So, it’s been a long time since I’ve blogged. Things have actually been pretty good overall, which tends to make me less inclined to write. I’m more of a “foul weather” blogger than a generalist. I’m also really, really distracted by my other projects.

In general, I feel great. I went to see a psychiatrist who prescribed some medication that has helped me overcome my anxiety and depression. I had a horrific anxiety attack last month that was a wake up call for me. Apparently, my experience of being diagnosed with congestive heart failure and cardiomyopathy may have given me PTSD. It sounds crazy, but it’s true.

My defibrillator was installed in March, and after my last bike stress test, I am now convinced that it may never go off. You see, I pushed myself to my physical limits, and my heart rate never entered arrhythmia or the heart rate danger zone. If that doesn’t do it, my every day life won’t either. I’m getting used to having an iPod-sized bulge under the skin of my chest, and the pain has faded. I can even sleep on the same side as the implant now, which is crazy.

The bike test brought forth good news — last time, my score was 14, which is the threshold for transplant. This time, my score was 20.7 — not perfect, obviously, but above the threshold. Hearing that number was the happiest day of my life.

Through the process of grappling with my disorder, I’ve been doing what I’ve called “closing the loop.” That’s reaching out to old friends, righting past wrongs and indiscretions, generally dealing head on with issues that made me feel guilty or filled me with remorse for years. As a result, I feel like I’ve been granted a true second chance at life — I feel more at peace with myself than I’ve felt in years, and I generally believe I’m a better person for having gone through my experience. I even went to the doctor who misdiagnosed me and forgave him for that mistake — he needed to know what he did, but that I didn’t hold it against him. These things happen. There will be no law suit, or anything like that, though I suspect I will soon be finding another primary care physician.

The last loop to close is Archie, the splendid Boston Terrier that died last year. I’ve felt horrible for not having been able to make his death less painful, for not having gotten him to the vet in time. And I have felt a hole in my life without him — a need for the companionship of a good and trusted dog. I have had a dog for the past 20 years of my life — my year without one has been fraught with grief.

So last night was the first night that I slept with a dog burrowed under the covers next to me, or woke to having my face licked. Yesterday, Tina and I adopted a 9 month old Beagle named Charlie. He became a member of our family almost instantly — it was like he had always been with us. I will always miss Archie, but I love having a young, generally well-mannered beagle — hounds are such fine dogs, and there’s no finer sub-breed than that of the beagle, that hunted game in Great Britain in 200 AD and is one of the oldest breeds in history.

Charlie is young, but he’s a delightful friend. Full of energy, loving, intelligent. He enjoys exploring the neighborhood as we go on walks, and for the first time in a long time, my life feels complete.

I don’t know what will happen to me in the coming days, weeks, months, or years. But I am content that I have made peace with my demons, that I have a wonderful family and now a new companion animal, and that I have lived the best life I can live. Oh yeah, and my Halo 3 skills are back up. Could anyone ask for more?

Back in 1991, I had my greatest high school-era experience — I attended the Duke Young Writers Camp at Duke University. It was the summer before my Senior year, and my first glimpse of what college would be like. To say that I changed my outlook on life in the two week session, would be an understatement.

There was this kid there from Falls Church, VA named Mark. Mark was a real dick to me, knowing that I was from Hagerstown, and was quick to discount my claim that I lived near D.C. He was also one of those guys, who seems untouchable, morally superior and right about everything. He was always quick to condemn me and my friends (who, in retrospect, weren’t probably the best people for me to have aligned myself with, but I was only 16), and made himself out to be this great paragon of honesty and virtue.

Yet, for some reason I remember seeing Mark running through the quad with his girlfriend’s bra on, and how she cried because of the embarassment and humiliation. She was slightly overweight and her bra was enormous. It was classically juvenile and cruel, and did completely broke the illusion of Mark as the “good guy.” My friends were dicks, but they didn’t do things like that.

The lesson, of course, is that everyone — even the most morally upstanding like Mark — has the capacity to be a great douche bag.

I don’t know why I thought of this, but it flashed in my head while on the way to work this morning. It had absolutely nothing to do with the story that was on NPR, which was about Charles Darwin.

The hardest thing I’m going through right now is this constant state of uncertainty. I’ve been sick with a cold for about five or six days now. The problem is that cold symptoms are very very similar to heart failure symptoms. I’ve called the Heart Clinc twice now about it, and they assure me that if my family is sick (they are), then it’s probably all that’s wrong with me, too. I’m not gaining weight — I’m not swelling in my hands or feet. But I’m still unsure. Maybe this is heart failure again, maybe my heart is giving out despite the medicine?

