The last blog I wrote was about Will Smith taking a swing at Chris Rock at the Academy Awards. What year was that? Feels like ancient history, considering all that is happening in the world. In our heads. And hearts.
Well I’ve missed writing and connecting with you. The “music thing” has kind of taken over my life and this worker-bee loves to work.
I still do one gig a week, teaching beginning ukulele at a local retirement community. Our enthusiastic little band of strummers scat on Route 66 and go all country with Jambalaya. This is my Friday reminder, up close and personal, how music heals us. One strum at a time. Here and then gone.
The CC Strummers are busy and growing. It’s thrilling that our players, both local and totally not local, are forming their own groups, performing and teaching the stuff we learn in our Zoom classes. A few of them tell me they hear “my voice” in their head. Quick, call a shrink! But I hear the voices of my teachers too. Long gone, they are. Flawed, wonderful human beings who changed my life and didn’t always give me the best advice.
What a kaleidoscope of contradictions, this teaching business. I make mistakes. We all do. I don’t always get it right the first time. Do you? I change my mind and frequently ask “what do YOU think?” because I trust that we draw inspiration from the same well. We may scoop with different buckets and what happens next? Who knows… But aren’t we all students? And teachers? Elders? Elders-to-be?
Our windy rendition of “Sweet Caroline” at The WLA Farmers’ Market will blow you away.
The CC Strummers had an eventful November…The weather is supposed to be “breezy” but halfway through our last show of the year at The WLA Farmers’ Market, the wind suddenly whips up and sends various objects flying through the air including our song sheets, music stands, chairs, hats. But we soldier on and laugh through it. Maybe if this wind storm had been a tornado I would have yelled “RUN!” But shows can be about the ways we endure, too. It feels like we’re the band on the Titanic. We know how this is going to end, but we keep playing anyway. Because that’s what musicians do. Click here to watch.
I’m playing along with the bass and drum tracks to my song “Pony Ride” with Loki, the puppy-muse close by. Everyone should have a therapy dog on duty when they are recording!
And would you believe I’m recording again?
Over the years I’ve written several instrumentals on the ukulele with pretty melodies you can actually hum. But I’ve also had to “practice, practice, practice” as if I REALLY AM going to play at Carnegie Hall. Well MY Carnegie Hall is the spare room at my producer’s house. Together we’ve been working on my album, Looking Glass, for months. Soon my graphic artist will assemble the “gift wrapping” and while that’s happening, I’m preparing easier arrangements and video tutorials so YOU can learn to play these songs too. I’ll keep you in the loop as things progress. Please Click Here to watch.
Friday evening is date night with my sweet husband. There are meet-and-greets with friends, trips to Trader Joe’s because, when it comes to meal preparation, I need all the help I can get.
I am calling this “Ukulele Joy Around the World” and it was painted by one of our CC Strummers, Eve Myles.
Don’t laugh but this schedule is my idea of “cutting back” after I had a heart attack in the middle of the pandemic. Life is messy and complicated. When there is so much suffering and s-c-a-r-y in the world, it can be a slippery slope into the land of despair, but I’m so grateful that WE, you and me, are still here.
I send weekly newsy emails with class materials specifically to The CC Strummers. But when I send a blog, it goes to everyone on my master list…which means a lot of you haven’t heard from me for quite a while and may have thought I ran off to join the circus…
Please know I’ve missed this connection and hearing from you. I’ve missed the “ahh” feeling I get being part of our shared online ohana.
But if you would like to join The CC Strummers’ elist and receive my weekly missives (or unsubscribe), please email me. Our Zoom classes are on holiday break and will resume the second week in January, 2024.
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“After all that we’ve been through in the world, I feel like we all want a place to be safe and connected to other human beings. Everyone has a thirst for community.” Beyonce.
From “Beyonce. Amen” by Michael Eric Dyson from The New York Times, December 3, 2023.
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So here we are, on the cusp of the unknown…also called THE NEW YEAR! I’m girding myself for a BUMPY ride in 2024 and leaning into our community, and leaning into music, to uplift, reassure, embrace us in the fullness of this moment. May we flourish. May we endure. And may we strum happy…
“This will be our reply to violence: To make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” Leonard Bernstein
I’m watching the Academy Awards, answering emails and cleaning my desk. That’s when I see Jada Pinkett Smith, sitting in the swanky front row with her husband Will Smith. The next presenter, Chris Rock, lays into her with a lame joke about her hair. She’s rolling her eyes and looking very pissed-off. Hubby is laughing, kind of fakey-like. Until he isn’t. That’s when he bounds on stage, all huffy-puffy, and smacks Chris Rock in the noggin. My computer screen goes blank. OMG was that a comedy bit or was it for real? A few seconds later I see Chris Rock cradling his face and making a joke. Because he is a COMEDIAN.
This is what I’m thinking: I hope Will Smith has his therapist on speed dial.
What a Rorschach Test moment for humanity, huh. I am so devastated by Ukraine, overwrought about Covid and global warming. Add to that toxic politics, racism and a litany of other troubles. So I appreciate a news story that doesn’t include annihilation or leaves me feeling utterly powerless. But as I watch that smack, something inside of me crackles. I think a lot of people are triggered. For a lot of different reasons.
Suddenly old memories wash over me, starting with this one: I’m in my early twenties, already working in piano bars and here I am, auditioning as a contestant on a new game show. One of the guest celebrities, a middle-aged comedienne, rags on me, making jokes about my appearance, especially my unruly red hair. All for laughs, of course, but I am mortified and her verbal volleys register quickly on my face. And not in a good OR entertaining way. In fact, after the show, she apologizes profusely and explains her process of making funny. At someone else’s expense.
Lesson #1: Don’t take it personally. Lesson #2: It’s not personal. Lesson #3: It’s probably about them and not you.
Unfortunately I am taking this whole thing too personally to process any of these lessons.
Fast forward. I am a middle-aged woman attending a five-day meditation retreat where everyone is supposed to be silent and follow the rules. Let me tell you about these retreats… The work is to lean inward. To watch the tangle of stories we tell ourselves. To notice how our emotions can go from calm to cuckoo and back again in one thirty-minute sit. To get cozy with the silence we desperately run from in our everyday life.
Not so easy…
But sometimes the clouds of our messy lives part, the sun shines through and butterflies circle overhead.
Until they don’t.
That’s when the walls close in and the personal stuff gets really big, menacing even, and blown out of proportion.
But at least the food is good….
Well no butterflies for me. Early into the retreat I overhear a couple participants saying something disparaging. About me. Never mind there is no talking here, you jerks. A match has been struck and suddenly my body is on freaking fire. It feels like I can ignite a hundred barbeques by just pointing my fingers.
The storytelling has begun! My mother has arrived in my head along with a cast of others from my past. Many of us know how it feels to be the butt of a joke or worse, the victim of someone’s loathsome behavior. It feels awful and these awful feelings can go unresolved, unprocessed and stuffed deep into our bodies. For maybe a lifetime. Or until there is a really big fire.
I’ve gotten angry in my life, but nothing like this. I am almost delirious with rage and my body is throbbing with a kind of energy that both terrifies and enlivens me. One thing for sure, the original verbal indiscretion, whatever it was, does not warrant this kind of feverish response.
It makes me wonder if I’m tapping into something bigger than myself. A collective fury that is about this moment and a billion other moments that stretch back in time. Sounds a little woo-woo, huh. But I also know this power surge is not good for my health, that I’m furious enough to smack someone and have to DO something to dissipate the energy.
I put on my sneakers and slam around the grounds. Up and down hills. Between buildings. Across parking lots. It takes all afternoon of bam-bamming over cement and through dirt for the anger to finally burn through and out of my body. I topple into my little retreat bed, a limp, exhausted mess.
Many years later, I am still processing what happened to me that day. I am very grateful for this experience and what I learned. I also hope it never happens again and can say the same thing about that smack.
