Faith Paulsen's Open Salon Blog

The Ill-Fated Voyage of the Schooner Mariah, Part 2

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 15:10:33 -0400

Part 2: Bailing Water For His Life!

To recap Part 1: Thirty years ago this week, I was 25 years old, going about my daily round. I didn’t know that on an 86-foot sailboat in a storm off the coast of Cape May NJ, my younger brother was bailing water for his life, after all the pumps onboard had failed.

To read Part 1 in its entirety:

http://www.open.salon.com/blog/faith_paulsen/2010/10/27/the_ill-fated_voyage_of_the_schooner_mariah

On Saturday October 25, 1980, according to a written account of the event, which was published in Yachting in August 1981, the Coast Guard radioed the crew of Mariah that it was sending the 210-foot cutter Alert to their location.

But Alert was over ten hours away.

At noon, two of the main staysail seams blew out, and within minutes, the sail was in ribbons. Now running under bare poles we were pushed by waves as big as houses. Steering was difficult and tiring as the waves continued to mount, yet [steering] provided the only relief from bailing.

The C-140 air transport that had unsuccessfully air-dropped them a new pump a few hours earlier reappeared, dropping a second pump (inside a drum) to the crew.

I steered toward the drum, visible only every two or three waves, and finally it appeared on the crest of the wave ahead of us. Ed gaffed the parachute which immediately began to tear. The drum submerged as the pressure on it increased, and finally broke away. Strike two.

Another pump was dropped well ahead of us, and once again I pointed Mariah toward it. The trail line was difficult to spot in the foamy sea, and once we saw and gaffed it, it was too late. There was no loop in the end of the line; it slipped off into the sea. Strike three.

They were instructed to wait for another pump. The cutter Alert was on its way. But the crew had been bailing for 20 hours, several were seasick, and everyone was exhausted, discouraged. They went back to their bucket-passing, taking turns resting, hoping help would come soon.

Seasickness could not hold us back; J vomited into the buckets as he dumped them overboard.

At 2145 the helicopter arrived. The winds were up over hurricane force with waves well over 40 feet. I brought the boat up as close to the wind as possible, about abeam to the seas. . . In the pitch dark, the helicopter had trouble maneuvering around our 86-foot mainmast, and after a half hour backed off and radioed that instead of lowering a pump, he would begin evacuation procedures.

But even that proved complicated.

The two least-experienced crew members were chosen to get into an inflatable life raft first, to be lifted into the helicopter. They “streamed” the life raft out on a line behind Mariah.

The helicopter’s huge floodlights illuminated the monstrous waves as the basket bounced across the water and life raft. . . Overall, it took nearly 40 minutes for [the two crew members] to reach the helicopter.

Next, it was time to recover the life raft and evacuate two more crew members.

As Ed hauled the raft back to the boat, a gust of wind flipped it over, partially filling it with water. He brought the raft upright and alongside, however, and J and B prepared to jump in. Before they could do so, a huge wave broke over the boat, knocking both of them over the lifelines. Ed hung onto B and hauled her aboard, and J, thanks to his safety harness, was brought back aboard. Once the wave had passed, we saw that the top ring of the life raft had deflated.

And so the remaining four crew members had no other options but to wait in their doomed vessel for the Coast Guard cutter Alert. When it arrived, two Coast Guard frogmen were sent to bring a life raft alongside the Mariah to evacuate the remaining members of the crew.

Including my brother.

Below I grabbed my wallet and car keys. The cabin was a mess. No one had bailed since the helicopter arrived, and all the floorboards were floating; they had destroyed most of the interior. Diesel fumes filled the air; I got out as quickly as I could.

The Mariah was never seen again.

The two Coast Guard frogmen were put up for well-deserved commendations.

My brother and the rest of the crew were home in a few days, grateful to be alive. I got married that December, and my brother went on to law school and became a successful attorney with a wonderful wife and daughter. And he's still a sailor.

In August 1981 Yachting published my brother’s first-person account of “The Loss of the Mariah,” in his own very seaworthy words, which I have quoted above.

