Sunday, January 26, 2014

The Heart of the Matter

Last week I was getting my blog post for the week together when I
realized that I was having an atrial fibrillation. This is a cardiac arrhythmia in which the heart beats too fast and irregularly. Unlike a ventricular arrhythmia, it is not dangerous in itself, as the blood continues to circulate, sort of, albeit in a reduced fashion. A problem arises if the fibrillation continues for some time, however, as eddies of blood move within the heart chambers and blood clots are formed that can leave the heart and travel to the brain, causing stroke. It is said that those of us with atrial fibrillation risk having a stroke at five times the rate of the general populace. In addition, long fibrillations mean that the heart is beating too fast for a prolonged period, and eventually it gets worn out, leading to cardiac insufficiency.
All this went through my mind as I marked off the hours during the evening; 4 and counting. Then I slept, hoping it would be gone like magic when I awoke, the usual case with me. No such luck, and when an early morning dose of medicine had not helped, I went to the emergency room. Surely I would be home in a few hours, I told myself, as I would be given medication to add to that I had already taken. Just in case, I packed my toothbrush.
Thus began what would become a four-day odyssey through the emergency room and then onto a ward. Dozing and then staring at the curtain in the little emergency room cubicle, I had plenty of time to reflect on why this had happened. Not in the “why me” sense, but understanding a bit about the emotional component of a fibrillation. I had this condition for years before it occurred to me that there was an emotional component. I began to understand that a fibrillation is a panic attack of the heart, really, in response to a particular emotional constellation. I began to converse with my heart, which proved very difficult at first. It is so easy to take it for granted, as it usually just quietly beats on and on. Not for it the more excited reactions of the gut, for instance. Its very dependability and regularity make it ho-hum. Only when I was able to compare the strength and rhythm of the beat with the hop, skip and jump or rapid but weak pitter-patter of a fibrillation could I see it as a bulwark and a protector that is also a partner in feeling: “matters of the heart”.
Three days of treatment with three different medications slowed the heart rate but did nothing to alleviate the irregularity. Finally came the welcome news that I would have a type of cardioversion, an electric shock to the heart that almost always restores normal rhythm. One is put to sleep for 2 minutes with an injection into the port of one’s IV drip, so one doesn’t even feel the needle. With such a short anesthesia one has few aftereffects. The worst part of the whole procedure was filling out the lengthy form for the anesthesiologist, probably the same form one fills out if one is having a far larger op.
To shock the heart sounds, well, heartless. What a way to treat the organ of love and feeling! But then one remembers that it is electric impulses that make the heart beat, and Eros shoots his arrows into the heart. Deep feeling is not namby-pamby. Neither was my feeling when I awoke and saw the lovely regular pattern of the EKG. It worked!
My regularly beating heart and I are now home, and I have a greater appreciation of this steady companion. We’re conversing regularly, and I hope that it will have little further need of panicking and fibrillating.

Friday, January 10, 2014

What I love


Last year I wrote about effective presentation in a post entitled Many are the Ways, and one of the websites I included is called “What I Love”, www.whatilove.org, created by The Climate Reality Project.

The name of this website alone conjures up emotion and individuality. It is not surprising that the site presents a multitude of possible answers to the question “What can’t you live without?” and great variation. There are the expected basics of nature: forests, mountains, the ocean; there are cities, beverages, foodstuffs, sports, hobbies, animals, people and values, all portrayed with lively pictures.

Why did The Climate Reality Project create this website? The expected future effects of global warming on each category are presented, most of them very threatening. For example, one of the items in the natural category is water. Just water, not rivers or the ocean. To be sure water is a very basic necessity of life, but as something to love? Maybe if one is an avid swimmer or sailor, sure, but…wait a minute, how about the bracing shower in the morning, the cooling shower after exercise on a hot day, the cold glass of water when one is very thirsty. Ah yes, one can have feelings about water. If one doesn’t, reading about the expected water shortages of the future and the wars that will be fought over water rights awakens plenty of emotion.

The cities category includes New York. Do I love New York? I wouldn’t go that far, but there is the experience of walking up Fifth Avenue on a crisp fall day, taking the ferry to Staten Island and admiring the skyline, lunching in Chinatown or shopping for lekvar in the German-Hungarian section of the city. Again, reading about the expected sea level rise and imagining the East River overflowing into the streets of the east side brings feelings of both doom and increased appreciation of the unique aspects of this great city.