Lesson #1: Don’t take it personally. Lesson #2: It’s not personal. Lesson #3: It’s probably about them and not you. Lesson #4: I don’t have to believe everything I think.
So let’s enjoy our topsy-turvy lives and rejoice that a microphone isn’t set up in our heads for everyone to hear!
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Ever wonder “How To Stop Taking Things Personally”? Read all about it in this short article from Forbes Magazine. CLICK HERE
One year ago, Friday, March 12, 2021, I had big plans for the day — two Zoom gigs and a Covid surge take-out dinner with my sweetie, wrapped and ready to go from our favorite Mexican Restaurant, Paco’s Taco’s.
But…
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,” wrote John Lennon. Instead of enchiladas, I stared down a baby bowl of tepid vegetable soup that a guy from dietary delivered to my hospital room.
Many of you know that my husband drove me to the emergency room at U.C.L.A. early that morning because, well, something didn’t feel right. I was experiencing strange heartburn in my throat, tightness in my neck and jaw, mild pain that radiated down both arms, a little pushy-pushy in my chest. No drama, no clutching. But all this stuff happened like an arpeggio in music, one note after another until the whole dissonant chord was ringing. When I circled the living room trying to walk it off, I felt sick to my stomach and was breathing hard. “It’s a panic attack,” I told myself, rather unconvincingly, because I don’t get panic attacks.
Like many people, “denial” is my first strategy of defense. It’s a freaking miracle that denial gave way, quickly, to begrudging acceptance. I swallowed an aspirin and got to the hospital where I tried to play down the whole thing as the emergency room nurse greeted me at the door and asked what’s going on. “Oh I feel like an idiot being here, but…”
In minutes the nurses and ER doc were huddled around my EKG. X-Rays were ordered, an ultrasound of my heart. They started an IV immediately and brought on the blood thinners and God knows what else. The cardiologist arrived and did his twenty questions thing. It would take hours before a diagnosis was made because, for one thing, I was NOT “presenting” as someone in acute cardiac distress.
Well guess what…
I was having a heart attack, right there in the emergency room and if I hadn’t gotten help in time, there is a chance I would not have survived. The big firehose of a coronary artery, the LAD (Lateral Anterior Descending), also known as “The Widow Maker,” keeps a big hunk of the heart watered and fed. If it goes, so do you. Mine was 80% blocked with sticky goo.
The doc in the cardiac heart catheterization lab gave me a full report after the procedure and didn’t mince words. I have to take pills to lower my cholesterol (forever) AND blood thinners for one year otherwise my brand new stent may fail and I can kiss my ass goodbye.
So March 12th is not only the anniversary of my heart attack, but it’s the day I can THROW AWAY the Plavix. Bring on the trumpets!
For the past year, a dinky paper cut would bleed until cows fly. Mysterious bruises — colorful splotches of black, blue, purple, red — appeared on my body, out of nowhere. Did I bump myself? Walk into a wall? Take up wrestling? Maybe…maybe…nooooo. My hemoglobin is still in the dumper. I know this is a nothingburger price to pay for being alive. I also know that too many women (and men) do not survive their first heart attack. I wrote several blogs about what happened and lots of people shared their own stories with me. Sometimes things ended well and sometimes they didn’t.
News Flash: According to the American Heart Association, heart disease kills one woman every 80 seconds in the United States. And half of all women who experience a heart attack have no warning signs and only subtle symptoms. “Unfortunately, this has led to worse outcomes in women with heart disease compared to men.” Cardiologist Marcella Calfon Press, MD, PhD, co-director of UCLA Women’s Cardiovascular Health Center
Still sitting down on the job
I thought I’d bounce back quickly and resume my way-too-busy schedule. Like NOW. But even while I was building my stamina in Cardiac Rehab, I had to take naps to make it through the day. As a performer and teacher I’m used to standing up in front of an audience and bopping around. But it took nine months before I could jettison the chair and bop once more. Then there’s the “head space” thing. Stuff I thought I had worked through years ago — family traumas — came roaring back and almost knocked me out of orbit.
When something like a heart attack (or fill-in-the-blank) happens, it’s like a body blow that throws you off balance or flat on the floor or over the edge. I remember laying on that hard gurney under the flying angiogram machine as they inserted a stent into my heart and thinking, uh-oh…this could be it.
The curtains parted a little and I got a real good look at the BIG PICTURE. That I am a renter here and the lease will end. That everyone I love will leave, some way or another. Every thing I cherish has a short shelf-life, even when I measure it in spins around the sun. Every tasty bite of guacamole…chew, swallow, gone. Disappearing into the wild, whirling cauldron of life. 24/7 alchemy, it is.
I don’t need to look any farther than our beloved ukulele to feel the kiss of impermanence. We strum four strings, a chord, make a beautiful sound and it ripples in our bones. But almost immediately it changes or melts into the next strum or just fades away. Back to silence.
The best I can do is embrace this moment — this pixilated, messy, terrifying, dazzling moment. The best I can do is trust that somehow, somewhere woven deep into the tapestry of life, everything is okay. Even when it’s not.
“How wonderful to be who I am, made out of earth and water, my own thoughts, my own fingerprints—all that glorious, temporary stuff.” Mary Oliver
Thanks to Stuart and Doug for inviting me to be the guest on their recent Ooktown Podcast. I share a few laughs, some stories, songs and sing my one hit, “It’s A PMS Kind of Day.” You can click here to watch the video version or click here to listen to the Podcast (Ep.105: The PMS Song) on iTunes. Enjoy the whimsy!!!
Click this picture to watch The CC Strummers play “We’ll Meet Again” at our last Jackson’s Cafe Jam.
The CC Strummers are going strong, with four live jams a month and two Zoom classes every week (Monday and Thursdays). New players in SoCal are joining us in person and others from around the world are logging onto Zoom. This is definitely one of those silver lining things that happened because the pandemic happened. I am grateful beyond words for our community of players. We are helping each other bear the heaviness in the world. And feel the joy. Speaking of joy… Click here to watch us play and sing my own song Brand New Day at our most recent jam.
The staff in Cardiac Rehab at UCLA offered me a cap and gown for this momentous occasion: Graduation. I thought they were kidding. They weren’t kidding nor were they laughing as hard as I was… Nevertheless, they broadcast Pomp and Circumstances through the sound system, handed me a certificate and parting gifts, including a Bruin-blue cardiac graduate tee-shirt.
But the best swag came at the end of my session when I slapped my big bare feet on the magic machine that measures everything that’s happening in my body. The good, the gooder, the OMG.
I took this same test my first day of rehab. They handed me paddles with electric sensors which I grasped tightly in my hands. I stood motionless, like a scared statue, as the machine went buzzzzzzzzzz. It was one minute of “what the hell is this?”
Well I soon found out, as they presented me with the computer readout — a cascade of numbers indicating what’s happening “down there.” A friend once said: “My brain would have killed my body years ago if I didn’t need it for transportation.”
Would you like to know how much fat is in your right arm? How about the amount of muscle mass in your left leg? Water in your trunk? (28 pounds for me).
It all looked like gibberish, but on graduation day when I took the test again, the improvement was stunning. Even the staff was over the moon. I lost fat, gained significant muscle, and exclaimed to myself “holy sh_t, this stuff works!”
Treadmills, circa 1920’s
How did I get here?
Well, for three months, two times a week, I arrive at 6 effing 30 in the morning, step on the scale by the front desk, announce my weight for all to hear, because that’s what we do, help the nurse attach the ECG leads to my chest, and receive instructions from the drill sergeant, er, Steve. I glide into a cardio routine for the next 45 minutes — the NuStep recumbent bike, the treadmill and what I call the arm-whirligig-from-hell. It’s like a bicycle for arms. If I never see this machine again it will be too soon.
All through the workout, the nurses are checking my blood pressure and asking me to assess how pooped I am (my words) on the Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion Scale. At first I don’t have a clue how I’m feeling, except scared that I am going to have another heart attack, but they are watching over me, hovering sometimes, so I begin to relax a little and report that I’m about a 13 — working hard but not keeling over (my words).