But that day when my mother called me to share the wonderful news, “Your brother is okay,” it seemed such a strange thing to say, such a strange thing to celebrate. Of course he was okay. Hadn’t he been okay all along?

Going about my normal day as if nothing was out of the ordinary, I didn’t know how close we came to losing him, until it was all over.

Seafaring lore includes sad tales about sunken ships, haunted by ghosts of their crew.

But this isn’t one of those stories. Because the crew of Mariah survived.

Thirty years ago this week.

A little song to celebrate my unsinkable brother:

The Ill-Fated Voyage of the Schooner Mariah, Part 1 of 2

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 10:10:40 -0400

Part 1: Red Sky at Morning, Sailor Take Warning

Seafarers tell many stories about sunken ships, some perhaps haunted by ghosts of their crew. I imagine she is one of those lost boats, under the ocean, about 200 miles southeast of Cape May New Jersey.

The schooner Mariah.

Exactly 30 years ago this week, just as I walked in the door, my phone jangled.

My mother had called me, but her voice was breathless as if it was she who rushed to pick up the phone. She had news – about my brother.

“What?” I cried. It made no sense.

Back then I was working as a technical writer, living in my very first apartment and planning my wedding. My younger sister was still in college. We had our whole lives ahead of us.

It was October 1980.

My brother was what we called a “boat bum.” Dad encouraged him to go to law school but my brother resisted. Instead, after college, he hired himself out as crew, deck hand, whatever he could get, as long as it was on the water.

He'd signed on as a member of the six-person (four men, two women) crew of Mariah, an 86-foot staysail schooner, recently refitted in City Island NY, and as far as I knew, headed south for the winter to serve as a charter craft in St. Lucia.

What I didn’t know then was that Mariah would never reach her destination.

The story was later told in a piece called “The Loss of the Mariah,” published in Yachting magazine in August 1981. I wasn’t there, and I’m not much of a sailor myself, but I’ll tell the story as best I know it, using quotations from that piece.

By early Thursday, October 23, 1980, we had completed provisioning and fueled up. Our Whaler had been lashed to the deck, the bearings greased, and everything secured. We flushed out the bilges, using every pump on board, and saw that each functioned properly. At 0100 we tapped the keg in the cockpit.

The night was cold, but crystal clear. The huge clock at the Watchtower building read 44 degrees at 0600; a beautiful day, with crisp Canadian air and northwest breezes. Both Bendix and NOAA predicted good weather, with a slight trough developing over the Middle Atlantic region which could produce some storm activity, but nothing serious.

They enjoyed a beautiful day of sailing, a chicken dinner and “a sip of J’s renowned homemade wine,” before taking watches for the night.

But late that night, the winds began to increase, to 20, 25, then 35 knots.

The sunrise was described as “brilliant red.” Had he forgotten the old saying, “Red sky at morning, sailor, take warning”?

By Friday the wind was at 40 knots. Mariah began to leak. This is not unusual for older boats, and they had bilge pumps aboard, including the two “big guns” that could pump 50-plus and 75-plus gallons per minute, so they were not overly concerned.

I had said with pride to visitors, “If we have anything aboard Mariah, it’s bilge pumps.”

By 1900 Friday we were leaking badly enough to engage the Jabsco [one of the larger pumps]. . . It worked for a minute or two, but grew hot and stopped pumping altogether.

They attempted to repair it -- but by then the water level was too high.

We then began the grueling process of bucket-passing which was to last the next 30 hours.

During those thirty hours when my brother was bailing water for his life, I drove to work, went to lunch with co-workers, went about my daily routine -- ignorant of the drama out at sea.

The Jabsco pump failed again, the deck pump proved inadequate. When finally the biggest pump was engaged, it would not prime.

By 2400 the decision was made to head for New Jersey and safety. We could still keep up with the incoming water, but we had no pumps. . . We kept bailing.

