%DV
Calcium 8%
Vitamin C 40%
Iron 20%

Pretty healthy for pre-packaged food. No cholesterol, which I have to be much more careful of and low in saturated fats, also very heart healthy. But that sodium is a little high and I also have to be very careful of my blood pressure. I've lost 2kg in the last couple of weeks, just by stopping the unhealthy snacks. As the LUC's aero-belly grows mine is shrinking. I find this hilarious, but her? Not so much.

Tomorrow I'm going to have to eat something else and with all due respect to Maggie Mason there are at least 3 people who care very much about what I had for lunch: the LUC, my Doctor and my Mother.

Hearts on Valentine's Day

I've been getting huge traffic on this site from people searching Owen's name. Normally this is a sleepy little corner of the internet and this came as a surprise to me.

There's a few things I should mention, for the sake of my conscience if nothing else.

First, I didn't really know Owen. The first time I met him I could tell that he had no interest in talking to me. "Right." I thought, "Fair enough." and left him alone. I'd say 'Hi' when the LUC and I went to dinner at the Richel/Hunt household and "Bye" if he was still awake when we left and that was the total of our interaction. The LUC made more of an effort and was usually rebuffed. Owen wasn't shy about making his wishes known. During his hospital stay we visited a number of times. Nothing had changed, he still didn't want anything to do with me.

I respect that. Hell, I admire it. If I, as a 40 year old adult, could get away with being as blunt and straight forward as Owen was in dealing with the world I'd be very happy indeed. And yet I found myself getting angry during the memorial because of this. Angry at myself for not making more of an effort to know him. Judging by the moving accounts told by those who knew him well, Owen and I shared a very similar world view. Angry also that there was no one to blame for this tragedy. I found myself wishing I believed in a god, any god, so I could curse him as a cruel, capricious bastard. I also felt anger for not doing more to help Daryl and Charlotte, and deep down I felt a little presumptuous because of these feelings.

The memorial was perfect. I was moved by the eloquence and sincerity of the speakers, moved by their love for the little boy who I hardly knew. I cried for a time. I confronted my shortcomings as friend and my shortcomings as an adult and was angry for a time. I even forgave myself, just a little and not without misgivings, for those shortcomings.

I learned things. It is better to care too much, even inappropriately, and forgive oneself for it than it is to have a stony heart and never know that one needs forgiveness. It is better to share tragedy. Just as many hands make for lighter labour, so too do many souls lessen the burden of grief. And most importantly, it is far better to have loved and laughed, been loved and been laughed at, even been scared and cried, for so short a time as six years than it is to have never lived at all. (Believe me, if I could go back and pound that lesson into the head of my angsty teenage self I'd do it.)

Over a decade ago I attended the funeral of Darren Howey, a young man who's life also ended far too soon. I made a promise to his father that I would never forget Darren. I've kept that promise. Darren now has the company of a strong-headed, fearless little boy and I sure hope they get along, because they will be in my heart together till the end of my days.

To all of you who knew Owen best and feel his passing deeply, you have my most sincere condolences.

In Memory of Owen Hunt Richel

He was six years old and had been battling lukiemia. He died last night. Daryl and Charlotte, his parents, were an example to us all of love, courage and grace in the face of the hardest choices anyone would ever have to make.

I grieve. Less so for Owen because his time might have been short but he was loved fiercely and often and is now out of pain. I grieve for his parents, lovely people who are now faced with their own battle to heal. You don't bounce back from a thing like this, not quickly anyway.

This has been a strange time for the LUC and I. The following is an email I sent them on Teusday.

>I wanted to add to Claire's thoughts. Monday was a very odd day for
>us. To see Owen in such a state and realize just how great the
>difficulties of being a parent can be was very sobering. I had thought
>that to go from that to the first shadowy glimpse of our child-to-be
>would be hard.
>

> But it wasn't. In fact what I took away from our time with you,
>Charlotte and Owen was entirely positive. It was a realization that
>love begets strength even in the face of such terrible difficulties.
> I'm sure you've had your black moments, moments when you felt
> you couldn't continue, couldn't make one more hard decision.
> And yet the people I saw on Monday were making those decisions
> and contemplating more with a grace and a strength that I
>couldn't imagine having. Couldn't imagine that is until I looked at
>that tiny figure on the ultrasound monitor.
>
> Daryl and Charlotte, by allowing me to share in this difficult time, however
> briefly, you have shown me a glimpse of what it means to truly love a child.
>No matter what happens in the end, your ordeal will have had at least
>that one positive effect in the world, an effect for which I'll be forever
>grateful.

Yes you read that right, I'm about to be a father.* This isn't the way I wanted to announce this but you can see how Owens illness and death and my impending fatherhood are all mixed up in my feelings. Daryl and Charlotte were two of the first people we told about our engagement and about the pregnancy. (Sorry Mum.) Mostly because it was a good way to distract them from their worries.

So now we all go on. Daryl and Charlotte to their grieving and healing and the LUC and I to our wedding and baby prep. I hope that our happiness will help them just as the example they gave me of good parenting will help me. I am going to hold what I learned very close as I take this journey into the deep, dark, mysterious jungle of fatherhood.


*Yes, yes I have details. As of today we're 14 weeks and 1 day in. The ultrasound and blood work showed normal development and reduced the likelihood of having a Downs Syndrome child from 1 in 686 to 1 in 6000 or so. The tyke was 7.5 cm long. We don't know the sex yet and aren't going to find out, kinda seems like cheating. Yes the marriage proposal took place before the conception. We really didn't expect to conceive on the first try (I'm trying very hard not to feel too manly about that). The wedding going to be 2 weeks before the due date. I hope our child is like us in that he or she is never on time for anything. There's a wedding web page in the works for updates, I'll post the link as soon as it's up and running. And finally remember: wedding gifts and baby gifts are two different things.

Can he tell me where my keys are?

We live in an increasingly superstitious world. The rise of religious fundamentalism, the popularity of the new age movement, the increase in psychic and ghost hunting shows on tv all point to this. It scares me.

It scares me far more than the drunk guy who came up to me as I was unlocking my bike and insisted that I was going to die. I have to say he was spooky. An older guy in a nice suit and overcoat with shiny shoes; he wasn't an incoherent homeless ranter. He was however, very insistent that getting on my bike was going to be fatal.

Pah, I say. I know folks, nice, normal, intelligent folks who would have taken him seriously. He was well dressed, he could have been a psychic who earned his living of the lottery, right? This is the danger of letting the para-normal into your life. You decide to believe one thing without insisting on good evidence and that can be the start of a downhill slide. If you're willing to believe X despite a lack of proof, why not Y or Z? Where does it end?

It ends with allowing some drunk who knows nothing about winter cycling project his unsubstantiated fears onto you. There's more than enough to worry about in the world without that sort of nonsense.