One of my favorite parts of Cardiac Rehab
After cardio, one of the exercise physiologists shows me how to lift weights. The right way. When to breathe in, when to breathe out and how to focus on specific muscle groups. I’m learning to get as much bang-for-my-buckout of each lift. CLICK HERE to watch UCLA’s Cardiac Pulmonary Strength Training video with lovely Lauren leading you in upper and lower body exercises.
My living room gym
What I love about this weight lifting regime is that all I need is a chair, a few dumbbells and a pair of ankle weights.
One rehab morning I was experiencing a little chest pain and let everyone know about THAT. My blood pressure was okay, the ECG normal. The exercise physiologist and I suspect this is a musculoskeletal thing and not related to my heart.
He mentions that his wife, who plays viola, has been practicing mightily to get her chops back, post pandemic and…wouldn’t you know…getting chest pain. I’m not proud to admit that it hadn’t occurred to me that some of my upper body discomfort is from playing a musical instrument, albeit a small one, and this focused physical activity includes repetition and postural adjustments. What a relief to know what I’m dealing with.
Then he tells me about trigger points.Like what…? Apparently there are points on our bodies that are like conduits of energy and manipulating these spots can help relieve tension in different muscle groups. He has me order a couple lacrosse balls on Amazon. The first time I lay my upper butt on a ball and hit that point — Zap! Pow! Bam!
But after a few seconds of pressure, I can feel my muscles relax, like they are saying “thank you…thank you.” I am absolutely stunned!
So now I do my trigger ball regime almost every morning. Butt, back, upper chest. Who would have thought that cardiac rehab would open an expressway between my head and body.
In lieu of the fancy cardio machines, I trundle daily around my condo community for a whopping thirty-minutes and encounter all kinds of wildlife (crows, ducks, lizards, rabbits) that I know aren’t paying the monthly assessment fees. Mr/Ms Squirrel reminds me to hydrate, although not quite THIS way…
The heart! This fist-sized miracle machine weighs all of 7 to 15 ounces and beats over 100,000 times a day. Let me say that again. ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND TIMES A DAY. In one year your heart, my heart, will pump enough blood to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool.
In all honesty, before all this happened I barely gave my heart a passing how-dee-do except to refer to it as my built-in drum machine. But I’m alive today, you’re alive today because our hearts are beating. It’s kind of that simple.
And this bears repeating — how that Friday morning last March unraveled. As I was sipping a cup of tea and cleaning my computer keyboard I suddenly felt a knot in my throat, a little achy pain in my neck and jaw. Then it spread to my arms and chest. When I stood up, a wave of nausea rolled over me and I was feeling just a wee bit winded. I tried to talk myself out of it: “This is a panic attack. I got gigs today. People are depending on me to show up.”
Sound familiar?
How I crossed the threshold between denial and acceptance SO FAST I’ll never know but within an hour and a half I was in the emergency room at UCLA. Having a heart attack.
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. My symptoms were mild. I was not clutching my chest in pain nor gasping for breath. But something was wrong and I knew it. Since that day I have heard stories of women who had similar symptoms, women who waited too long to get help. They didn’t make it.
Let’s all give our hearts a whole lot of love.
Postscript:
The way I process Life 101 is to write about it. Tap-tap-tapping on the computer keyboard is my therapy. Let me tell you, it really helps. The remarkable bonus is that you are reading these blogs too and finding yourself in the stories. Thank you for being there!
These are the blogs that got me through the past few months:
Big fun happenings are happening in my world and I want to keep YOU in the loop!
This Thursday, September 16, 2021, from 5:00 to 6:00pm (PST), I am the guest teacher at The Ukulele Kids Club Academy. It’s FREE and online! So all you have to do is sit your butt down and play along. I remember the first class I taught with the UKC Academy because so many of you showed up and it just felt like home.
Over the years, the CC Strummers have donated $9000 to The UKC, which delivers ukuleles to pediatric hospitals near and far. Our designated hospital is UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital. We keep them stocked with ukes and are looking forward to doing rounds with the music therapist again, playing for the kids and giving ukuleles away.
As a musician who has made a living working as a solo performer, it’s been quite a journey learning how to create ensemble arrangements that are accessible, challenging and surprising. At the same time.
Thursday we are going to take this “arranging” trip together and learn how to make a song your own.
CLICK HERE to register for the class and receive the Zoom link. I’m looking forward to seeing you!
Like many of you, I am stepping gingerly back into the world, along with many of the other players in The CC Strummers. We are more comfortable meeting and singing outside and have landed at a location that is ready-made for a Kanikapila–music, community and FOOD.
Jackson’s Cafe is located in a business park and on Sunday it is the only business open so we have their big umbrella-decorated patio and sprawling parking lot to ourselves.
Our twice-a-month gatherings are growing and turning into this “feel good thing” that so many of us are craving in this upside-down world.
So I shared The CC Strummers’ story with a local television station in Los Angeles, Spectrum News. Kristopher Gee, one of the on-air journalists, emailed back saying his producers are excited and can he attend one of the jams?
Well let me tell you, Kristopher stayed for two hours. He interviewed just about anyone who was willing to talk on camera and took a truckload of videos.
Then he culled the whole thing down to three minutes. That’s three minutes that will make you smile! I think our ninety-one year old Lillian gets the Oscar for her ad lib about running off with a drunken sailor during the pandemic. And then there’s my oratory about snot…
CLICK HERE to watch the video on Kristopher’s FB Page. Enjoy!
And a great big _thank you_ to Kristopher and Spectrum News!
The CC Strummers continue to meet twice a week online for our Monday Beginners Ukulele Class and our Thursday Intermediate/Beginners Ukulele Class. Players join us from around the world. This has certainly been the silverlining of this pandemic for me. The boundaries of distance and time are increasingly irrelevant. Our classes are a refuge, a safe space, where we leave our differences behind and make music together.
CLICK HERE to learn more about these Zoom Classes.
The next online session of my intermediate level OnGoing Ukulele Workshop & Jambegins Saturday, September 25, 2021 from 10:30am to noon (PST). We take songs and fancy them up, with chords, strums, embellishments. We learn how to improvise a solo and create a chord melody. We are swimming in the deeper waters of music . Confident beginners and intermediate players are invited to take the deep dive with us. CLICK HERE for more information.
On a personal note, I finally finished Cardiac Rehab and am still alive. That blog is coming soon!
My relationship with time has always been a little wobbly but since the pandemic, wobbles have turned into free-falls and bumpy rides through the land of “what is time anyway?”
This is my way of saying I don’t remember when “that morning” happened. Was it spring, summer, fall, winter? I don’t know. But it’s easy to flash back to the moment.
There he is, one of our CC Strummers, a big teddy bear of a guy, gripping a giant coffee in one hand and his ukulele in the other. You can’t miss his mischievous Cheshire Cat smile because it kind of lights up the room.
Then he speaks.
“Cali, something wonderful happened to me this morning.” Pause…pause…pause… He leaves me dangling over the edge of this conversational cliff as I mentally scroll through the possibilities here.
“Okay, okay…so what happened?” I finally ask.
“I WOKE UP!”
Well I hear this and burst into laughter, like snorting kind of laughter. (I thought he was going to say he got laid…)
This Morning Something Wonderful Happened To Me (I Woke Up) with Cali, Michael, Lyn, Debbie, Toni, Sheila-Sheila, Ethan, Tom, Nancy, Nomi, Doug, Chris, Lin and Marilyn. Click this picture to watch the video.
Please tell me how do we miss “the obvious?” That of course…we woke up this morning. But it doesn’t take long for my ha-ha-ha to level out and kerplop into the mortality thing.That IF we have the good fortune to wake up one more day, the rest is gravy. That we are renters in this apartment building of life and sooner or later we have to turn in the key. So being here NOW is a pretty big deal.