The wind increased to 50 knots, and squalls were frequent through the night. Seas grew to 20 feet or better, leaving J and E incapacitated by seasickness. Bailing was constant and unbearable, thanks to a break in the main fuel line leaking diesel into the bilge. There was no time for rest, and daybreak brought no relief.

They sent MAYDAYS by radio which were relayed by other vessels to the Coast Guard, which replied that it would air-drop them a new 140-gallons-per-minute pump.

The news gave the whole crew an emotional lift – the cavalry was coming over the hill.

We expected a helicopter, but a huge C-130 transport appeared instead. Slightly taken aback, we hoped they were good at high-speed air drops. . . After several practice runs, the pilot approached with amazing speed; we watched anxiously for the drop, but nothing happened. Then Ed spotted a bright orange parachute at 200 yards behind us. . . Recovery was impossible, since we could not head upwind. The C-130 headed back to Elizabeth City, NC, for more pumps and would not return for four hours. For the first time, we realized we were in danger of losing the schooner and possibly our lives.

Here's a link to the exciting conclusion of "The Ill-Fated Voyage of the Schooner Mariah."

http://www.open.salon.com/blog/faith_paulsen/2010/10/27/the_ill-fated_voyage_of_the_schooner_mariah_part_2

ER Act 3: An Ambulance, a Heartbeat -- and Me

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 12:10:18 -0400

ACT 3: HEART IN THE RIGHT PLACE

In Acts 1 and 2, my son "G." complains of a “funny feeling” in his chest. After months of inconclusive doctor’s appointments, I take him to the Emergency Room while the “funny feeling” is in progress. In the ER, he is swept into an exam room and a stampede of doctors and nurses goes to work on him. After he is stabilized, he’s transferred by ambulance to Children’s Hospital, and I ride along.

Open with a shot of the modern façade of Children’s Hospital, with its colorful child-friendly decoration, looming in front of us. The ambulance pulls into a spot in front of the ER door and I leap out, still clutching my knapsack. I race to the rear of the vehicle, hungry for the sight of my son’s face. The big doors open like cemetery gates and there he is, white-faced and somehow small.

“The ambulance was fun,” he croaks.

More chirping coming from my knapsack reminds me I’ve been ignoring the sound of the cellphone my son had entrusted to me in the ER. I pull out the phone, see the text-message signal. I flip it open.

“Wow, you have twelve text messages!”

“What do they say?”

“The first one’s from Matt. It says, Are you OK? The next is Kelly, What’s wrong? Wait -- How do they all know you’re sick?”

“My iTouch. I changed my Facebook status to ‘In the ER.’”

And we laugh – heartily.

That night in Children’s Hospital, my husband and I squeeze into the tiny one-parent cot in our son’s room in the Cardiac Care Unit. As the snow begins to fall outside the window, we lie on the hard cushion, watching G. sleep soundly despite all the electrodes all over his body, hooked up to a computer in the hallway outside his room, so the nurse can check his vitals without even entering his room.

The next day, a technician wheels in a large contraption with a screen, an ultrasound machine. She jokes with us as she lathers up our son's chest with cold ointment. We're going to watch a new cable channel, The G’s Heart Channel.

The shadowy image that appears on the screen reminds me of my very first sight of this same child as a tiny fetus, an ultrasound taken 14 years ago. I gasp.

The technician points out the valves and chambers. The little gray lump, the size of a small frog, thumps on the screen in front of us, exposed. How can something so small hold all the vastness I feel in my own chest?

If this had been a typical TV medical drama, the doctors and nurses would have argued cleverly until the cardiologist came up with an exotic and life-threatening diagnosis. But that's not how things happened.

“Your heart is structurally healthy,” the cardiologist addresses G. as Bart and I sigh with relief, “I think what you have is a short circuit.” He teaches us some new words, “supraventricular tachycardia” (SVT). From a normal heart rate of 60-100 beats per minute, G’s heart can sometimes accelerate to 300. The attacks are painful and scary (we know that now!) but they are not lethal. In fact, this condition is quite common and not that serious! G. will go home with a Remote Episode Recorder, or Holter monitor, which he will carry with him as he continues his normal activities. (The doctor says we should warn the school “so they don’t call Homeland Security.”)

