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Of all the popular methods of execution, the electric chair scares me most. The scene in "The Green Mile" where they fry the guy without first putting the sponge on his head is my all-time film fright. Waltzing through
a bout of atrial
fibrillationSo let's say I was edgy as I lay in the cardiac care unit at Castle Medical Center waiting for them to zap my chest with shock "paddles" to get my skipping heart back on beat.
You see it all the time on "ER." The doctor rushes in as some poor slob turns blue, grabs the paddles, yells for everybody to stand back and blasts the slob 10 feet into the air, whereupon he flops back to the table like a boated tuna as everybody watches for a flicker on his heart monitor.
In my case, it was less dramatic -- a planned procedure rather than an emergency to treat a flare-up of an irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation.
You can live a relatively normal life in A-fib, but it's unsettling to feel your heart fluttering out of sync. And if doctors can't restore the normal rhythm, you're looking at a lifetime of unpleasant drugs to prevent clots.
The first two times my heart went out of rhythm, in 1982 and 1992, drug therapy got my beat back within a day. But this time it was two days and no joy with the drugs. So I lay wired in a cold room waiting for the cardiologist to come at 1:30 to zap me. Despite promises that I would be sedated beyond pain, the crash cart took on the foreboding look of the Evil Emperor Zurg from my grandson Corwin's Space Ranger cartoons.
As I waited, they asked if I'd like to watch the UH-Nebraska volleyball match on the TV. I decided this wasn't the time for a heart-stopping sporting event.
Instead, I worried that I was about to miss my weekly column for the first time. I had planned a piece about how Al Gore lost the presidency not in Florida, but by failing to carry his home state of Tennessee. I intended to cleverly weave remarks from Gore's concession speech around the melancholy chorus of "The Tennessee Waltz."
When they scheduled me to be zapped, I figured the column was a lost cause and asked editors to re-run an old piece.
But as I lay waiting, I wondered if I could yet salvage the Gore column. I had it all worked out in my mind and just needed a little time to tap it out on my Palm Pilot.
I started humming "The Tennessee Waltz," concentrating on the steady beat of the main bass line. I tried to infuse the rhythm through my body.
I noticed that 1:30 had passed and the cardiologist hadn't arrived. The nurse came in at 1:35 to tell me he was running late. Suddenly she stopped. "I'll be darned," she said. "Look at your monitor. Your heart is back in normal rhythm."
I never did get that Gore column done as I lay awake most of the night stunned and grateful for the last-second reprieve. I may yet have a date with those paddles in my future, but to borrow young Corwin's battle cry, "Not today, Zurg!"
I went home the next day and was greeted by a FedEx man with a letter from a lawyer who had business with me. The lawyer's return address: Nashville, Tenn.
Did somebody say atrial fibrillation?
David Shapiro is managing editor of the Star-Bulletin.
He can be reached by e-mail at dshapiro@starbulletin.com.
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