These little flashes of whooo-whooo happen once in a while and I try to capture them for keepsies. When I was a kid growing up in Washington D.C. I loved to catch lighting bugs and slide them into an empty mayonnaise jar. My father used a screwdriver to poke air holes in the cap so they could breathe. The next morning I woke up. The bugs did not.
It’s taken a long time for that lesson to sink in. Once a flesh and blood moment of “aha” is snared in a net of words, well…poof. It loses it’s electrical charge. I still scribble in my journal anyway because I can’t help myself. But in this case, I decided to write that waking up thing into a song so I would remember. Really remember. And that’s how “This Morning Something Wonderful Happened to Me (I Woke Up)” came about.
When I started performing my song at gigs I noticed something very interesting. Other people had the same reaction that I did when I first heard the words. They laughed, like “oh yeah…right…” And then they didn’t.
But now they sing along. Every time. With joy! Who can ask for more?
It’s the yin and yang of life, made visible. A little darkness in light; a little light in darkness. “And maybe all is well, even when it is not.” (Yep, I wrote that into the song).
With the help of Michael Kohan, The CC Strummers’ video-creator, editor-extraordinaire, the bass player too and several CC Strummers who cheerfully played in the sand box with us, we have come up with a marvelous visual expression of this deeply felt observation. CLICK HERE to watch and please share it with your peeps!
Here today, gone tomorrow! Whoop it up folks!
This Morning Something Wonderful Happened To Me (I Woke Up)
is from my ukulele CD, Smile, Smile, Smile.
Ask Alexa to play it for you or check out Amazon and Apple Music.
“All that you touch you Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change.” —Octavia Butler
The parking garage entrance to UCLA Medical Center at 6:30am and the Covid screener
My phone alarm goes off at 5:30am. I am jolted awake by Al Jarreau crooning his song Mornin’ because it sure is… I’ve been doing this “deliver-the-newspaper-kind-of-early” for the last couple of months so I can get to Cardiac Rehab on time every Monday and Wednesday.
One of the lovely perks of being in “the first session” of the day is that LA traffic is mercifully spare, the gentle quiet that blankets the city is rustling a little but still cozy and I snag my favorite parking place in the subterranean garage at UCLA because there is hardly anybody there. It’s just plain wonderful, especially since early morning is my “leave-me-alone” time.
But I do look forward to greeting the covid screener who holds court in front of the elevators. One more time she points her electronic thermometer at my forehead and sincerely goes through her spiel.
Have you had any of the following within the past two weeks:
*A fever. Nope *Loss of smell or taste? No. Right now it smells like a parking garage and tastes like Crest. *Muscle aches? Well nothing that screams OMG. *Sore throat? No my throat is happy today. *Shortness of breath? Just when I read the news alerts on my phone. *Chills? Um, not since the rollercoaster ride at Magic Mountain.
*A new or unusual headache? Nah. Just the old, usual stuff.
*Have you been in close contact with someone who has been diagnosed with Covid-19. Not that I know of. But frankly no one is telling…
And so it goes. I once saw an interviewer on television ask Tony Bennett if he gets bored singing “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” over and over, thousands of times, and he said “No! Because each audience is different.” I think this young lady is channeling Tony.
Recently I asked the screener how many times a day she recites this litany of Covid questions and she said about 50 but her friend, who sits upstairs in the lobby, goes through the laundry list maybe 200 times. She adds that almost everyone answers NO to these questions. Apparently we save the truth for our doctors. Well let’s hope…
I know this isn’t something that most of us think about. It’s an almost inconsequential by-product of this heart-wringing pandemic. But look at the numberless ways the past months have impacted our lives. Have changed us. The screener tells me that she hears these questions in her sleep. Fifty years from now I bet she’ll be able to recite them again. Oh the magic of repetition.
I’m about two-thirds through my Cardiac Rehab program and it’s been an education and a half. Having a heart attack is the scare of a lifetime but this rehab program has also been a life-changer. In a very good way. I am surrounded by experts—the nurses, exercise physiologists, a nutritionist on call and a psychologist whose door is almost always open for a speedy talk-it-out session.
My first day in rehab she introduces herself and I’m thinking “oh isn’t that nice…” and skulk away. Many of you know that I am no stranger to therapy and I say hooray for anyone who makes this inside-passage and takes the time to dig in the dirt with a trained someone at your side. And if you grew up in a “dysfunctional yurt” like I did, therapy can be like a cool glass of water after a day in the desert.
But I’m in Cardiac Rehab to build up my stamina, get my ass back into an exercise routine and not keel over on the treadmill. Self-introspection is not on my to-do list.
But…
Something has been weighing heavily on my mind. And my body. California is emerging from the oppression of this pandemic and I get an email from the Senior Center in Culver City saying they are planning to open again and want to know if I’m coming back to teach.
My ukulele group, The CC Strummers, was born there. In the craft room. It was May 2010 and I was a first-time teacher, teaching a two month Ukulele For Beginners Class. It was supposed to be a one and done kind of thing. But anyone who plays in a ukulele group knows something happens that is almost transcendent. A gathering of people with different stories and opinions and histories come together and turn the whole musical enterprise into something that resembles a family. A family you choose. “Well let’s call ourselves The CC Strummers” I tell them and we keep right on going. And growing.
As we got bigger The Senior Center provided larger rooms to accommodate all our players and then we took it to the streets, literally. Flash mobs, shows, music therapy, teaching middle school kids how to play. We were honored for our work in a ceremony at City Hall. Then March 2020 happened and it all stopped.
But not for long. I got a Zoom account and brought all my classes online. Suddenly everyone, anywhere could learn to play ukulele with The CC Strummers. No age restrictions. No where-are-you-on-the-map limitations. We became an international group. And still are…
How do I put the Genie back in the bottle? I want our group to be open to players of all ages, like it is online and NOT like it is at The Senior Center. I want us to be in control of our destiny and not tangled in bureaucracy. But I’m mightily nervous about “leaving home” and the security it provides, not to mention the lovely rooms where we play. This decision will not only affect me but a whole lot of other people too. Going independent feels like growing up, which I have assiduously avoided all my life.
I am losing sleep over this so after my workout I nab the psychologist for a little chat. We only have a few minutes so I lay on the spiel quicky-quicky. And this is what she says to me: “You are a cardiac patient now. You have to put YOUR OWN heart first. Not anyone else’s.”
My first thought is “you have GOT to be kidding?” Like I almost never do that… What an earthshaking proposition!
“Feel into your heart. Your body will tell you what to do,” she continues. Yeah I know that sounds all whoo-whoo and I can only guess what my face looks like right now because I’m kind of shocked. But I take a deep breath anyway and have my answer. It is clear and concise. We are going independent.
I don’t think anyone of us needs to be a cardiac patient, or any kind of patient for that matter, to heed this advice. After all the flight attendant instructs the mother to put HER oxygen mask on first.
Isn’t it amazing how one person can pop into our lives for a few moments, a day, a week and say something that completely blows the dust out of our eyes?
That happened to me once before, when I was working in a local hospital emergency room at night, attending nursing school during the day and agonizing over my life because all I wanted to do was make music. There was no one in my corner, encouraging me to chuck it all for that crazy music thing. So here I am, face to face with the ER supervisor for my six-month employee evaluation when she stops mid-sentence and says “you seem really upset…what’s wrong?” Well, busted. And o-o-oh the music spiel pours out of me. It’s a gusher.
Then silence. Until she speaks…
“If you don’t do it now, you never will.” Her words slice into my heart. With every cell in my body I know she is right and that afternoon I drop out of nursing school and am soon performing in piano bars.
What kind of life are we living, if we are living someone else’s instead?
The CC Strummers are finding a way. One of our players has generously opened her party-size backyard for twice-monthly jams. Other players found a restaurant patio where we have room to stretch out, eat delicious sandwiches and entertain a built-in audience every other Sunday. Click here to watch a song we performed at our last jam.