For the next several months, every time our son has an attack, he turns on the monitor, records his heart rate, calls an 800 number and transmits the recording to the hospital. We soon discover that he's having attacks of extremely high heart rates, as often as three times a week. There's also another ambulance ride, and another ER.

The end of the story is that my son is alive and well. The only “better place” he went was Children’s Hospital.

Early one February morning, with yet more snow hovering in the air, we return to Children’s for his cardiac ablation procedure. It is performed by cardiac catheter, through an incision in his thigh. The electrophysiologist (who tells my son, "I'm really just a fancy electrician") induces an SVT attack, maps the electrical circuitry of my son's heart, then uses heat to burn away the unnecessary electrical charge. The whole thing takes about 4 hours. It is like something out of "Star Trek."

Our son goes home the same day, groggy and nauseous, just as the snowflakes begin to fall. And although there have been moments when he reported his heart trembling on the edge, almost as if the SVT were starting (the doctor calls them ‘phantom pains’), he has never had any episodes since the procedure. The following summer he goes on a second canoe trip to Canada. He plays soccer and rides his bike. And that ambulance ride last December feels very far away.

But something has changed, and here I depart from my medical drama format. After a few weeks I return to my relaxed, take-it-in-stride style, but I've learned the future is never certain. We never know what the next heartbeat might bring, or how quickly. You might think this knowledge would make me anxious -- but it doesn’t. Instead, I feel liberated.

Because I experienced something in that exam room that night. Like my son’s symptoms, this experience is hard to put into words. It is something that causes me to wonder and to ponder. I was not afraid. The fear hit me later, in the ambulance, in the hospital, when I looked back at what had happened. But in the ER, I was not afraid. I was not aware of any thoughts, memories or fears. I was calm, wide awake, sensing, watching, listening, my feet solidly on the ground.

I felt – what can I call it?

Trust.

Trust in the size of the human heart. Surrounded and buoyed by the kindness of people around me, supported by the Being we all share, I found out I can trust my own heart to be spacious enough to encompass all the pain and love and gratitude of a lifetime -- and still keep on beating, in this moment, in this place.

Final scene. Back home from Children’s Hospital I flop onto the sofa beside my son. “Wow, that was something, huh, kid?”

“Yeah. It was just like one of those doctor shows on TV,” my very wise son says, with a look of wonderment on his face, “except I was in it.”

And so was I.

ER Act 2: An Ambulance, a Heartbeat and Me

Thu, 7 Oct 2010 21:10:14 -0400

A REAL LIFE MEDICAL DRAMA IN 3 ACTS

ACT 2: THE ER

To recap Act 1 of this real-life medical drama: Sitting in the passenger seat of the ambulance to Children’s Hospital, I recall the series of events that led to my teenage son’s experience in the Emergency Room. For months, my son "G." complains of a “funny feeling” in his chest. After months of inconclusive doctor’s appointments, I take him to the Emergency Room while the “funny feeling” is in progress.

Act 2 opens in the present, me and my son in the ambulance.

As we race through the night, siren blasting, I remember how calmly I decided to go to the Emergency Room. The camera focuses on my pensive face. I am amazed at the memory of the past few hours.

Flashback to a few hours earlier, me in my own car at an intersection near home. My face again. No words ran through my head, no plans, no anxieties, just a clear image of my teenage son's heart, doing whatever it was doing inside his chest, and of what we might be able to find out if I took him to the ER now, while the incident was occurring.

I turned right. Drove to the Emergency entrance of the local hospital. Pulled out my cell phone and called my husband.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You won’t be home until midnight," he says. We both know from experience what a long night in an Emergency Room waiting area can be like. With three sons, we’re veterans of ER trips for all kinds of minor emergencies – fevers, stitches, sprains, broken bones. One weekend when G. was only two, two of our three sons got stitches less than 24 hours apart.