Everyone loves certain items in the food category: cherries, for instance, chocolate, or how about maple syrup? The mouth waters, and then one thinks of the dying bee population, without which there may very well be no more cherries, or one is more aware of the rising temps that threaten maple trees and cocoa beans.

Those of us who live in CH are well aware of global warming and its threat to the ski areas, where already 40% of the snow is artificially made. The days when I would drive up to Horgenberg to ski cross-country on the prepared track for 45 minutes at lunchtime and then return to my computer are long gone. No more prepared track, for there is too little snow for it to be worthwhile. Not into active sports? Photography and gardening more your style? You’ll see changes every year through the lens of your camera and you’ll spend more time fighting insect pests in your garden.

Perhaps you have a dog or cat or ride a horse? Horses, the site tells us, are especially susceptible to heat exhaustion and dehydration. More than 400,000 pets were displaced during hurricane Katrina, and few were reunited with their people. Dogs are especially vulnerable to heat strokes.

Now we come to what are the most important categories for us human beings: people and values. Family, partners, friends. What do these have to do with global warming? The site points out how many people will die during extreme heat waves and violent storms, and we have only to think back to hurricane Katrina to recognize the truth of this statement. Such threats to life and limb are accompanied by threats to faith and hope, freedom and equality, particularly in poor countries, for they are more threatened by environmental disaster.

Because this is a site about what people love, it includes helpful and fun info as well. The best places in the world for chocolate, for instance (Zurich is one, naturally!) or how to handle your hedges if you are into gardening. Horses breathe 4 times a minute when at rest, we are told, dogs have 3 eyelids, a cat’s brain is more similar to man’s than is that of a dog.

No matter what you love, global warming is going to impinge on it in some way. It seems to me that one has only to think of the children in one’s life: one’s own, or one’s grandchildren, nieces and nephews, godchildren or stepchildren to want them to grow up and grow old in an intact world. What you love as an individual connects you to all of humanity.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Comeback


You’ve probably never heard of the town of Kivalina. It had only 374 residents as of the 2010 census and is located on a remote Alaskan island. But in 2008 Kivalina made history when it sued the Exxon Mobil Corporation and eight other oil companies, 14 power companies and one coal company in federal court. Threatened by coastal erosion and rising sea levels, the town plans to relocate, at a cost of between $95 and $400 million. In its suit the town claims that the defendants emitted sizeable amounts of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, which is causing rising sea levels. The suit went all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided not to hear the case, thus effectively ending the town’s claim. The courts had already decided, in the 2011 case American Electric Power vs. Connecticut, that climate change damage is a matter for the executive and legislative branches of the government, not for the courts.
Was Kivalina’s court case thus simply another claim in the litigation-happy United States? Can one in fact pinpoint polluters and assess their individual contributions to global warming? Thanks to research published recently in the journal Climatic Change, we now have the calculations that show that only 90 companies, most of them fossil-fuel producers, have caused two thirds of all the man-made global warming emissions since the start of the industrial age. Half of these gases have been emitted in the last 25 years. We’ve known about climate change for longer than that. It could thus be argued that these companies have acted irresponsibly and should be fined or their activities stopped; not by bringing suit in federal court, but by act of Congress or by the EPA.
It is thought that the situation may be different in state courts, or in other countries with different legal systems. Suing the polluters might be possible there. As more and more companies are busy suing governments for lost earnings due to environmental regulations, they would get a taste of their own medicine.
Of course there is a catch here. Who has bought the fossil fuels produced by these polluting companies? You and I and the next-door neighbor. It can certainly be argued that Exxon Mobil and other oil companies would not be the giants they are, in both production and pollution figures, if everyone with an oil furnace and a car did not buy their products. Thinking in terms of court cases is perhaps not the point here. It is rather that these companies have lobbied and spent millions of dollars limiting our choices where energy is concerned. It is the consciousness-raising, the concrete evidence of just how gigantic these companies are and the dire necessity of getting away from fossil fuels that should motivate us. A David and Goliath story in which Goliath is pointed out as the bully he is.
And let’s not forget that David won.