Still others are combing the neighborhood, scouting for an indoor location that can support our ohana and not cost an arm and another arm to rent. The welcome mat is out for people of all ages to learn and play ukulele with us. I feel like it’s not just me carrying the weight of this group anymore. We are in this together, surviving the pandemic, meeting in person and online. Taking it to the streets.
My journey through post-heart attack land is a traveler’s work-in-progress. I’m learning more and more about the backroads and red flags in Cardio Land. So here’s the latest…
I’m still alive! And so are you. The rest is gravy. Or icing on the cake. Neither of which I should be eating now…
Two months ago I did not know that heart disease is the number one killer in the United States. For women and men. Never crossed my mind. But now it’s personal and I really understand how we ladies are especially proficient at talking ourselves out of it. We’re too busy. Not today buddy…
The force may be strong in Luke Skywalker’s family but denial is the party planner in mine. As you may recall, my early-morning symptoms were squishy and ho-hum. Mild heartburn, some tightness that crept into my neck and jaw. A little achy breaky in my arms and chest. I tried to shake it off: “Walk around Cali.” “Sit down Cali.”
You’d think I was playing musical chairs. But soon I was breathing harder and feeling nauseous. We know what a heart attack looks like in the movies… I wasn’t grabbing my chest, howling at the moon or seeing dead relatives beckon me from the other side.
But I knew something was wrong and that’s when I swallowed a regular strength aspirin. I learned later in the hospital that it’s better to CHEW it. Nonetheless the blood thinning process had begun with that one Bayer. This little act of doing something was just enough to push me through the veil of denial.
I will be forever grateful to the morning staff at UCLA’s Emergency Room for taking my lady symptoms very seriously. And now it’s been eight weeks since my heart attack and between the “please-tell-me-what-the-hell-happened” appointment with my cardiologist and the first meet and greet with the staff in Cardiac Rehab, I’m learning about the risk factors that contribute to heart disease and the steps we can take to find healthy detours through this land.
My cardiologist explains that the plaque that builds up in our arteries can crack. Like plaster or my beloved acrylic nails. The body goes “Ding! Ding!” “Injury! Injury!” “Send the Troops!” In this case, the big guns are the itty bitty platelets in our blood. Word gets out, as if this is how the body does social media. Platelets rush to the cracked plaque and gather ‘round. Now it’s about crowd control. Things get crazy. And sticky. My cardiologist snaps his fingers and says a blood clot can form just like that.
The nurse in Cardiac Rehab tells me that my 80% blockage was in the worst part of the biggest coronary artery, the one that supplies breakfast, lunch and dinner to the largest area of the heart. It’s called the LAD. That does NOT stand for Let’s All Dance. It is referred to as “The Widow Maker,” also known as the Left Anterior Descending, which means it’s on the left side of the heart, in the front and points down. My blockage was at the top of the artery where the spigot opens and it could have, potentially, cut off the blood supply to that entire side of the heart.
Slowly it’s sinking in–how close I came to sustaining permanent damage to my heart, how close I came to shuffling off this mortal coil. In the snap of a finger. I’m not kidding when I tell you that getting to the Emergency Room quickly most likely saved my life. And now I gratefully carry a “stent” card in my wallet. Wish it was good for a discount at CVS…
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In my previous blog, The Yellow Light, I mentioned how heredity is not on my side. Heart disease is a smoldering flame in the trunk of my family tree. Here are other risk factors that lead to heart disease:
Smoking. I never smoked because I’m a freaking Girl Scout. But my father loved his cigars and pipes so I grew up in a biosphere of gunky haze. Then I sang in piano bars–dives and fancy joints galore that reeked of Marlboro’s and Virginia Slim’s. So there’s that…
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And imagine all those years working in assorted boozy watering holes and I don’t even drink alcohol. But I gulped down enough glasses of “I-wanna-buy-her-a-drink” cranberry juice to pee pink.
Yep that’s me doing my piano/guitar/banjo thing and chugging down those glasses of cranberry juice
Speaking of sugar… Okay I’m knocking off the honey that I slop on almost everything and am eating more veggies and less meaty stuff. Integrative medicine researchers are pointing their fingers at inflammation as one of the culprits in heart disease (and a whole lot of other ailments too). Sugar is deadly. So is obesity. And stress. Anyone out there stressed?
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High blood pressure is really bad news in Cardio Land. Like most people, I didn’t have symptoms and went through my day blissfully unaware of the thumping and banging inside. Now I pop a couple pills and check my BP every morning with a cuff I bought at Costco. As a woman who is going through this right now, here is my advice. DON’T MESS AROUND WITH HYPERTENSION.
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Yes I am back on the exercise bandwagon. Many of my friends “walked” themselves through the pandemic. They invited me along. I wish I had said “yes.” But I got way too comfortable sitting in front of the computer playing Zoom. And Sleep. What’s that?
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Then there’s the social network thing. I think it’s risky business NOT to have someone or better yet, a community of someones, who keep you warm and safe in their embrace. Online, in person, whatever. I picture myself skipping along a yellow-brick road of humanity. From my dearest dear ones to the perfect stranger who shares a smile with me in line at Trader Joes… anywhere I can make a heart connection is a little slice of heaven for me and I feel loved back to sanity for another day.
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So when I look at the list of lifestyle changes, post heart attack, there’s room for improvement, but mostly I’ve been doing okay. So I ask my cardiologist “what is the most important thing I can do now?”
TAKE THE PILL
He laughs and shakes his head at the irony of this. Of course it all helps–eating healthy, moving my ass, turning off the cable news…and so on. But when it comes to my innards, the plaque is here to stay and what we are trying to do, from now on, is keep it from getting worse. I have to control my cholesterol with a daily pill.
My doctor adds, somewhat cheerfully, that I am healthier today than I was the day before my heart attack. Well yeah, I’ve got this stent... But NOW I KNOW what’s going on so I can sort through my choices and take the best path forward. After her heart attack, one of my friends quit her job in the corporate world to pursue more creative endeavors. “How’d the resignation go?” I asked. “They feel bad that I’m leaving.” Then she smiled as big as a rainbow and said “let them feel bad.” A heart attack is a wake-up call but it’s also a fierce gift — the kind that shatters your compass. Then helps you build a new one.
Speaking of choices… Something had to go for me too. My first paid gig was in 1976 so you do the math. I am a working musician, through and through. My fellow musician friends and I have been living in our own “gig society” long before it became part of the popular lexicon. When the gigs came, I grabbed them. Last year was no exception. I worked 375 gigs (that would be shows and classes combined). I was exhausted and obviously nefarious things were percolating under the hood. Plenty of people were plenty concerned but nothing and no one got through to me. It took an effing Widow Maker to get my attention. I quit my gigs.
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The grand adventure continues. Cardiac Rehab! Picture a cozy little gym. With nurses. And heart monitors. After my hour workout, I go home and take a nap. I have committed to all 24 sessions. That’s a lot of naps…
To be continued…
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I’m not doing gigs but I’m still teaching. If you would like to learn the ukulele and play with The CC Strummers on Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings, please check the Zoom Page on my website. Email me personally so I can add you to the elist and send you the login information.
When I write my blogs I can go all deep into philosophy-land and oh yeah, there was that heart attack thing… But not today. This story is about buying a ticket to see naked people sing and dance…
Apparently some astrologers report that right now is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. To be sure, I suspect a few are also saying “nuh-uh.” As for me I tell myself, “that’s entertainment.” I bring this up because when I hear the reporter talking about this new age stuff on my local NPR station I don’t glom onto spinning moons and planets. No-no. I start humming the iconic Aquarius song from Hair, the hippie musical that opened on Broadway in 1968. “The CC Strummers can do this on the ukulele,” I proclaim out loud as I’m foraging through the fridge for a snack.