“Yeah, probably. We’ll have to get the Christmas tree tomorrow. But maybe we can find out what this is, once and for all. Bring me a book to read in the waiting room when you come, will you?”

But the book would not be needed. At the Registration Desk, all my son said was “Chest pain.” We were swept into the triage area, without ever seeing the waiting room.

The triage nurse hooked my son up to a pulse machine. As he explained the funny feeling, I sat behind her, watched her ponytail wag and her fingers tap the keyboard. The words marched across the screen, “Affect normal. Speaks in complete sentences.”

Buzzz! Close-up of the pulse monitor.

My own heart stopped. The digital readout said:

280

(I knew from my exercise classes that a normal pulse is 60-100.)

“Oh, that can’t be right,” the nurse dismissed it with a wave and a laugh. “The machine must be broken. I’ll take his pulse by hand.” She placed her fingers on his wrist. I started to breathe again.

And then her face dropped.

Return to the present, the ambulance radio, playing “I’ll Have a Blue Christmas Without You.” The choice of song feels a little too heavy-handed. A chirping sound coming from my knapsack tells me my son has a text message on his cell phone but I ignore it.

Flashback to the ER. I can't remember how we got from the triage station to the exam room, where all those people came from, what happened to my son’s clothes or how all those monitors got hooked up to his body. I just remember standing back to make room for a stampede of scrubs, flinching at the strong odor of medicine, and looking into my son's wide brown eyes. I reached one hand toward the exposed skin where the hospital gown slipped off his shoulder.

“Don’t touch the patient!” a voice commanded.

I obeyed.

There was an oxygen mask on my son’s face. A needle pierced his arm – once, twice, I think maybe three times. A very young nurse in pink puppy-dog scrubs coached him as if he were a mother giving birth, “Great job, buddy. You’re doing great!”

The nurses were piling blankets on my son’s shivering body when my husband walked into the exam room with my book in his hand. I saw the emotions drain his face.

Digression from the medical drama format: Surprisingly, I realized later as my son’s cell phone chirped again in my bag, I couldn’t remember a moment when I thought my son might die. I could not remember saying a prayer. I could not remember any thoughts in my brain at all – It was as if my head was not there. All I remembered was the crackle of plastic wrappers being torn off sterile medical tools, the sense of the hard floor supporting the soles of my Crocks, and the ping-ping-ping of the heart monitor, my heart awake to the beat of his heart.

The young Asian doctor whose name I never got gestured to me and my husband. We found ourselves in the hallway. “He’s stabilized now,” the doctor’s voice emerged from the clatter, “But we’d like to transfer him by ambulance to Children’s Hospital.”

We nodded. Of course. Of course that was what we wanted.

“But,” my husband said, “it’s possible this is nothing serious. Right?” His voice was urgent. “Right?”

“Oh yes, very possible.”

And I was neither relieved nor worried, just there. This was the fact. The doctor rushed away. My husband and I turned to each other, dividing the responsibilities, as we’ve done nearly every day since we became parents. As if everything was normal. He’d go home, walk the dog, pack up some clothes and toothbrushes, and he’d meet us at Children’s. I’d ride in the ambulance with our son. We hugged. A hug with no words, just warmth. He left.

As I returned to the exam room, the nurse in the puppy-dog scrubs stopped me. “I hear your son is going to be transferred to Children’s. I just wanted to tell you that he could not possibly be going to a better place.”

I thanked her.

“You look like you could use a hug.”

And there I was in her arms, my nose pressed up against the starched puppy-dog scrubs, wondering, “Do I?” and yet, the comfort was welcome.

Back in the exam room, my son's face was white. His iTouch lay on the blanket that covered his lap.

“Mom – Did she say -- Did she say I’m going to a better place?”

With a whoosh it hit me. “Gone to a better place” had another meaning. And then I was gathering him in my arms, with his electrodes and IVs and wires, with the ping-ping-ping in the background, “Oh no, honey, she didn’t mean that other place! She just means Children’s Hospital!”