Being chronically ill is like being placed in a state of constant limbo and panic. Every bout of sickness takes on greater weight. And with no contact with doctors for weeks on end, it’s hard to know where you stand, what your future may be. You can only hypothesize and worry, and I am a terrible worrier. In the end you guess that you don’t have a future.

I don’t know what I would do without Tina’s constant support and optimism. She makes me feel that I’m not alone, even though some pretty bad things have descended on me, and she can skillfully talk me off a cliff when panic sets in. Without her, I would have already lost this.

I’m sick of people giving me advice.  Yesterday, someone at work, after lecturing me naively about my low-sodium eating options as if I haven’t done 30 days of research already, advised me on getting my affairs in order.  In getting a will.

Now this person recently lost someone close to them, so they were thinking practically — what I needed to do to make things right for the people I leave behind.  And getting a will is on my list of things to do — but Christ, was it really any of their business to talk to me about it?  It’s one thing to be the survivor after a family member dies — God knows, I know what that means after losing my father — but it’s one thing to presumptuously counsel a person who actually might be dying.

Seriously, work colleagues should not be doing this.

Now here’s the thing, I don’t know if I’m dying.  All I know is that I have a weak heart and that I’m currently in fairly stable condition.  I had a right-side heart catherization a week ago, and the cardiologist told me it looked better than before.  Not normal, obviously — but better.  My gas levels and pressures were fine.  No one knows my risk level yet.  I may need an assist device, or I may not.  I may need a heart transplant, or I may not.  I may only need medication, or I may need more than that.  The point is, no one knows.  But this person treated me as if death was a forgone conclusion.  

Now, death is a foregone conclusion for every human being on earth.  But that doesn’t mean it’s happening tomorrow, this year, next year, ten years from now, etc.  Anyone can die at any time — shit happens.  Shit has happened to me.  I watched my father die of cancer for half a year, and I’ve recently quite suddenly lost a family member.  But I’m not dead yet.  And I’d prefer if people would stop treating me as if I’m going to die in the immediate future.  Because no one knows — I don’t know, my doctors don’t know.  I don’t even feel that bad.  

I have accepted that I may die, and I’ve also accepted that I may live.  I’ve come to terms with that — I’m not in denial.  But I believe very strongly that to get through this I have to fight death with everything I have.  And that means avoiding conversations with well-meaning douche bags who have no idea what it means to have been told things like “you may need a heart transplant” or “you may die.”  Until someone has said those words to you, keep your fucking advice to yourself.  I have enough advice from my top flight health care providers, thank you very much.  Nothing spoils morale more than someone treating you like you’re going to fail in the struggle you are now committed to.  

Even if this does eventually kill me, no one will be able to tell me that I just gave up or rolled over.  I am stubborn and driven.  As a boy, my father taught me how to suck it up and keep going despite pain and doubt.  I clawed my way out of a possible future of dead-end service industry jobs to work in the white collar professional world of Washington, D.C.  

I have modest goals — live to see my girls graduate from high school.  Get my master’s degree in communication.  Live as long as my dad — if I can make it to 50, then I will have succeeded.  That’s less than 20 years.  I can do this.

And if it means replacing my heart and a lifetime of immune-suppressing drugs then so be it.  I will do whatever it takes.

And anyone who wants to tell me otherwise, or focus on the worst possibilities over the best possibilities can go fuck themselves.

As John Darnielle once said, “I’m going to make it through this year if it kills me.”

I had my first doctor’s appointment today after being hospitalized nearly three weeks ago.  My cardiac team is about my age and really, really good.  I felt great about them — there’s something comforting about being treated like a peer, rather than being treated by some aging gray-haired cleric of medicine who treats you like a test subject.

But the reality hasn’t changed much.  I’m doing really well for someone who’s been through what I’ve been through. Almost normal overall — that’s pretty surprising to the docs given the state of my heart.  But a weak heart means different things for different people.  My body has healthy reserves that are keeping me going in the face of all this.  If I was in my 80’s, they said, this would be catastrophic.  But I can go back to work tomorrow.

But I’m not 100% by any stretch of the imagination.  What I have will not go away, and it will almost certainly not get better.  All I can hope for is stability — being able to function as normally as I can and live as long as I can.

It changes your worldview.  I can’t think about what I’ll be doing next year, or five years from now — I have to live in the moment, in the now.  I feel fine right now.  My heart is beating right now.  I’m alive right now.  I will not die today.

And if the now stretches on for another 10 – 20 years, then all the better.

Let’s hope that’s the case.

It’s a hard thing knowing that you’ve crossed the line between your mortality being something amorphous, vaguely present, but hard to define, and the moment that you learn that it is most definitely finite.  I’ve cross that line.  I am going to die.

