a-o-k
"I see no reason to keep you from the exercise," said the ultrasound guy yesterday as he smeared the gel around on my chest. I hadn't realized that the echo part would be an ultrasound of my heart. I've had two babies, I know about ultrasounds. So I walked on the treadmill. My heart rate when I got on the thing was 70. My resting heart rate (terrifies me that I know this) is 64. My target was 160. Took just over ten minutes. The cardiologist, the ultrasound guy and the Ukranian nurse were there the whole time, cracking jokes and making me laugh. Thirty seconds after I achieved the target, they laid me back down on the table and took another ultrasound. It was tough to hold my breath for that. "Everything looks perfectly normal," said Dr. Miller, the cardiologist. "You're good to go." And that, as they say, was that. (Yes, chest still hurts and I'm still having trouble catching my breath, which is annoying and uncomfortable.) I'm about to be hard at work on brand-spaking-new chapters, the scenes have been swirling around in my head. The group critique looms large in my thinking -- they liked the dialogue, but were bothered that there's so much of it. That kind of feedback is so useful -- brings back the Francine Prose book yet again -- I see very clearly that the chapter one dialogue is too one-dimensional (all they're talking about is bridge -- there's no subtext). Easy to fix, after a fashion. I've mentioned it now several days in a row -- how tempting it is to go back and tweak the chapter while the comments are still fresh in my head. I'm resisting that urge (argh, maybe I should just do it, quit talking about it!!), and finding that the remarks are informing my new work instead. That's every bit as good, as far as I'm concerned, provided the new work also reflects the stuff the group had to say. Also a new project looming on the horizon, means I'm back dabbling in web design -- an easy way to waste boatloads of time. Stay tuned, there may be a moving announcement in my future.