Return to the present. Now, sitting in that ambulance, aware with every ping that my son is alive, alive, in this very solid earthly place, I recognize the taste he’d just had at age 14 of his own mortality.

That's when the panic hits me. “I can’t believe I let him go canoeing in Canada last summer – hours and hours from the nearest ER!” my mind screams. “I can never let him go camping again. I can never let him play sports. What if my other two sons have this – whatever it is? I’ve taken his health – all my children’s health – for granted!”

Back in the cardiologist's waiting room, I'd looked at the parents of the really sick kids. Is that me now?

My son’s heart can flutter as rapidly as a hummingbird’s.

What does that mean?

Stay tuned for Act 3, the conclusion of this drama, and the diagnosis!

TUESDAY OCTOBER 13 on Open Salon.

(Updated date for posting of Act 3)

ER: An Ambulance, a Heartbeat, and Me

Wed, 6 Oct 2010 11:10:30 -0400

A REAL LIFE MEDICAL DRAMA IN 3 ACTS

ACT 1: THE AMBULANCE

The scene opens with the screech of a siren. A camera shot of the dashboard radio, playing the surreal “Jingle Bell Rock.” The camera focuses on my face as I clutch my knapsack to my chest in the passenger seat. Next to me, the ambulance driver muscles the steering wheel to maneuver through thick rush-hour traffic on the Expressway. Despite our lights and sirens, one car blocks our way.

“Hey! This is an ambulance, buddy,” the driver grumbles. Finally the car grudgingly inches forward to let us squeeze through.

In the midst of this noise, the sound my ears tune into is the ping-ping-ping of the heart monitor clipped to my teenage son’s chest. In the back of the ambulance, my son "G." lies, strapped to a stretcher, his face turned the other way, his heart monitor my only measure of how he's doing.

“Sorry, ma’am,” the driver says to me, “I just can’t get over how some people won’t pull over for an ambulance.”

I put on a smile. My own heart is only just now starting to slow down.

The camera turns to the back of the ambulance. The EMT, a young man in a Phillies cap bends over the bundled patient. He sees me and smiles, “He’s doing fine.”

My ringtone, “Ode to Joy,” emerges from my knapsack. I fumble among my belongings, past my son’s phone and iTouch to answer my cell phone.

“Hi,” says my husband’s voice in an unfamiliar octave. “I can see an ambulance. Is that you?”

I scan the tangle of traffic below me, two crowded lanes, with snow piled up on either side, but I can't pick out my husband’s tan Acura on its parallel route to meet us at Children’s Hospital. “I don’t see--”

“Mom!” comes my son's voice behind me, “There’s Dad’s car!”

“Hey,” my husband says, “Ask the driver where I should park when I get to the hospital.”

So the driver feeds me directions which I repeat without understanding as we slide between the cars, one of which I know is my husband’s, although I still can’t find it, the traffic a blur, my senses still focused on the steady ping-ping-ping behind me.

I lean back in the seat. “We were supposed to be shopping for a Christmas tree tonight,” I murmured, not sure who I was talking to. The driver nods.

The flashback begins the siren drones and the monitor pinges, and we jerk our way through the darkness. The image returns to me, the intersection of two major roads where, just a few hours before, in my own car, I had been sitting at a red light, my son in the passenger seat beside me. I flipped on the right turn signal to go to the Emergency Room. I reconsidered, hit the left signal, toward home. I glanced at my son’s hand resting on his chest. Then I changed my mind again. That last time, it was with a clear mind, not a trace of doubt or fear, that I signaled to the right, and turned my car toward the local hospital.

Flashback further, to the carpool lane at school. “You know that funny feeling I get?” my son had said as I picked him up from wrestling practice. He placed his hand on the rock band logo on the front of his T-shirt. “I’m having it right now.”

Of course I knew the “funny feeling.”

Fade back in time even further. My son first complained about it two years before during soccer season in sixth grade. “When I run too many laps, sometimes I get this funny feeling, like I can’t catch my breath,” he’d said, his sweaty brown hair stuck to his forehead.

