Defining normal

Today BD (Beloved Daughter) and I had our annual, or bi-annual visit to the cardiologist. The techs were trying out a new echocardiogram machine, so I heard interesting things like, "You get can get a 4-D image. Use the 3-D transducer." Are we a dimension short? The transducer is. Time is measured on the monitor.

No change. No surprise. My heart hasn't changed in the last seven years. Neither has BD's.

The cardiologist recommends we start taking Losartan. Given my experience with the mystery med (previous post), I'd rather not right now. The Great Sorting. Writing and teaching this fall. But I promised I'd start in January, after the semester is over. (The Great Sorting will be over before the end of the summer. It will! It will!!) I also said that if I notice that I felt logey (sp?) and/or felt my creative juices were impaired, that I would go off it.

This is one more instance of "It's not what you've got, it's how you use it." I want to use the days I have, not get through them. I did that with enough days before I figured out what I wanted to do with my life.

The other thing that caught my attention was the cardiologist, whom I like, saying, "Losartan could solve a lot of problems. The biggest are the heart, and the eyes, but then there's other issues." He described patients who are 7 feet tall.

I had an image of my neighbor's athletic son, who is 6'-10", no sign of Marfan's. So, what's abnormal about being extremely tall? I'm practically 6' myself, and while I certainly felt abnormal in high school in the 1970s, I meet young women on college campuses regularly who are as tall as I am or maybe taller. I don't think they all have Marfan's. Hey, I can even buy clothes retail that fit these days.

I'm not comfortable with medicine that normalizes. Medicine should relieve pain and suffering. Medicine should reduce the risk of mortality. But I don't believe medicine should tinker with those things that make us who we are. If I had started taking Losartan when I was, say 8, and had never reached my current height, I would not be who I am. I became who I am because I was 5'7" in the 6th grade (taller than the teacher) and being so tall all the way through high school meant that I stuck out. I was the kid who was different and it wasn't at all easy, but without that experience I would not have developed the same sense of empathy for others who are different. I would not have escaped so deeply into the world of books. I would not have felt so comfortable traveling to a country where I barely knew the language.

If everyone were "normal," what would the world look like? What would the world feel like?