April 19, 2026: “ What the Angels Left,” Hospital, “Ode to Cheese and Crackers”

The last four or five days have been a rollercoaster.

On Tuesday, my wife texted me, telling me that it felt like an elephant was sitting on her chest and her jaw was aching.  Having worked in a cardiology office for about eight years, I knew she needed to go to the ER.  (You wouldn’t believe the number of times I spoke to patients on the phone experiencing symptoms of a heart attack and asking me what they should do.  The answer was always the same:  CALL AN AMBULANCE! or GET TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM!)

Two days later, my wife was still in the hospital, and we still didn’t have any answers.  First and foremost—we do know she did NOT have a heart attack.  All the testing (bloodwork, EKGs, stress test, echocardiogram) proved that.  What the doctors couldn’t figure out is why her heart rate kept falling into the 40s.  The first morning, she couldn’t complete her stress test because her heart rate fell to 39 bpm (that’s “beats per minute” for my non-medical disciples).  

Of course there have been moments of grace over through this whole ordeal—simple kindnesses like text messages and an occasional piece of chocolate—and I know that there were tons of people praying for my wife.

Marie Howe writes about unexpected grace . . . 

What the Angels Left

by: Marie Howe

At first, the kitchen scissors seemed perfectly harmless.

They lay on the kitchen table in the blue light.

Then I began to notice them all over the house,

at night in the pantry, or filling up bowls in the cellar

where there should have been apples.  They appeared under rugs,

lumpy places where one would usually settle before the fire,

or suddenly shining in the sink at the bottom of soupy water.

Once, I found a pair in the garden, stuck in turned dirt

among the new bulbs, and one night, under my pillow,

I felt something like a cool long tooth and pulled them out

to lie next to me in the dark.  Soon after that I began 

to collect them, filling boxes, old shopping bags,

every suitcase I owned.  I grew slightly uncomfortable

when company came.  What if someone noticed them

when looking for forks or replacing dried dishes?  I longed

to throw them out, but how could I get rid of something

that felt oddly like grace?  It occurred to me finally

that I was to use them, and I resisted a growing cumpulsion

to cut my hair, although, in moments of great distraction,

I thought it was my eyes they wanted, or my soft-belly

—exhausted, in winter, I laid them out on the lawn.

The snow fell quiet as usual, without any apparent hesitation

or discomfort.  In spring, as I expected, they were gone.

In their place, a slight metallic smell, and the clear muddy earth.

I think what Howe is getting at in this poem are graces that don’t seem like graces at first:  missing a bus and finding out later that the missed bus got hit by a train; getting sick on Christmas thereby avoiding a family get-together that ended in tears and screaming; or not eating dinner and hearing that everyone who DID eat ended up with food poisoning.  You get the idea.  The scissors seem like a plague, but, in actuality, they are gifts from angels.

My wife did her second stress test on Thursday morning without any problems.  By noon, she was discharged from the hospital sporting a 30-day Holter monitor.  By 3:30 p.m., our car was packed, and we were on the road for a whirlwind weekend of poetry readings in Ann Arbor, Dexter, and Detroit.  (More on that in an upcoming post.)

So, you may be asking, where is the grace in all of that?

Answer:  all of our family and friends.

Being in the hospital can be a pretty isolating experience, but we never felt that.  My sister-in-law and brother-in-law waited in the ER with us.  One of my best friends (who happens to be the head of the cardiology clinic) made sure my wife’s tests were completed as quickly as possible.  Another friend who’s a cardiology nurse stopped by to see how we were holding up.  It was simply grace upon grace upon grace from everyone (and that includes my friends and family from downstate).

Here’s a poem about grace that Saint Marty wrote . . .

Ode to Cheese and Crackers

by: Martin Achatz

Nothing special.  Saltines.  Kraft American

cheese slices.  I sit on the couch at 11 p.m.,

home from the hospital where I left

my wife in a bed, her heart singing

lullabies on a screen at the nurses’ station.