But then I fall backwards in time and land at THAT matinee at the Aquarius Theater on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. It was an afternoon that shook my world. By then I had worn out my New York cast album of Hair and, in the process, learned the words to every single song in the show. My parents probably thought I had lost my mind as I skipped through the house singing “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna” or “gliddy-glub-gloopy, nibby-nabby-noopy, la-la-la-lo-lo.” Um, whatever that is…
So let’s just say that I was familiar with how this musical rolled, especially that infamous scene at the end of Act One where the cast gets naked on stage. You have to understand that in my repressed nuclear family we didn’t talk about body parts and all that doing-what-comes-naturally kind of stuff. It’s not like we lived on a farm and every season beheld the circle of life. I know it’s hard to imagine daily existence before the age of the internet, technicolor jpegs, high resolution videos. And Bridgerton. I remember a late night slumber party where my girlfriends and I tore through an absconded copy of “The Naked Ape” and wailed in horror (mixed with rabid curiosity) as the story of human zoology unfolded before us. I really wanted to see a naked person. Like, in person…
The Aquarius Theater on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California
When Hair arrives in Los Angeles, I am SO there, on that blessed Saturday afternoon. The best seat I can get is way back in the orchestra section, closer to the bathrooms than the stage, but who cares. I’m living my hippy dream. For two hours, at least.
Act One. Stuff happens. Then more stuff happens. But I know that naked finale is coming. And I know when it’s here. The lights go psychedelic, a giant tarp covers the stage and undulates like canvas waves. The music rises in wild crescendos that I feel thrumming in my bones. Whoosh! The tarp snaps away and like magic the naked cast appears, posing like statues in a museum. But suddenly the lights go out in the theater. Well except for those awful flashing strobes. Strobes?
NO-O-O-O-O-O-O
Body parts light up, yes they do, but then vanish in the dark. You don’t know what part belongs to what person. Was that a boob, a thing, an arm? The strobes flash on the audience too. Geez thanks for momentarily blinding me just as we’re getting to the good stuff. After a few anxious breaths the stage is once again flooded with light and all we see is a whole lot of nothin’.
I’m not proud to admit that I don’t remember anything else from the show except THAT. I’m sure this west coast performance of Hair was a full body immersion in sights and sounds. But I drove home, crestfallen, shaking my head at this latest brush with crushed expectations and icy reality.
Going old school at The Wadsworth Theater
You can barely see my seat. Last row but right in the middle
Flash forward thirty-two years. To the summer of 2001. The latest revival of Hair lands back in Los Angeles at the Wadsworth Theater on the sprawling grounds of the Veterans Administration. Of all places. I have lived a lifetime or ten by then and seen plenty of naked people. (I was in nursing school for a while, so there’s that…) But I’m feeling that adolescent oh-oh-oh again as I snag another matinee ticket, which just happens to be the last available seat in the house. I am perched in the back row of the balcony, with my head leaning against the wall. At least I’m in the center. Two older women are sitting in front of me, breathlessly commiserating before the show begins.
This time I have binoculars.
Sam Harris and Jennifer Leigh Warren are the big name stars in this rollicking production. They sing and strut with their fellow long-hairs. It’s a joyous celebration as they tick off song after song before that big naked reveal at the end of Act One.
I’m looking for the tarp. Where’s the freakin’ tarp?
Suddenly the stage is lit in a beautiful pink glow as the cast members walk, like naked angels, into the light. And they sing. I think. They move gracefully. There’s choreography. I think. And every single body part is hanging out for everybody to see. You know what belongs to whom. No rushy-rushy. No strobes. Time stretches like a rubber band and…I can’t believe I’m saying this…it feels like this naked thing is going on forever. I have to pee. It also appears that it’s a little chilly on stage.
I have very good binoculars.
Then it ends. Quietly. The house lights go on. Intermission. One of the ladies in front of me leans into her friend and says, “next time we get the expensive seats.”
Next time…
Cali, The Hippy Girl, at The CC Strummers’ Halloween Party
Click here to watch excerpts from the 2001 performance of Hair at The Wadsworth Theater in West Los Angeles.
Peace, man…
One of the things I love about Zoom is that every player has the best seat in the house—front row center. The CC Strummers will be learning Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In this month in our Thursday Zoom ukulele classes. Email me if you would like to join us. Thank you for getting word out about our online classes. They are open to everyone.
Maybe life is like a traffic signal. When the light is red you stop. When it’s green you go, when it’s yellow, that means caution. You have choices and choices have consequences.
Ten days ago I landed at the yellow. Let my story be a cautionary tale.
Over this last pandemic year I have spent more time sitting on my butt in front of the computer than ever before. For days I wouldn’t even go outside and outside around here is really pretty. Exercise? Puleeese…
A friend suggested that right after rolling out of bed, I do some kind of physical something. This is how it started for him and now he’s a jock. So I commit to a whopping ten minutes of weights or yoga every day and this particular Friday morning I am doing aerobics, dancing hard to my funky music playlist. When the ten minute timer goes off I’m a little winded but, stick a fork in me, I’m done.
Then I plop down at the kitchen counter to clean my computer keyboard. I’ve talked about the “spraying thing” in my classes. When we sing, we share our juices. Yeah it’s gross and every once in a while I have to clean off the grody. With alcohol pads and Q-tips at hand, a steaming mug of tea and honey nearby, I’m reveling in the early morning quiet. Aah…
Until a vague feeling of heartburn creeps into my upper chest and grabs my attention right away since I haven’t eaten anything for hours. I swallow a few times but it’s still there. This feeling is almost in my neck which is now beginning to tighten, just a little, along with my jaw. And shoulders. I keep cleaning the keyboard but believe me, my attention is laser-focused on this unfolding constellation of sensations. Then my right arm starts to throb. And get this, just my bicep. I danced this morning, but it’s not like I punched a hole in the wall. Then my left arm begins to ache too. In the same place.
“Walk it off Cali,” I tell myself. But when I stand up I feel a little woozy and nauseous. I’m wondering how much of this is anxiety or a panic attack because I’m really good at twisting myself into a great big knot with one frightening thought. But the sensations are not going away and now the heartburn feeling is moving into my chest. I also have a ukulele class and music show today on Zoom. “How am I going to make it through?” I ask myself. “Come on…you can do it.” That’s the workaholic talking.
Another voice pierces the conversation: “Take an aspirin!” I quickly swallow the pill, reconnect my keyboard to the computer and Google heart attack/women.
I already know that lady symptoms can be subtle, low-drama, and we can talk ourselves out of believing “this is happening to me.” I also know that my mother had at least two heart attacks, my father had triple bypass surgery and both my grandmothers died of a stroke. But hey, I’ve got things to do today…okay?
I’m driving towards the yellow light and wobbling mightily between denial and acceptance. My primary care doc would tell me later that this is what happens and the sooner you come to acceptance, the sooner you get help. Too many people freeze in denial.
My Google search lands at heart.org and this sentence grabs my attention:
“Many women I see take an aspirin if they think they are having a heart attack and never call 911…But if they think about taking an aspirin for their heart attack, they should also call 911…”
OMG, I didn’t just think about taking an aspirin. I actually did it. But there is no way in hell I’m calling 911. I’m feeling fine. Sort of. I’m talking. I’m walking. I call my husband Craig instead, who is having breakfast at his regular hangout.
“Honey please come home, I may be having a heart attack and need to get to UCLA.”
“CALL 911…”
“No-no-no, I’m okay, let’s just drive there.” La-dee-da. I later learn the restaurant staff is really worried for him as he dashes out, white as a ghost.
So what do I do next? Take a shower. Remember I’m still at the yellow light—yeah this stuff happens to other people. Not to me. BUT if I’m going to the hospital, at least I’m going to start off clean.
Afterwards I throw on some clothes, grab my backpack, take a last look at our living room, wonder if I’ll ever see it again, lock the door and meet my husband downstairs. He is a nervous wreck and right now I’m just trying to breathe—in, out, in, out.
