"Weather or Not"

By Jerry Zezima

I was born during a blizzard, I am all wet even during droughts and, perhaps a contributing factor to global warming, I am full of hot air.

This alone would qualify me to be a television weather expert.

But I have made it official by buying a rain gauge and an outdoor thermometer and hygrometer. I also have the world’s most impressive meteorological instrument — a Vermont weather stick — which is why I am now a proud if somewhat foggy CBS-2 First Alert Weather Watcher.

My job is to alert the weather team at Channel 2 in New York if it’s raining, snowing, sleeting, misty, drizzly, sunny, cloudy, partly sunny, partly cloudy, windy, breezy, cold, chilly, mild, warm or hot here at the Last Alert Weather Center, which happens to be in my backyard.

I also have to record how much precipitation we got during either a rain event (using my trusty rain gauge) or a snow event (using a less trusty tape measure that keeps snapping back before I can get an accurate measurement).

Whatever it’s doing, in modern weather parlance, it’s an “event.”

Another important piece of meteorological information is relative humidity, which I can see on the hygrometer. My closest relative, even when it’s not humid, is my wife, Sue, who thinks I’m balmy, no matter what the weather is.

“Welcome to the team,” meteorologist Justin Lewis, the weather producer at Channel 2, told me over the phone after I signed up.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’d like to report that it’s partly cloudy here.”

“Did you have a shower?” Justin asked.

“I took one this morning,” I told him.

“No, I mean, did it rain?” he wondered.

“I didn’t notice,” I answered. “I’ll have to check the rain gauge.”

It was agreed that I have to be more observant to be a good Weather Watcher.

“Sometimes,” Justin confided, “all you need is a window.”

Of course, the First Alert team at Channel 2 — including veterans John Elliott and Vanessa Murdock, new guy Tony Sadiku and my weather hero, Lonnie Quinn — have much more sophisticated equipment.

“We use satellites and computers,” Justin said. “And we have different forecasting models, like the GFS model and the European model.”

“My favorite European model is Heidi Klum,” I said. “Is she on the team?”

“No,” Justin replied. “She’s from Germany, which is a little out of our coverage area. But when she’s in New York, I hope she watches us.”

Channel 2 has about a thousand Weather Watchers (registration is free), although I am probably the only one with a Vermont weather stick, a thin piece of balsam fir from the Green Mountain State that rises or falls depending on moisture in the air.

“It’s low-tech but pretty impressive,” said Justin, who added that one of the most outstanding Weather Watchers is a woman named Elena, who sends in her meteorological observations with pictures of her dog.

“My late pooch, Lizzie, was a good forecaster,” I said. “She could tell if we were going to have a thunderstorm long before it arrived. She’d hide under the coffee table.”

Justin said his dog, Daisy, could be a Weather Watcher.

“She never used to react to thunder, but now that she’s 5, she does,” said Justin, who’s 40.

“My boyhood dog was named Daisy,” I told him. “She could have been on your team, too.”

Roosters could also be Weather Watchers. That’s because Justin has to get up at 1 a.m. so he can be in the studio at 2.

“Do you get up with the roosters?” I asked.

“No,” Justin answered. “They get up with me.”

One human who’s not an official Weather Watcher, because she has direct access to the forecast, is Justin’s wife, Caitlyn.

“Every now and then, she will say, ‘Hey, you said it was supposed to rain and it didn’t.’ She’s tough,” Justin said. “But she appreciates what I do.”

“My wife thinks my head is in the clouds,” I said. “Even when it’s sunny.”

“If you really want to be an accurate Weather Watcher,” Justin said, “you should get another dog.”

“I have a better idea,” I told him. “Let’s call Heidi Klum.”

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima

"The Cardiac Kid"

By Jerry Zezima

If there is one thing that will make your heart pound faster than finding out you need cardiac surgery, it’s finding out, mere hours before the operation, that you don’t.

Thus did my supposedly faulty ticker skip several beats when my cardiovascular surgeon called me the day before surgery was scheduled and said, “I have good news and bad news.”

“What’s the good news?” I wondered anxiously.

“You don’t need surgery,” he answered.

My heart practically leaped from my chest.

“What’s the bad news?” I stammered.

The doctor said, “You went through all this for nothing.”

Well, not exactly nothing, because I still have an aortic aneurysm, but it’s not as bad as first thought, meaning I won’t have to go under the knife — the saw, actually, because that’s what the surgeon would have used to cut me open — and end up with more scarring than the Frankenstein monster.

I could just hear my surgeon scream, “It’s alive! It’s alive!”

That’s how I feel now that I have avoided the dubious honor of being the new poster boy for the board game Operation.

A comprehensive CAT scan, the last of what seemed like a hundred pre-surgical tests, showed that the aneurysm isn’t large enough to be a balloon in the Thanksgiving Day parade.

“It can be controlled with medication,” the surgeon told me. “Do you have any questions?”

“Yes,” I said. “Does this mean all the sympathy I intended to get from family and friends is out the window?”

“Looks like,” the surgeon responded.

