Do the Twist
Three months ago, my husband was scheduled for a procedure meant to correct some issues from a previous foot surgery. Two days prior, he came down with a bizarre virus requiring a brief stint in the hospital, lots of morphine, and a delay to his foot fix.
When he went in for the rescheduled foot surgery, the routine pre-op EKG showed his heartbeat mirrored a cold reptile’s. Although my husband is fit-as-a-fiddle, it’s unlikely his resting heart rate should be lower than a current Olympian’s one-third of his age.
My husband was completely asymptomatic and EKGs taken during his virus episode were completely normal. Consequently, had his original surgery not been rescheduled, it’s unlikely anyone would have noticed his pitiful heartbeat and ground level blood pressure. But they did, so he’ll have a quick-ish procedure to ensure his heartbeat better matches his warm-blooded mammal status for years and years to come.
I don’t want to chalk this up to luck. For one, I don’t think God or the universe or whatever moves this world around would be so arbitrary as to make some lucky and others not. I won’t stand for a world where chance or luck allows some people to be handed solutions for not-yet-problems, while others are slammed into the unexpected without a net. For that matter, luck is probably in the eye of the beholder. I’m sure my husband doesn’t find himself lucky. His foot still hurts and he hadn’t planned on heart surgery.
The only thing I can suggest is that these twists and turns are just part of our path. I don’t think we earn them or conjure them or deserve them or not deserve them, we just move alongside them the best we can. If we are given the opportunity to look back and recognize some twist gave us more space or another chance, hopefully we can remember this when a new turn shows up. Then we can welcome it the best we can and twist on down the road right beside it.
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Photo Credit: Local Studies Collection – LS Images: Woolfiesta. (April 14, 1963). Woolfiesta Midnight Dance. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/blue_mountains_library_-_local_studies/33156281140