Humor & Heart Disease

I ran across the perfect survey for this blog. It is a humor and heart disease survey on the University of Maryland Medical Center website. The survey, originally published in November of 2000, helps you determine how well your individual sense of humor will help protect you from heart disease. The survey comes from a study conducted by the university that found that laughter may in fact be good medicine.

“People with heart disease were less likely to recognize humor or use it to get out of uncomfortable situations. They generally laughed less, even in positive situations and they displayed more anger and hostility.

"The ability to laugh -- either naturally or as learned behavior may have important implications in societies such as the U.S. where heart disease remains the number one killer," says Dr. Miller. "We know that exercising, not smoking and eating foods low in saturated fat will reduce the risk of heart disease. Perhaps regular, hearty laughter should be added to the list." Dr. Miller says it may be possible to incorporate laugher into our daily activities, just as we do with other heart-healthy activities, such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator.”

Okay, my only problem with this survey is that it insinuates that we folks with heart disease may have a diminished sense of humor. I take issue with that. Even as I was laying in the emergency room the night of my heart attack, my humor was still intact.

In any event, you can take the survey by clicking here.

My score was 58.

Airport Coat Check

Denise and I are preparing for our long anticipated trip to the islands in early February. This is something that we started two years ago as a way to break out of the winter doldrums here in Baltimore and rejuvenate our minds and bodies in the warm sun. Many other folks will be doing the same thing of course. In every place that feels the cold pinch of winter, people will hop aboard south bound airplanes to escape for awhile.

As Jimmy Buffet so aptly puts it in his song Boat Drinks, “I wanna fly to Saint Somewhere.”

We are all set. We have plane tickets. We have reservations. We have time off work. We have sunscreen. I have an ample supply of my blood pressure meds. It will be perfect, except for one little thing.

When we leave our home in the early morning hours and set off for BWI, it will be probably be cold. In fact, I hope it is cold that morning. It will make us feel all the better about going south in the peak season (and paying peak prices). The only problem is that we will need our coats. We will need coats until we reach the terminal building. Once inside though, we won’t need our coats again for another week. We could, of course, leave them in our car in the airport parking lot but that won’t help much when we return from the sunny warmth to the blistering cold in the dead of night. If we left them in the car we would still freeze as we waited for the parking shuttle bus. It always seems to take forever for those buses to come around, especially when you’re cold. We could also schlep them with us but that seems ridiculous. Who wants to land in a tropical paradise lugging around a wool coat?

The solution is simple. Why don’t cold climate airports offer coat checks for winter travelers?

It is not exactly a new idea. A Google search on airport coat checks turned up just such a service at Dusseldorf International Airport. I wonder why this hasn’t caught on in other cities.

Happy New Year!

Yeah, I realize it was yesterday but in case you hadn’t noticed I haven’t posted here since December 20th so I figure a belated Happy New Year is entirely appropriate.

So why no postings lately?

Good question. The best answer is that there were so many demands on my time over the Christmas holidays that I found it difficult to carve out the time to write. I intend to rectify that now.

I am working on a post about Joel. He is a relative newcomer to my cardiac rehab class. Joel experienced his heart attack back on September 7th. I’ll try and finish that up this evening. It's a good one.

I have also been making some other observations in my cardiac rehab class which I will be sharing in the next few days.

And finally, I continue to look for stories about heart attacks and how these cardiac events have affected lives. Drop me a note at theheartattackguy@gmail.com if you have something you’d like to share.

I am also curious as to what you think of this site. Do you enjoy reading these stories and other heart attack oddities I find?

Is there anything else you’d like to see?

Talk to me.

Holiday Stress Test

First of all let me apologize for not posting the past few days. The holidays have taken over at our household and I find my discretionary time to be at a minimum. There are are Christmas cards to get out, shopping to be done and mastering og multiplication tables to be completed.

Huh?

The point is, that on top of all the extra activities that the holidays bring on we still need to focus on the mundane things that normally eat up our time. My current challenge is help my nine year old daughter master her multiplication tables. We are employing a variety of strategies and having limited success. Does anyone know of a good software program for kids that could help here?

