Almost ten years ago I awoke to a painful experience. Thinking it was no more than an overly generous dose of indigestion and/or heartburn I became anxious, worrisome and aggravated. Thinking it might be a caused by a pocket of intestinal gas located high in my intestines I tried going to the bathroom to pass the gas or whatever might be in the way of relief. Nothing worked. The more I pushed and strained, the more I understood I was executing a dangerous activity called the Valsalva Maneuver.
The Valsalva is dangerous. “Many heart attacks which occur in bathrooms have been linked to the Valsalva Maneuver, which is closely associated with sitting toilets. The increased pressure in the thoracic cavity reduces the amount of blood flowing into the thoracic cavity, especially in the veins leading to the right atrium of the heart. The maneuver can cause blood clots to detach, bleeding, irregular heart rhythms and cardiac arrest.” (askville by amazon 2013)
I woke my wife and told her I was in trouble. She called 911. From there it went downhill. I was sent to hospital and managed to succumb to a near three minute absence of unsupported oxygen as a blood clot ceased all blood flow from the point where it was lodged in the right atrium of my heart. My atrium “quivered” without successfully beating for an extended period of time. Most people don’t “convert” or recover from this anomaly. It requires electroshock, great skill and no small amount of luck (prayer?) to convert a person suffering from full-blown Atrial Fibrillation. They “bagged” me and kept trying to push a catheter through the clot so as to add a stent. They finally broke through, instilling an alloy mesh to keep the arterial corridor open and pushing oxygen enriched blood to the rest of the heart. I spent weeks in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with experienced Cardiac Care (Specialist) Nurses marveling at the fact I was alive.
Things are better now, but some after effects linger. My train of thought derails occasionally and I must be helped to get back on subject. I forget the words I want to use in speaking and writing causing great anxiety and more than a little outright fear for what it means. I’ll take an extensive list of expensive heart medications until I die. I live at risk of suffering a stroke at any moment.
Life sucks, but it is life and I must admit, having suffered a near-death experience: I’ll take life anytime.
Questions arise in my mind at times. Was I thrown back because God isn’t finished with me, or because he didn’t want me, or because the devil was scared I’d get there and start an insurrection? I don’t know but my relationship with God has improved (?) as I finally learned my place and it’s in no way god-like.
It’s something I’d love for Beaurat Obama to endure. The epiphany understood after the eyes open and you fully realize you’re still alive as the cold darkness enveloping you recedes is startling and enlightening. That sudden and intuitive understanding brought about by something I believe everybody endures (death, near-death whatever) and being allowed to return is instructive.
Obama’s been stomping around Washington like a blinded war-horse. He knows he should be moving toward the sound of the battle, but his blind attack at anything and everything he senses in his way has driven him into the heart of a battle he can’t understand because he’s never been involved directly with any similar experience in his life. He knows the theories of battle. He believes he understands the mechanics of it. He’s even deluded enough to believe his grasp of the situation is fluid enough he can distill victory consistently from his blundering, stumbling missteps and lurching performance aimed at getting past the enemy. All the while he’s trampling, crushing and injuring his own troops working valiantly to fight the battle for him.
Obama is as much the clot stops the free flow of ideas in Washington as he is the war-horse. He’s plugged up the free-flow of ideas in favor of ideology. He’s staunched the flow and movement of necessary nutrient ideas to the control center (the brain) causing it to starve for what it needs to survive. American foreign policy is stumbling. America’s lurching ahead blindly with excuses for the failure of ObamaCare to launch effectively. Now he’s nearly solidified, mired his place in history as a Shakespearean foil suffering the fate he deserves for his ignominious assault on the American public. He’s Hamlet in his insanity, He’s Macbeth in his duplicity and avarice for power. He’s Richard the Third hopelessly rushing into battle only to be wasted on the field of battle he never really understood was as ugly and as intricate a hell as could ever be entered.
Even if Obama (the clot) is pushed through and it allows America’s life-blood to freely flow again; there will be economic, diplomatic and existential shortcomings for a long time after he’s gone from the field.
His legacy will endure unless America stops denying it elected a fraud and demands responsible, integrity laden leadership in Washington.
Thanks for listening
