Funny Glasses, Funny Things

If you squint your eyes just right and maybe don someone else’s prescription glasses, you can sometimes see humor in heart failure. People might think you’re crazy at first, but if you take yourself too seriously you might just end up in the loony bin anyway, so I say try to laugh instead of crying whenever possible. Sometimes you just need the right single-minded nugget to find amusement in spite of the not-so-funny stuff taking place around and within you.

One such nugget is my pump that delivers 24-hour meds through a PICC line in my arm. When I’m not cursing its existence or worrying about possible infection, I sometimes derive great amusement from it. It offers a wealth of material suitable for a variety humorous situations. For example, when I returned to work recently, I was offered some brilliant advice. I told my friend M that everyone was asking questions about my newest accessory, and she suggested I tell people it’s my pee pee catheter. A hypothetical conversation might go like this: Person X would say, “say, what’s that bag hanging around your neck” and I would respond with, “it’s my…[insert increasingly relieved pee face here]…whew I feel better now, it’s my catheter.” Now that could provide entertainment on the spot, plus amusement during the retelling of the story including a reenactment of the other person’s reaction, as well as a possible bonus of rumors subsequently floating around the building and back to M.

Also amusing is considering whose heart I might land if I end up requiring a transplant. This game is neither based in reality nor appropriate for sharing, given it is based completely on stereotypes, but that’s what makes it fun. One scenario I like to consider is getting the heart of a young black woman. Might I suddenly possess incredible rhythm and dance moves? Likewise, if my donor were a middle-aged gay man, would I suddenly wear really cute belts and walk with a swagger? Or maybe if I got the heart of a young woman that actually possessed some tendencies toward style and/or femininity, I might be better able to fulfill my mom’s fantasies of long days of shopping with her only daughter – and possibly stop wearing my fully functional but embarrassingly dorky opaque knee socks to work. Then again, if I got the heart of an accomplished country club member, I might be able to occasionally establish contact between my driver and a teed-up golf ball to fulfill my dad’s latent dreams…

I could go on and on but I think that’s enough fun for one day. The point is this – if we can find humor in heart failure, you can be damn sure there’s something funny about your life. Just borrow someone else’s glasses, pour yourself a cold beer and try not to take things too seriously.