Anyway, on top of all the normal chaos that comes with the holiday season, I had the added fun of putting up a Christmas tree twice. I came home early the other day hoping to get some work done before I had to go meet Morgan at the bus stop. I came in, let the dogs out and was heading back out to my car when I heard a very loud CRASH. It was a glass breaking crash sound.

Sure enough, my ten foot Christmas tree which had stood steadily for three days suddenly decided to give into an unseen indoor wind and toppled over onto the hardwood floors in the foyer. Broken ornaments littered the area, so much for getting any work done that day. For the next few hours I cleaned up the mess, moved the tree back out to the garage and removed the tangled morass of lights while Mama Wordbones cleaned up the water and pine sap that remained behind.

The thing is, I didn’t let it stress me too much. Sure, at first I was angry but then who was really angry with except me?

I certainly couldn’t blame Mama Wordbones. In our house we actually have two Christmas trees because years ago Mama Wordbones decided that a real tree was just much dam trouble. She now happily unpacks her fake tree and places in the living room while I still go the traditional route with a live tree in the family room. If anything I was extremely grateful that Mama Wordbones helped me at all. She could have easily retreated to her fake tree in the living room and sipped a hot cocoa while I slaved away at cleaning up my natural disaster.

But this is Christmas after all and in the spirit of the holidays she pitched in and helped me reconstruct my tree. It is now back up, complete with a new tie back to the wall behind it (Mama Wordbones suggestion) and some ornaments that look like they came from the Island of Misfit Toys.

Corrupted Plans

I really try to post something new here everyday. I also try to make my posts interesting or at least mildly amusing.

Sometimes I think succeed in doing both. Other times I don’t. I just want the reader to know that I really do try. It’s just that sometimes, just every so often, outside forces corrupt my carefully designed plans and everything goes to hell.

Take yesterday morning for instance. I rose at 6:30 AM with the intention of getting some writing done before I had to leave for my cardiac rehab appointment at 9:30 AM. By the time I finally settled down in my office after feeding the dogs and bringing in the morning papers, it was around 7:30 AM. Not bad so far.

Denise comes in and gives me a quick kiss before heading off to her job. The first order of business was to take care of some business that I told myself to do on Friday. I made a few changes to a lease proposal and then emailed it the client.

Now I could start some real writing. It was about eight o’clock. I had a good solid hour before I would have to leave.

Then the phone rang. It was Igor.

Igor is our home improvement contractor. We’ve had Igor and his fellow Russians in our home quite a bit this year. We like Igor.

“Is Miss Denise home?”

“No, I’m sorry Igor, she just left for work.”

“I call her on cell phone then.”

“Good plan.”

I should point out here that Denise is the true General Contractor on all of these home improvement projects. I pretty much step aside and enjoy the show. For now I felt confident that I now had a clear path to an hour of uninterrupted writing. Denise would deal with Igor. I was wrong. The phone rang again. It was Denise this time.

“Honey, do you remember that I was a planning a surprise for you for Christmas?”

“Sure.”

“Well the surprise is that I am having your office redone.”

“That’s great.”

“Well, unfortunately, Igor is on his way over there right now.”

“Oh. Is he coming to measure some things?”

“No. He’s coming to get started. You have to move everything out of there.”

“Now?”

“He’ll be there in about ten minutes.”

“Today?”

“I’m sorry honey; I didn’t mean it to happen this way. I told him…”

At this point I really stopped listening. I looked around me at the chaos of my office. There was barely any wood showing on my desk. There were things stacked on the floor. There was extension cord spaghetti next to my feet. The picture in yesterdays post shows how my desk normally looks.

“Thanks honey. It’s a great gift. I’d better get off the phone now. I love you.”

“I love you too. I’m sorry.”

No sooner did I hang up than the doorbell rang. Igor had arrived.

Surprisingly, when I checked in at cardiac rehab, my blood pressure was only 136 over 84.