I place the cheese and crackers on my tongue

like communion wafers, blessed by the salt

crunch, creamy orange blandness, the way

I used to feel blessed when my mother gave

me Campbell’s Chicken Noodle when I was home

sick as a kid and I believed she could cure

leprosy, raise the dead with a can opener

and microwave oven while Bob Barker

dispensed miracles to the sick and lame

on the TV as long as they promised

to spay and neuter their pets.

October 24: "Gold," Everything Precious, Appendicitis

It is days like today that really remind me of what's truly precious in my life--not just the silver lining, but the gold lining of my daily existence.

Too often, I get swept up in the worries and stresses of my jobs or teaching or writing.  (Yes, writing can be stressful, but it's a stress I embrace wholeheartedly as delight.)  When this happens, I often find myself spiraling, like blood down the shower drain at the Bates Motel.  Everything precious goes right out the window.

Billy Collins on things that are precious . . . 

Gold

by: Billy Collins

I don’t want to make too much of this,
but because the bedroom faces east
across a lake here in Florida,

when the sun first rises
and reflects off the water,
the whole room is suffused with the kind
of golden light that might travel
the length of a passageway in a megalithic tomb
precisely at dawn on the summer solstice.

Again, I don’t want to exaggerate,
but it reminds me of a brand of light
that could illuminate the walls
of a hidden chamber full of treasure,
pearls and gold coins overflowing the silver platters.

I feel like comparing it to the fire
that Aphrodite lit in the human eye
so as to make it possible for us to perceive
the other three elements,

but the last thing I want to do
is risk losing your confidence
by appearing to lay it on too thick.

Let’s just say that the morning light here
would bring to anyone’s mind
the rings of light that Dante
deploys in the final cantos of the Paradiso
to convey the presence of God
while bringing The Divine Comedy
to a stunning climax and leave it at that.

My wife woke up this morning with severe abdominal pain.  She spent quite a bit of time in the bathroom because she thought it was due to something she ate.  Then she went back to bed.

When I picked her up after work, she couldn't even straighten her body to walk normally.  So, she went to a local walk-in clinic that promptly sent her to the ER.  After waiting for four hours, she got into an exam room, and then they did some lab work and CT scan.  Two hours after that, the doctor told us she was suffering from an acute appendicitis.  After another two hours, she was loaded into an ambulance and transferred to another hospital's ER, where she is waiting to see the surgeon in the morning.  

I just got home.  It's after 2 a.m.  I'm beat.  In a few hours, I'll have to drive my son to school and head to the hospital.

Tonight has been full of stress and worry.  The kind of experience that really does remind me of what's precious in my life.  Sure, my jobs are important.  Ditto teaching.  Writing poetry keeps me sane.  But, when my life is distilled to its elements, here is what remains:  my wife and kids and family.  They are my gold.

Saint Marty is a rich man.

July 14: Filled with Peace, Reality Check, At Sea

Merton finds real peace of mind and heart . . . 

It was a late, cold afternoon. The frozen piles of snow lay along the swept sidewalks, in the gutters, in front of the small, one-story buildings on State Street. Presently Bob O’Brien, the plumber at the Olean house, who lived in Alleghany, and who used to fix the pipes when they went wrong up at the cottage, came by in his car. He stopped to give me a ride.

He was a big, jovial, family man, with white hair and several sons who served as altar boys at St. Bonaventure’s Church in Alleghany, and as we passed out of town on the wide road, he was talking about peaceful and ordinary things. 

The country opened out before us. The setting sun shone as bright as blood, along the tops of the hills, but the snow in the valleys and hollows was blue and even purple with shadows. On the left of the road, the antennae of the radio station stood up into the clean sky, and far ahead of us lay the red-brick buildings of the College, grouped in an imitation Italy in the midst of the alluvial valley. Beyond that, on the side of the hill were the redder buildings of St. Elizabeth’s convent, past the high bridge over the railroad tracks. 

My eyes opened and took all this in. And for the first time in my life I realized that I no longer cared whether I preserved my place in all this or lost it: whether I stayed here or went to the army. All that no longer mattered. It was in the hands of One Who loved me far better than I could ever love myself: and my heart was filled with peace. 

It was a peace that did not depend on houses, or jobs, or places, or times, or external conditions. It was a peace that time and material-created situations could never give. It was peace that the world could not give.