On Christmas morning, I suffered heart failure at my mother’s house in Hagerstown, MD.  My lungs were clouded with fluid, my heart too weak to pump it off.  That problem was taken care of with medicine, but I was transported  home to Washington, D.C.’s Washington Hospital Center for further testing and evaluation.

It turns out that I have an extremely weak heart — probably have had one my whole life.  The question is not if it will give out, but when and how.  I’m on medication to help regulate it, but if it doesn’t work, I will be given a defibrillator implant to make sure that if my heart stops, it will resume.  I will also be placed on a transplant list for a new heart.

It is very hard for me to type these words, to accept them.  Just two weeks ago, I was a 34-year-old man with a chronic cough.  Now I’m a man who could die tomorrow, today, in a minute.  It’s hard to even bring these thoughts into my head — but they’re true.  Now I have to learn to accept them.

I have panic attacks — and the only thing that makes me feel better is anti-anxiety medicine.  I am afraid to get up and a walk around — is what I’m feeling a cardiac event or anxiety?  

I must regain control over my life — what’s left of it — but to do that I have to accept the fact that I will die.  Submit to it.  And only then will I be able to stand tall and move forward, marching toward the inevitable while still enjoy what’s left.  I don’t know if I’m up to the task.

Wish me luck.

No artist has moved me in recent years more than Damien Hirst.  When Tina and I discovered his work at the now-closed Satchi gallery in London, I was blown away by how terrible and moving it was.

Now he addresses the issue of the subprime mortgage crisis.  Those familiar with his past work will definitely get a kick out of it.

CLARIFICATION: This is obviously not a real piece by Damien Hirst. But it is funny nonetheless.

I have to say, I usually don’t feel too much like a voyeur when I read the blogs of strangers, but reading the blogs of people I used to know seems wrong, maybe even amoral. I feel oddly guilty, yet I can’t bring myself to stop.

For whatever reason, this person decided to end their association with you, and reading their blog offers a personal window into their life that they never intended for you. The general public maybe, but not former friends.

It’s a particular problem when said friend’s blog is hosted in WordPress and is improperly configured, and you know WordPress better than just about anybody. The urge to contact this former friend and politely suggest how they might improve their blog in the tiniest of ways is damn impossible to resist. And yet you imagine it’s that urge to help (but also, on some level, to prove that you know more than your former friend) that probably resulted in the rift to begin with.

I have to say, it was a bit of a relief to turn away from politics. Limiting myself to a few blogs in the morning, and no cable news coverage, allowed me to get a much-needed break from the day-to-day back and forth that was grinding away at my soul.

The polls seem to be trending in Obama’s favor — but as with McCain’s advantage two weeks ago, any kind of advantage in popular opinion so far out from Nov. 4 (which would mean any day other than Nov. 4) should really be taken with a grain of salt. This is going to bounce back and forth both ways until the election, and then it’ll come down to enthusiasm, GOTV, and Diebold’s representatives in Ohio.

Politico has a story up today about how race is impacting Democratic voters and their support for Obama. This is hardly a surprise, after all. An acquaintance of mine who has long been involved with political campaigns (and ran for congress himself many years ago) told me as early as last spring that this race will come down to whether or not white working class voters can bring themselves to vote for a black guy. If anything, this Politico story proves the point, but I if Obama’s core supporters — ie young people — are as underrepresented as I suspect they are in polling, the level of disadvantage may not be what people presume. I’m not saying it isn’t, I’m just saying that the outcome maybe surprising. We’ll see.

Robin Williams, who is rarely funny these days, had a moment of brilliance on the Late Show with David Letterman last night where he addressed the greatest fears of these voters about Obama. I’d post the YouTube if it was available, but it made me laugh. Let’s just say Williams revealed that Obama is secretly DMX.

I’m still kind of bummed about David Foster Wallace’s suicide. Stories about him continue to trickle out over the Internet and depress me whenever I read them.

I’ve been playing the SOCOM: Confrontation beta all week. It’s got a lot of problems still, but it’s more playable. If only my damn Bluetooth headset wouldn’t keep running out batteries …

David Foster Wallace, author of such books as Infinite Jest, Girl With Curious Hair, and A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again, is dead, of suicide.

Not sure how this news hits me — I greatly enjoyed Wallace’s essays and short stories. Infinite Jest was something I struggled to finish, and ultimately abandoned, but I appreciate his talents and the things he brought to literary fiction (such as copious footnotes). He certainly had great ideas and a unique command of language — he was a huge young literary star in the mid-1990’s only to be supplanted by David Eggers, Michael Chabon and the young writers of the McSweeny’s movement. But you couldn’t have had McSweeny’s without Wallace to pave the way.

One wonders why he decided to take his own life. It’s saddening, and of course, it adds to my overall sense of melancholy.