The long and short story of an anomalous heart.

The concept of the anomalous heart arrived rather accidentally about a dozen years ago. The doctors said the heart probably had some blockage. So the plan was to give me a heart cath, take a look at the arteries and jam some stents in there to open it up.

So after lying on the table and somewhat dreamily watching a doctor go up and down my veins (he was humming so I knew it must be ok) the guy gave me his report. No blockage. That was the good news. But the next thing was kind of a surprise. One of my arteries plugged into the wrong place. It was supposed to plug in on the left side but it was on the right. I would later learn that this condition was called an anomalous coronary artery. It can be a rather deadly condition (and I’ll skip over the battery of tests that I had afterwards) but the book on it—in layman’s terms—if it hasn’t killed you young, there’s a good chance it’s not going to. Instead, you are going to just live with an anomalous heart.

—Sigh —

I know a metaphor when I see one. It wasn’t long before I realized that this condition explains everything: My repeated and usually futile attempts at that love thing; the wreckage of my relationships; years of angst piled up like heaps of trash; the cloying quest for peace at any cost. It was all just the fragments of an anomalous heart.

Did I get anywhere in spite of my condition? Kind of yes. Kind of no. This is not an up-from-the-ashes story of survival. If it is about overcoming or survival, then much of the time, I wasn’t very good at it. Instead, it is about how we don’t all have to be survivors who have reached a higher consciousness or have overcome so much that we live a life that is somehow better than yours, Those stories often come with the And You Can Too! Resolution. No. But it is about how there was something beautiful in embracing the anomalous heart, and all that it was and all that it still is,

For anyone who is interested enough in following along, I have divided this site into several categories. You can wander amongst them or read it all in a linear fashion—or mix and match. A brief rundown of those categories is that:

• Daily Reports are the day-to-day contemporary reports:
• Heart Murmurs are reports related to the history of the anomalous heart
• Broken heart are the reports related specifically to various relationships
• Slow Bleed is made up of various writings from along the way. (I didn’t know it at the time, but as a writer, I have documented this journey since the beginning of time.)
• Post-op is made up of confessions and reflections on them.

Last Notes:

Finally, my name is not on this site and it will be entirely reported and delivered anonymously. I think we can write as honestly as possible about ourselves and other things, but at some level, it is hard for the writer not to be self-aggrandizing to the name that appears above the words. Yes, it is my hope that this site acquires some readership, not because it bolsters or burnishes my name, but simply as a message to fellow travelers (the faint bleets of a still beating heart?) There will be pictures—maybe a lot of them because it is, after all, a visual medium, but none of those will be of my face.

In spite of the above, I do care what people think so I welcome questions, comments and personal shares. Let’s do this together.