There are some times in your life when you experience what Merton is writing about in this passage.  A peace that has nothing to do with wealth or health, possessions or people.  A peace that doesn't come from anything the exists on this little rock of a planet.  

I apologize for my extended absence this last week.  My last few posts were certainly not about peace of mind or heart, that's for sure.  I allowed myself to become overwhelmed by certain aspects of my life.  Choices I didn't want to make, but also couldn't avoid.

Then, God stepped in.  Gave me a reality check.

My wife found a lump in her breast last Monday.  She had a doctor's appointment and a biopsy on Tuesday.  Wednesday, she spent the day in bed, nauseated with chills and a low-grade fever.  Thursday, she had a COVID test, even though she is fully vaccinated.  Friday morning at 2 a.m., she woke me up to take her to the local ER.  Her incision site was red and hot and hard.  The doctor diagnosed her with an infection and prescribed an antibiotic.  Friday, she was supposed to get the results of both the COVID test and the biopsy.  She got neither.  Saturday, she wasn't feeling better, and the infection looked as if it was spreading.  Back to the ER.

Finally, at about 5 p.m. on Saturday, we find out that she didn't have COVID and that her breast biopsy came back negative.  And she had a MRSA infection throughout her body.  She was admitted to the hospital Saturday evening and spent three days there on IV Vancomycin.  She was discharged yesterday and is recuperating at home, taking oral Bactrim and changing her dressings twice a day.

So, here I sit on my couch at almost midnight.  Everyone else in my house is asleep.  I'm tired after a full week of medical chaos.  I'd like to say that I've found the peace that Merton is talking about.  Peace that the world cannot give.  I haven't.  I'm still at sea about a lot of things.

However, there have been some blessings these last six or seven days, as well.  I spent a lot of time with my twelve-year-old son.  He wrote some poems.  Went to an Open Mic poetry night with me.  My daughter and I bonded over hating the ending of a movie called The Florida Project.  We had a family game night of Jeopardy.  And one particularly bad situation was completely avoided because of my wife's illness.

As I said, God put things into perspective.  Showed me who's really in charge.

And it ain't Saint Marty.  Perhaps there's some peace of mind in that.

July 30: Ultimate Question, Emergency Room, Blueberries

Deep Thought is receiving some criticism for his answer to the Big Question of life, the universe, and everything . . .

"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl.  "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?"

"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer.  I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."

"But it was the Great Question!  The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything," howled Loonquawl.

"Yes," said Deep Thought with the air of one who suffers fools gladly, "but what actually is it?"

A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and then at each other.

That is the crux of the whole problem.  They have an answer, but they don't know what the actual question is.  For example, I could type "blueberries" right now, with no context.  You, my dear disciples, have no idea what the significance of "blueberries" is, although you can probably guess they are going to be important considering the photo at the beginning of this blog post.  So, knowing a question is important to understand the answer.

If I typed "Emergency Room" right now, you would not know that it is the answer to the question "Why didn't Saint Marty write a post last night?"  Yes, my wife and I were at our local ER for almost seven hours last night.  We arrived at around 3 p.m., and we didn't leave until about 9:30 p.m.  It was a long, exhausting night.

As I said in earlier posts, my wife has been teetering on hypomania/mania for a good portion of this summer, if not longer.  After some events this part week, it was suggested to me by the nurse of my wife's psychiatrist that I try to convince my wife to go to the Emergency Room for an evaluation.

I broached the suggestion with my wife yesterday afternoon, and, to my surprise, she agreed.  Her one worry was that they were going to try to keep her in the psychiatric ward at the hospital.  She has been there before, and she isn't particularly fond of the idea of returning.  I had to keep reassuring her several times, "Honey, they can't keep you if you don't consent."

At the end of that long, long afternoon and evening, a really nice ER doc, who seemed to know his stuff about psychiatric medications, suggested some changes in dosages and added Vistaril, a drug that will help her sleep at night.  Frankly, walking through the doors of the ER yesterday afternoon, I help little hope that anything constructive was going to come of the visit.  I was wrong, I think.

