Carless in Seattle

Not quite Carless in Seattle

Hi there!

So, it’s been quite a while since I last posted anything. And normally I wouldn’t go into one of those “Oh-I’ve-been-so-busy-please-forgive-me-I-still-love-you-Interwebs” tirades…but I’m going to, so I apologize in advance.

Some of you know that the past six weeks or so have been rough for me. On May 13, (which happens to be not only my birthday but that of the fabulous Isabel, my friend and fellow SMB columnist) my husband woke up to hear me gasping for breath, not breathing, and turning blue. He called 911, and my mother-in-law, who happened to be in town visiting, did CPR on me for the three or four minutes before the paramedics arrived.

Turns out, I had an episode of what the doctors call ventricular fibrillation, and went into heart failure. Thank God my husband was home and my mother-in-law was visiting, or else the outcome would have been entirely different, and I wouldn’t be here today, writing this post.

So, anyway, I spent about two weeks in two different hospitals, in part recovering from the incident itself and in part recovering from surgery as the doctors implanted a defibrillator in my chest, so that if this ever happens again, it will shock my heart back into functioning.

The doctors are attributing the cause to something called Peripartum Cardiomyopathy, which is defined as heart failure in the last month of pregnancy or within the first five months postpartum. According to Wikipedia, “PPCM is a diagnosis of exclusion, wherein patients have no prior history of heart disease and there are no other known possible causes of heart failure.”

Basically, although they can identify what it is, the doctors have no idea why it happens, which is scary.

But anyway, my excuses for not posting now made, you can read more about all of this stuff on my personal blog. On to more exciting (or at least more relevant to my column) topics.

I have to confess that since this happened, for the most part we haven’t been carless. We’ve had a slew of family visiting from Portland, and most of them have brought their cars, so we have had the very great luxury of being able to hop in the car and go…well, wherever we need or want to go whenever the fancy strikes us.

When we did happen to be carless for a few weeks after this happened, it basically meant we were housebound, because I’ve been in no condition to be busing it everywhere. (Which, by the way, was driving me slowly crazy; I am not a person who likes just sitting at home so being stuck there has been hard.)

Anyway, now my husband Brett’s sister Rachel is here for the summer to help us, and she has her car here.

Of course Brett and I have had good intentions to leave her car parked, to continue taking the bus, ordering our groceries online, riding the bus to church, work, etc. — for the most part, to continue our carless lifestyle.

But…well…it’s hard! The temptation to just jump in the car and go wherever we want or need to go without having to check a bus schedule or wait around for a bus or rush to catch a bus is so irresistable. It’s so much easier. And I feel guilty for that, even though I know that right now I really need to take it easy, and that includes not trekking all over Seattle on the bus with a baby strapped to my chest, carrying a diaper bag.

At least Rachel’s stay with her car is temporary, so in a couple of months, we’ll be back to our carless life. I hope by then I’ll be more in a position health-wise where we can continue to be carless.

I’ll leave you with a picture that I took quite a while ago (in late April, I think) at the intersection of 22nd Ave. NW and NW 56th Street in Ballard. I didn’t put the sticker on the sign, but I wish I had. I love it!

If you can’t quite read the rest of the sticker, it says, “DRIVING / Start: Walking! Biking! Using Public Transport!”

Now that’s my kind of bumper sticker.

Also, does it strike anyone else as ironic that it’s essentially a bumper sticker (you know, for a car) that is advocating to do away with cars? Hah. I guess that is why it’s on a stop sign and not on a bumper…

Anyway, to sum up: I’m back, blogging, and not quite carless. It should be an interesting summer, I think, with gas prices at record highs and rising every day and the temptation to drive everywhere looming large. I’ll keep you all posted as we navigate these murky waters of being not-quite-carless anymore.

Read more of Kathleen’s writing at http://shinelikestars.blogspot.com. If you have questions, anecdotes, or topics for “Carless in Seattle,” email kathleen@seattlemomblogs.com.