“And you won’t give me a doctor’s note saying I am medically cleared to be lazy and useless for the six weeks I was supposed to be recuperating?” I inquired.

“Sorry,” the surgeon said. “You still can’t do any heavy lifting, but if your wife wants you to do household chores, I can’t stop her.”

Just my luck! I thought I had the perfect excuse to sit in front of the TV all day, watching something intellectual, like football or the Three Stooges, while being waited on hand and foot, and now this.

It’s enough to make a grown man cry.

Sure, I would have been sore — a couple of ribs might have been broken during the surgery, prompting me to order spare ribs — and I would have had to shuffle around the neighborhood every day because walking is the best way to bounce back from such an invasive procedure.

I even bought a pedometer to count the thousands of steps I would take. Since I’d be on a special diet featuring such delicacies as cabbage and beans, it would be more like gas mileage.

But I have been heartened, so to speak, not just by all the cardiac puns that are a rich vein of humor and prove that laughter is the best medicine, but by the good wishes of people far and wide who have sent words of encouragement or told me their own stories of successful heart operations.

One woman suggested I get a medical alert bracelet in case I keeled over on a stroll down the street. I told her I was more worried about getting flattened like a flounder by one of the vehicular maniacs who regularly blow through the stop sign in front of my house.

I could see the headline: “Man survives heart surgery only to become roadkill.”

So now you can call me the Cardiac Kid, even though I’m a kid just from the neck up. I have dodged the proverbial bullet and am thankful that so many people have kept me in their hearts.

Yes, I am back to doing household chores sooner than I thought, which will please my wife. But as my doctor would agree, avoiding cardiac surgery has done my heart a world of good.

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima

"Testing My Patience"

By Jerry Zezima

When you’re scheduled to have heart surgery, nothing tests your heart more than pre-surgical testing.

I have had more tests than I ever had in school. Fortunately, I have passed them all, which is more than I can say for the tests I took during my ignominious academic career, when I regularly made the dishonor roll.

My worst subject was math, followed closely by all the others, so I may not be exactly correct in stating that I have had 27 pre-surgical tests.

“How come I have to take all these tests?” I asked Paige, a nice staffer in the office of my cardiac surgeon.

“So the doctor can have the information he needs to perform your surgery,” she explained.

Paige has scheduled some of the tests while the nice staffers in my cardiologist’s office have scheduled others.

To complicate matters, they have been done in different places, such as labs, imagining centers, doctor’s offices and hospitals. Most of the time, I don’t know which is which or whether I’m coming or going.

Also, I had to get a letter of clearance from my dentist, saying that I have no oral infections that would prevent surgery from being performed.

“I do this all the time,” he said after he examined the cave that passes for my mouth. “And not just for heart patients. It’s for people who need knee replacements, hip replacements, eye surgery and operations for practically everything except hangnails.”

This has all had to be coordinated with my primary care physician.

“I know it’s a lot,” said Debbie, the physician’s assistant.

“All these tests are taking a toll on my heart,” I told her.

The tests have included two rounds of bloodwork, an X-ray, an MRI, a couple of CAT scans, a urinalysis, an abdominal sonogram, a carotid ultrasound, an echocardiogram, an electrocardiogram and a physical. Some of the tests have required me to fast (I don’t know why it’s called a fast when it’s so slow) and some haven’t.

The worst was when I mistakenly fasted for a test.

“You mean I could have had breakfast?” I whimpered as my tummy rumbled.

“Yes,” a phlebotomist answered sympathetically.

“I don’t know what’s worse, heart failure or starvation,” I moaned.

One day I had two tests back to back.

For the first one, I was sent into a tube to get an image of my chest. A female voice from outside the room said, “Breathe and hold it.” A few seconds later, she said, “Exhale.”

This was repeated three times.

“How did I do?” I asked a technician named Joseph when the test was over.

“Very good,” he responded.

“I practiced breathing before I got here,” I said.

“That’s the first time I ever heard anybody say that,” he told me. “You’re a great patient.”

In the next test, a technician named Othniella checked blood flow in my neck.

“People tell me I’m a pain in the neck,” I said.

She chuckled and said, “You’re not supposed to talk.”

“People tell me that, too,” I said.

The most interesting test was a catheterization, which was performed in a hospital.

This required me a strip down to my birthday suit and don a johnny coat.

“Don’t tie it in the back,” a nurse instructed.

“I hope I don’t bottom out,” I said.

I was placed on a gurney and wheeled into a room that looked like the command center at NASA. Surrounding me were several big screens, lots of sophisticated equipment and a team of medical professionals, including my cardiologist.

“You’ve got this,” one of the nurses said reassuringly.

“If I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t need this,” I said.

She smiled and said, “Now I’m going to shave you.”

By that she meant areas of my anatomy, one very sensitive, where needles might be stuck.

“I don’t want to go to Vienna,” I said.

“For treatment?” the nurse asked.

“To join the Boys Choir,” I responded.

Mercifully, that was unnecessary. In fact, I aced the test.

“I hope this is the last one,” I told my cardiologist. “I never thought I’d say this, but I can’t wait for the surgery.”

Copyright 2024 by Jerry Zezima