Ten o'clock last night, we were home, and my wife was taking her first dose of the new medication.

Now, as much I would love to say that Vistaril was the answer to all the problems that have plagued us this summer, it wasn't.  There isn't a drug that exists that will have that kind of effect.  No, the medication changes are part of a very complex solution to a very complex problem.  There is simply no magic pill for bipolar disorder and its attendant problems.

However, my wife did get a really good night's sleep last night.  That's makes me happy.  We are not out of the woods by far yet.  Sleep is just one of the first steps for my wife's recovery and stability.  I will not go into the other issues that revolve around this particular episode.  They are personal and difficult and not for me to share.  That is up to my spouse.

This afternoon, my family and I went blueberry picking at a friends' property.  There were six of us, including my wife.  As I sat, squatting on my haunches, I began to find a little peace of mind.  (My mind has been on overdrive for about two or three weeks.)  It was just me, the blueberries in front of me, and my bucket.  After about an hour or so, I mentioned to my wife how peaceful it was collecting blueberries.

"It's meditation," she said.

And she was write.  I was breathing more easily.  The worries that have been plaguing me weren't present in my thoughts.  I just moved from one spot to another, hunting for patches of blue on the ground.  As I picked berries, I prayed a little, had a conversation with the Almighty.  Asked Him to take away all the doubts and fears that have stressing me.

When I left my friends' house, I was more relaxed that I have been in a long time.  It was a perfect kind of evening.  I love being with my family, sans television and cell phones.  Just a man and his bucket and his kids and his wife.  It's a memory I will hold onto for harder times.

This evening is going to help me with the stresses coming my way tomorrow and the rest of this week.  Because I have this one perfect moment to hold on to.  A couple hours of happiness.

Saint Marty will take that.

October 28: Einstein's Brain, Pumpkin Guts, New Cartoon

It has been a long day.  My wife has been to the ER twice this weekend.  On Friday, she had ear infections and a sore throat.  This morning, she woke up with a case of conjunctivitis.  So, while my wife made her second trip to the hospital, I made lunch for our son and daughter.

My daughter got her pointe shoes for ballet this afternoon.  We met her dance teacher at the store, and, after about half an hour of trying on shoe after shoe, my little Cinderella had her glass slippers.  She was so excited that she held her shoes in her lap like a new puppy all the way home.  She even took a picture of herself with them.  She's planning on wearing them to bed tonight.  (Her dance teacher said that was OK.  It will help the shoes mold to her feet.)

Then we picked up two pumpkins to carve tonight.  My daughter picked out a "super" pumpkin and a "medium" pumpkin.  The pumpkin patch was picked pretty clean, but we ended up with some nice squashes.  After dinner, I gutted them and sifted through the innards for seeds.  My son, who usually wants to roll in mud like a pig, wanted nothing to do with pumpkin guts.  He looked like a cast member of The Walking Dead, trying to avoid zombie contamination.

Now, I am at home, and my daughter is doing homework.  She's tired and more than a little cranky.  I'm also watching Nova on PBS.  It's about Einstein's brain.  Pretty gross and fascinating at the same time.  It's the public television version of a Halloween special, I think.  I had no idea that Einstein's brain was removed illegally and chopped into 40 blocks.  The guy who did the autopsy actually took pictures of Einstein's brain after it was removed, before he diced and sliced it.  When he eventually left Princeton, he took the brain with him.  Einstein's brain travelled all over the Midwest of the United States.  When Dr. Igor, the brain thief, died, Einstein's brain was returned to Princeton, where it is kept under lock and key these days.

Yes, I am tired.  Yes, I find pictures of a dissected brain more than a little disgusting.  Yes, I am ready to go to bed.  Yes, I want to go to sleep and not get up for about two or three days.  I wonder if Einstein ever got this tired.  I'm sure he did, but, when Einstein's head hit the pillow, he probably counted prime numbers or light years or abstract algebraic equations.  When I finally go to bed tonight, I will think about Bugs Bunny or Tweety Bird.  I am not Albert Einstein.

Marty is just a tired saint, facing another week of labor, with trick-or-treating thrown in for fun.

Confessions of Saint Marty