I am a hypochondriac. I have been one all my life. There are two types of hypochondriacs, quiet sobbers and loud moaners. I am a card-carrying member of the loud moaner type.

My six grown children confirm this.

Most adult children cherish fond memories of the first words their parents said to them: “Goo goo! Cutie pie! Daddy loves you, sweetums!”

Not my kids.

“I think I’m gonna die!” is what they claim that I shouted, repeatedly, whenever I had anything from a broken arm to a hangnail. Some of those children have said they will chip in to have “I think I’m gonna die!” engraved on my tombstone, along with “P.S. This time you did it!”

So when I go to the hospital, I go loudly.

Earlier this month, I experienced a miracle of modern medicine, a cardiac catheterization.

They slit your wrist. Then they shove a sewer pipe, or so I thought, up into your chest through an artery. They pump dye into the arteries of your heart. Then they look at computer monitor screens – and they also let me look – so we could see my heart beating in real time. That is somewhat surreal.

Three of my heart’s four chambers seemed energetic. Left atrium: Lub-DUP. Left ventricle: Lub-DUP. Right atrium: Lub-DUP.

Uh-oh. Right ventricle, the chamber that squirts oxygen-depleted blood toward my lungs: Lub-Dupsssssh, or something similar.

At the bottom of my right ventricle lies a lump of “dead” tissue, probably killed about 15 years ago from a “silent” heart attack, so named because I never felt it so I did not scream, “I think I’m gonna die!” when it happened.

Happily, I did not die from this month’s cardiac catheterization, either. I did not even suffer greatly, though I thought that I would.

I can endure pain. But I do not do so silently.

On that Wednesday, Dr. Jay Ambrose and his crew, Joe, Tyler, Danielle, Heather and Tracy, probably went home with something akin to laryngitis. I no longer hear worth a darn, unless the word being spoken is “Chonk’lits!” or something similar. So they had to use their across-the-room voices to give me instructions though my ears were no more than three feet from their faces. In addition, I myself talk … loudly … all… the… time.

It is difficult for a catheterization crew to maintain synchronization when, “Pass the frammus” or “Insert the whatzis” has to compete for attention with, “So anyway, when we were at the funeral home that time….”

Talking about funeral homes in cath labs is … I’ll bet that it is rare. A no-no. Not to be discussed. But I babbled about everything, despite the light anesthesia that was supposed to relax me.

To their credit, the cath crew tolerated my discussions without outward signs of disgust.

For those readers who have not experienced a cardiac catheterization, I can report that the procedure can be uncomfortable. It can be stressful if, like me, you allow it to be. It can be a tad humiliating due to the scarcity of cover-up cloth in hospital gowns.

But mine was less uncomfortable than, say, tooth extractions or dental root canal procedures. Those things are not unendurable unless, like me, you wail at hangnails.

David Sullens, the transplanted Texan who now edits the Courier-Express, advised me this way: “I’ve enjoyed the ‘cath’ experience several times myself so knock off the martyr stuff. Nobody’s buying it.”

That must be “West Tixis dialect” for “I shall devote devout prayers to sustain your recovery.” Sympathetic fellow, that David.

Oh. The medical results? The cath confirmed that my “silent” heart attack blocked one of my five major coronary arteries. Happily, other blood vessels compensated for some of the lost blood flow.

I underwent the cath because a routine checkup discovered my pulse had dropped to 30, about half of where it should have been. A CT scan and a 24-hour Holter monitor recording also showed extra heartbeats. The cath puts the blame for all of this on that long-ago heart attack, plus my getting older. My heart had been goofy all along.

So I am good to go, though at 76, that suggests “putz” speed, not whiz-bang physical exertions.

I have an additional piece of advice for prospective “procedure” patients: Bring charging cords for cell phones, with our ginormous family hanging on every groan made by Dad as relayed by my wife and myself, texting taxed the phones’ batteries during long prep and recovery periods.

The hospital staff was cheerful and competent. Dr. Ambrose even acted interested in my – this shows how weird I was – my Scriptural exegesis of the “Peter walks on water” account (Matthew 14: 22-34). I thought it natural to go all Biblical while they were, in effect, publicly undressing my heart’s innards.

Happily, I survived.

But I did think I was gonna die, for a whole minute there. Waah.

¯¯¯

Denny Bonavita is a former editor at newspapers in DuBois and Warren. He lives near Brookville. Email: denny2319@windstream.net.