We live close to UCLA and get there quickly. It’s early morning and these are Covid times. No visitors in emergency. My husband drops me off and I won’t see him again until that night. The triage nurse greets me at the door and I go into my spiel, which in itself reveals the complexity of the moment and how I’m processing all this. “Hi. Nice to see ya. I feel like an idiot being here…but I think I may be having a heart attack.” Then I rattle off the symptoms. The nurses whip me back to an examination room lickety-split, hook me up to an electrocardiogram and ask me to stop talking. You gotta love that…
Something is up with the first test and they put me in another room with a different ECG. “Is it me or the machine?” I chirp brightly. No answer. Until the ER doctor tells me there is a problem and barrages me with questions. A nurse promptly starts an IV line. Blood is drawn immediately. Chest X-rays and an ultrasound of my heart follow in quick succession. The tiny nitroglycerin pills they pop under my tongue don’t do squat.
If you haven’t already guessed. I am having a heart attack.
But when the cardiologist introduces himself, even he is not sure what’s going on yet because I am not “presenting” as a person in acute cardiac distress. You know how I love to ask questions and soon learn that when the heart muscle is damaged it releases a chemical known as troponin and this can be measured with a blood test. The first round comes back at .2 which is just a nudge above normal.
Talk about this modern technological world, I am getting lab results online as quickly as the doctors by just logging into my UCLA account on my phone. And believe me I am Googling furiously, trying to assimilate as much information as I can about troponin and heart attacks.
And worrying desperately about my husband. Our phones are our only lifeline to each other and I am having trouble getting through to him. He’s somewhere in the hospital or sitting in his car or the cafeteria and I would later learn, frantically texting our friends. They help him through the day. Not knowing what’s happening to someone you love is absolutely awful. And to think Covid families have been going through this for a year.
Google says when the troponin level is above .4 there is the probability of a heart attack. The next lab is .47 and ultimately will peak at 31. They wheel me to the heart catheterization lab for an emergency angiogram, just about the time I would be doing my Friday afternoon Zoom show. I’m trying to pay attention to what I am seeing and hearing and feeling. However, I’m not taking in the big picture. How can the words Cali,heart and attack be in the same sentence? This can’t be. But I’m right there when the cath team asks what kind of sedation I’d like them to use.
“Oh nothing, I want to watch.”
How many people get to see their heart lubba-dubbing on a computer screen. In real time? No twilight happy juice for me. When I later tell one of our friends about this he replies “Holy sh-t, are you f–king crazy? I would tell them to knock me out and keep me knocked out until I’m ready to go home.”
Each team I encounter at U.C.L.A. is caring, extraordinarily competent and so kind. In the cath lab, they do everything to allay my fears and help me feel comfortable. And preserve my modesty, considering that the entry and exit point of this procedure is below the Equator. One of the nurses offers to call my husband’s cell phone personally during the procedure.
It’s not like there is a roto-rooter sensation as the catheter inches up to my heart through my femoral artery. I hear the team jibber-jabbering but can’t make out what they are saying. What looks like a flying upside-down toilet (with the lid closed) is whipping in circles over my chest, other machines are hissing and the lights in the room go on and off. You see what I mean…who’d want to miss this? I catch a glimpse of the imaging screen when the flying toilet isn’t in the way but in truth I don’t know what is going on.
Itty bitty stent
Until finally the cath doctor leans into my face and tells me I have an 80% blockage in one of my coronary arteries. I will later learn, thank you Google, that the LAD, the left anterior descending, is the largest coronary artery in the heart and is also called, g-a-s-p, the widow maker. I know these doctors and nurses see this stuff every day but when it happens to you, well it’s shocking. He suggests that inserting a stent is the best option. This procedure is called an angioplasty. “Well okay,” I say, “but do you have a stent laying around so I can see what it looks like?” He pulls up a picture on his phone. First they will push through a balloon to open the blockage and then send that stent up the elevator. The nurse calls my husband again.
The symptoms I experienced earlier that morning had waned. Maybe the team in the ER had given me something for pain or to thin my blood. But when the cath doc starts manipulating the balloon, the tightness and discomfort come roaring back, WHOA, and believe me I let them know about that. The doctor says, “good, we know we’re in the right place. These are YOUR symptoms of a heart attack.” Once the stent is inserted the discomfort goes away.
Afterwards, the doctor shows me more pictures and video replays. I have other blockages but they aren’t as bad and will be treated with medication. Speaking of the new pills in my life—a blood thinner, stuff to control my cholesterol and blood pressure, baby aspirin—these medications are supposed to keep the stent and artery from closing up again. In other words, if you don’t take these pills you can kiss your ass goodbye. Here are the facts:
I’m on the thin side, my diet is more healthy than not, my husband and I meditate. Yes I could exercise more, get more sleep and work less. “Why did this happen?” I ask my cardiologist. Apparently, in my case, it’s mostly about genes, genes, and more genes. So here we are, you and me, taking our seats at the poker table of life in the Grand Casino of Heredity. We get dealt a hand. Some cards are good, some not so much. At least today there is medicine (and yes, lifestyle changes behind Curtain #2).
The view from my room is a little spooky at night
That evening I am finally reunited with Craig as I’m rolled into my hospital room. I am SO glad to see him. At least I’ve been royally entertained all day but he’s been through the wringer and needs to go home and get some sleep. I meet the team of nurses and residents on cardiology rotation as they help me settle in. I haven’t eaten anything in 24 hours and order a cup of vegetable soup. But mostly it just sits there.
I probably would have gone home the next day except for what happened in the wee hours of the morning after I received my first dose of magic pills. Three nurses hover close as they help me to the bathroom to pee. So far so good but when I re-emerge from that glorious experience, I tell them “I’m feeling really dizzy…really diz…” and then everything goes black.
I freaking pass out and later learn that the nurses catch me as I fall forward onto the bed, keep me from slipping to the floor and somehow get my unconscious butt back on the mattress where I finally come to. When I open my eyes, I see a phalanx of residents and nurses looking at me. And not in a good way. They don’t know why I lost consciousness and are afraid I’m bleeding internally. Some bruises on my belly are gaining acreage.
They put me through a battery of mental acuity and physical tests. What’s the date today?Can you lift your right leg? More blood is drawn and my hemoglobin has dropped a little. Now the residents are really worried and want me to have an invasive procedure to detect internal bleeding. “Good Lord. Can we just wait and see?” I ask, “I feel okay now.” In the end the cardiologist-in-charge puts the test on hold.
The advances in modern medicine are miraculous. Science is a wonder. But medicine is also an art. How many times a day do knowledge, experience and intuition intersect and pause at the yellow light. What to do? What to do?
This is a teaching hospital and teaching goes both ways.
As it turns out, one of the medications they gave me dropped my blood pressure precipitously low and that’s why I passed out. No internal bleeding.
I’d like to know how big pharma comes up with the generic names for their pills. Do they throw darts at an alphabet chart on the wall? It’s impossible for me to remember, much less pronounce these words. So I stick to the more accessible brand name. I mention this because a long time ago, in another hospital, I was given a medication for high blood pressure. When I tried to stand up, I passed out.
My day shift angel and me. I will long remember these nurses with fondness and gratitude.
I remember the brand name and vowed that I’d never take THAT stuff again. Not once did it occur to me that, after all these years, I was the only one who knew this. And furthermore, I didn’t recognize the generic name when the nurse presented me with the pill that night. But it was the same medication. Big lesson. Put information like this in writing, on a card in your wallet or enshrined in the electronic medical records. These kinds of personal details can make a big difference. For you and your doctors. The medical professionals know the science but no one knows your body and your story better than you.
The day shift arrives. “I heard about last night…” they tell me, one after another. Apparently word spreads fast around here. My husband arrives too, with fresh undies and a ukulele. He stretches out, all 6’3” of him, on the comfy vinyl-padded couch under the window and gets some sleep. He’s exhausted. They are changing up my medication today, for obvious reasons, and I am “observed” by one Florence Nightingale after another. The rest of my hospital stay is blessedly uneventful.
