DES MOINES, IA – After overhearing a conversation about discharge planning, the heart belonging to 87 year old Thomas Munson decided at the last minute to start fibrillating in order to keep the body he belonged to in the comfort of the inpatient ward at Methodist Hospital.
Munson was admitted to the hospital two weeks earlier with congestive heart failure. “I was so sick of the daily grind. The constant beating, day in, day out. Not to mention water aerobics three times a week. It was exhausting,” explained Munson’s heart. I just decided, you know, enough is enough. I’m gonna start half-assing this thing.”
“At first, I thought I’d bring my ejection fraction down to maybe 40 or 50%. Then I thought, what the hell, go big or go home. I dropped to 20%. Turns out the old bag of bones didn’t like that too much.” Munson ended up in the emergency department with shortness of breath and was admitted shortly thereafter. This proved to be a fortuitous turn of events for the disgruntled heart.
“My laziness really paid off,” boasted the heart. “Now I get to lie in a bed all day. This is just the vacation I needed.” When informed that physical therapy had been ordered during the inpatient stay, the slothful heart scoffed, “Yeah, I’ll make sure to pace myself when they make this shriveled prune shuffle around the unit every other day.”
However, the heart’s extended holiday nearly came to an end this morning when Munson was deemed healthy enough for discharge. “I sure as hell wasn’t about to be taken to a rehab facility, with all the walking and moving around,“ the heart announced. “So I started fibrillating my atria. Doctors freak out about that sort of thing.”
When asked how he knew Munson was about to be discharged, the old man’s heart replied, “People don’t realize that when you use a stethoscope, you can hear me, but I can also hear you. All it takes is one intern yapping during a cardiac exam, and suddenly I know your whole plan. The heart was relieved to hear about the extended hospitalization. “The afib usually works, but I’ll fibrillate by ventricles if I have to. It’s risky, but if I can pull it off, cardiovascular ICU here I come!”