“Maybe it’s just a stitch in your side,” I said, without giving it much thought. I was never much of a worrier, and this was my third child. I was confident, if anything serious ever happened, I would recognize it and know what to do.

“You probably just need to build up your endurance.” I’d said -- words that would haunt me later.

My husband and I continued to hear about the funny feeling every once in a while, but our son went on playing soccer. Sixth grade, seventh grade. Our son started wrestling. The funny feeling came and went. The summer after seventh grade, he went on a demanding school-sponsored canoe trip in Canada and came home, tan and somehow taller, spilling over with stories of the trail, but no mention of the funny feeling. But in August as eighth grade soccer season began, it was back, more frequent than ever.

“Maybe we should get it checked out,” Bart said.

“Yeah. Maybe he has a touch of asthma.”

During September, at a series of doctor’s offices, G. pointed to his chest and described his symptoms as best he could. He was instructed to blow into plastic tubing, but the verdict was ‘no asthma.’ A trial of reflux medication ruled that out too, and that brought us into October.

“A cardiologist?” I blurted when the pediatrician made the referral. “But there’s nothing wrong with his heart!”

“That’s the next step. Just to rule it out.”

But I dragged my feet, it seemed like an overreaction, a waste of time. So it was November when he and I finally sat in the waiting room of the Children’s Hospital cardiologist, surrounded by children with pale faces, some in wheelchairs. I wondered how their parents found the courage to deal with true emergencies. I gazed at my own healthy athletic child, his fingers on the tiny keyboard of his ever-present iTouch, updating his Facebook status to “Another doctor’s appointment.” I looked at the other, sicker children and felt out of place, and grateful.

In the exam room, G. scrunched up his face as he struggled all over again to describe what it was he sometimes felt. He pointed out the site of the funny feeling. “Right here. I can’t catch my breath.” They stuck a bunch of electrodes to his chest and took an electrocardiogram.

“I see nothing wrong with your heart,” the doctor said. He addressed G., not me. I liked him for that. G. was the patient; I was only the mom. Maybe G had an old injury to his chest wall that was causing the pain. He should continue with all his sports: soccer, wrestling, lacrosse. Not to worry. I went home relieved.

Soccer ended. Wrestling began. It was December, exam week, and the funny feeling persisted. “Sometimes I have to sit down for 45 minutes before it stops,” G. said, “It feels like my heart is racing.”

Noting that “heart racing” was a new way of describing the funny feeling, I decided that once Winter Break started, I would call the pediatrician again. But I never got the chance.

Flash forward again, to the carpool lane. His last midterm exam only hours behind him, G. dropped his heavy backpack into the passenger seat of my car, put his hand on his chest and said, “You know that funny feeling?” Close-up of my face as I struggle with my decision, biting my lip. Right turn or left?

Faith Paulsen's Open Salon Blog

The Ill-Fated Voyage of the Schooner Mariah, Part 2

Part 2: Bailing Water For His Life!

The Ill-Fated Voyage of the Schooner Mariah, Part 1 of 2

Part 1: Red Sky at Morning, Sailor Take Warning

Here's a link to the exciting conclusion of "The Ill-Fated Voyage of the Schooner Mariah."

ER Act 3: An Ambulance, a Heartbeat -- and Me

ACT 3: HEART IN THE RIGHT PLACE

ER Act 2: An Ambulance, a Heartbeat and Me

A REAL LIFE MEDICAL DRAMA IN 3 ACTS

ACT 2: THE ER

280

Stay tuned for Act 3, the conclusion of this drama, and the diagnosis!

TUESDAY OCTOBER 13 on Open Salon.

ER: An Ambulance, a Heartbeat, and Me

A REAL LIFE MEDICAL DRAMA IN 3 ACTS

ACT 1: THE AMBULANCE

TO BE CONTINUED!!!

Stay tuned for Act 2 of this 3-Act medical drama, on Open Salon later this week!