The next morning I plop into a wheelchair and am Fed-Exed to our car by a nice transportation lady. Craig safely delivers us home where I end this “trek through heart attack land” the same way I started. With a shower. Getting to the emergency room when we did probably saved my life. I heard this more than once during my stay at UCLA. Thankfully, I have minimal heart damage. Somehow we pushed through the yellow light. So many helping hands. My heart is full.
These are the “before and after pictures” of my heart. I suspect these images look like hundreds of thousands of others, women and men who have had blockages and were given a second chance. With a stent.
Just imagine the scientists and designers who dreamed this stent thing up, the researchers and fabricators who developed the hardware and refined the techniques for this procedure, all the teams of doctors, nurses and techs who train long and diligently to do it right. How about the countless number of people who support them, emotionally and otherwise, so they can do their work. Or the farmer in Brazil who grows the coffee beans that end up in the early morning cup of Joe that is just what the doctor needs to focus and forge ahead for the day. On and on it goes. All I can say is thank you.
What a year! These 366 days. They came at us like roiling storm clouds. One freaking squall after another. At times I have felt like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, running for the backyard hole-in-the-ground before the tornado hits. My own storm shelter is made of blankets, which I pull over my head. I close my eyes, cover my ears and go “na-na-na-na-na.” Apparently kindergarten is still in session our house.
Obviously, in ways stark to slim, this year will not leave us where it found us. We are forever changed. At whiplash speed. Sure we’re all in this together, considering we live on the same planet, but it sure seems like we’re riding out the storm in different boats. The immensity of the issues that confront us, personally and as earth-dwellers, is overwhelming and I can go into a dark funk just thinking about it.
But through all the darkness of 2020 there have been flashes of sunshine. And stars and a rainbow or two. So when I’m not hiding under the covers, I change the conversation and direct the self-talk to what I’m called to do. Right now. Right here. This helps me be with today’s mess as if I’m peering through a wider lens. Like what do things look like from a hundred miles up? From two years from now? So I choose doing because ruminating is making me crazy.
This quote, “Grit, grace, gratitude,” is pressed under the plastic coverlet on my desk. I stuck it in a place where I would see it every day. Next to my computer. These are the words of Gwen Ifill, the late, dearly beloved journalist who passed away in 2016. When I first heard them, something inside went ding-ding-ding. They have served me well in the last 366 days.
And here we are—at the cusp of a new year. Does it feel like we are being drop-kicked into 2021?
But there is the sunshine part too: My zoom classes and gigs have been a miracle of technology and heart. We are helping each other endure, to make it through. And we’re doing it together, inviting total strangers over an invisible threshold into our own corner of the world–a living room, dining room, bedroom, office, cubby hole, garage, closet, kitchen, under a tree, in a car, into our life.
For me, this is grace made visible. And grit (are you woodshedding that Bb chord?) And gratitude (for waking up this morning). Singing and playing together, it changes the conversation. No matter our differences.
I’ve shared my ukulele fantasy with many of you: By executive order, every member of Congress is issued a ukulele. Nothing fancy or high end. They hire a patient and politically-neutered teacher to show each Democrat, Republican, Independent, how to strum three chords: C, F and G7. In tempo! They learn to play and sing one chorus and verse of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” Each senator and representative must practice five minutes every day. Alone and with a colleague from across the aisle. When they all show up for an important vote… Well you can see where this is going. They have to do Woody Guthrie FIRST. Ya think more legislation would pass?
Yeah, I know… In my dreams. Well maybe Congress can’t change the conversation. But you and I can.
So here’s a toast to grit, grace and gratitude. To a change of heart, to enduring, to kindness and to the healing power of music! We will need them all in the new year.
Warmly,
Cali
If you would like more information about my three weekly Zoom ukulele classes, please log onto my website by CLICKING HERE.
“Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.” Emily Kimbrough, author and broadcaster (1899-1989)
I am not familiar with Emily nor her work, but I sure like this quote and maybe you noticed she lived a really long life. Heads up to my introvert, extrovert and whatever-vert friends. Even during these “don’t touch me, don’t breathe on me” times, our pals, our friends, our tribes, the online faces in little Zoom boxes, we are throwing lifelines to each other.
We are “walking each other home.” (Ram Dass)
I’m one lucky lady because I am living the creative life. Got the music thing happening and like my daddy, I love to write. It’s a party in my brain when the two go matchy-matchy.
Three years ago, I was working with a couple ukulele students on gospel tunes. I love songs with thumping rhythm that rolls in my belly. But I’m not a “religious” person so for my daily dose of inspiration, I look to you, the beloved community*. Numberless hands and hearts, known and unknown, help me through each day, like invisible rings of warm.
And it hit me. Why don’t I try to write one of those rollicking hand-clapping songs but what will I talk about? Well of course, the beloved community. Just like that, the melody and words poured out. This rarely happens in my songwriting life, where the creative process is more like pro-wrestling than “a spell.” But with Brand New Day, the beloved community waved its magic wand.
I started playing the song at my gigs. Folks clapped and sang along on the easy-peasy chorus: “Oh hallelujah! Oh hallelujah! Oh hallelujah! It’s a brand new day.”
Then I did a ukulele arrangement for The CC Strummers. They loved it too and we performed the song at Fiesta La Ballona, which is Culver City’s equivalent to a county fair. Some people in the audience gave us a standing ovation and yelled “more…more…more.” As a songwriter, it just doesn’t get any better than that.
Flash forward to here and now.
“May you live in interesting times.” Apparently this is an English expression that is based on an old Chinese curse. We are painfully aware of all the awful that is happening in the world. How easy it is to miss the little flower growing through a crack in the sidewalk. Or through a seemingly impenetrable wall that separates us?
A friend once told me that life is a mystery to be lived, not solved. So I look to the beloved community to sustain me. We are going through this together, like sentries, quietly and not-so-quietly, witnessing our shared humanity. The joys, the sorrows. The whole mess of it.
My ukulele group, The CC Strummers, has morphed into a global ohana online. I am gobsmacked and filled with gratitude that we have the technology to support this kind of work and that we have each other. This is where I have landed—at the intersection of music, technology and all that “it takes a village” stuff.
The CC Strummers’ tech master, Michael Kohan, has taken on this project—to turn Brand New Day into a marvelous Zoom mosaic. A musical partnership. Several of our players made their own videos and sing along on that catchy chorus. I hope you will sing along too. Watch the bouncing ball!
Thank you Michael for your extraordinary work! And thank you to our ohana who appear and sing on this video: Ellen B, Carole E, Lyn G, Nancy H, Bobbie H, Marilyn H, Lorri K, Sherry K, Michael K (editor and bass), Ethan K, Tom K, Donna N, Joyce P, Nomi R, Robert R, Bob S, Bonnie S, Lin Van G and Mollie W.
If this song is new to you and you’d like to learn it and/or share it with your peeps, Brand New Day is available as sheet music.
I’m going to sound like one of those late night infomercials… “For $5, yes only $5, the sheet music is yours AND there’s more! I will throw in the ukulele arrangement too. Whoo-Hoo!” If you are interested please CLICK HERE for more information.
Thank you for showing up, for yourself and others. Thank you for fighting the good fight, whatever that is, and for helping to make this brand new day a place we all want to share.
_______
If you would like to Zoom with The CC Strummers on Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings please CLICK HERE to check out my Zoom classes. Thank you!
*The Beloved Community is a term that was first coined in the early 20th Century by the philosopher Josiah Royce and later popularized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
CLICK HERE to watch The CC Strummers perform Brand New Day at Fiesta La Ballona.
“Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.” Emily Kimbrough, author and broadcaster (1899-1989)
I started playing the song at my gigs. Folks clapped and sang along on the easy-peasy chorus: “Oh hallelujah! Oh hallelujah! Oh hallelujah! It’s a brand new day.”
My ukulele group, The CC Strummers, has morphed into a global ohana online. I am gobsmacked and filled with gratitude that we have the technology to support this kind of work and that we have each other. This is where I have landed—at the intersection of music, technology and all that “it takes a village” stuff.