2008 Woodie Awards
Be still, my bleeding heart
Jacob Sharbel
Issue date: 11/12/07 Section: Features
My father used to tell me that I had a bleeding heart. As it turns out, he was right.
My doctor calls it mitral valve prolapse with slight mitral regurgitation.
I'm fascinated with this disease of mine. Basically, the mitral valve leaflet that keeps blood from flowing back into the heart is misshapen, which sometimes allows blood to spill. The more my heart bleeds, the bigger it gets. Sounds terrible, right? Well, it's really not that bad.
Even though the odds are it won't kill me, it still hurts whenever it leaks. For instance, I'm prone to taking pity on strange people, picking them up, and driving them places, which isn't the smartest thing to do late at night.
I first picked up someone in need when I was 16. A scruffy-looking man came up to me while I was sitting on my 19-year-old brother John's front stoop down on Highland Avenue in Knoxville. I had fond memories of that street, it being the first place John had to himself and the first place I could go with my friends to party, so I went there a lot. But John wasn't there that day, so I was just wasting time waiting for him. This man asked me if I wouldn't mind giving him a lift, and I said sure. He motioned at a tree, and from behind it came his wife and two children. We went back to my truck, and he and I climbed into the cab, while my 11-year-old sister Maggie, who was sitting in the passenger seat, looked at me with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow and silently demanded, 'What are you doing, crazy brother?' His wife and two kids climbed into the bed.
I drove this family around until the father in the back of the cab reached his arms around my seat and said they'd go ahead and get out right here, on a Cumberland street corner. They hurried out of my truck and ran off, not looking back. I've continued to do this (though never again for that family) since then, and I have never been robbed, per se. So it's not a fatal condition that I have, just a borderline dangerous one.
My doctor calls it mitral valve prolapse with slight mitral regurgitation.
I'm fascinated with this disease of mine. Basically, the mitral valve leaflet that keeps blood from flowing back into the heart is misshapen, which sometimes allows blood to spill. The more my heart bleeds, the bigger it gets. Sounds terrible, right? Well, it's really not that bad.
Even though the odds are it won't kill me, it still hurts whenever it leaks. For instance, I'm prone to taking pity on strange people, picking them up, and driving them places, which isn't the smartest thing to do late at night.
I first picked up someone in need when I was 16. A scruffy-looking man came up to me while I was sitting on my 19-year-old brother John's front stoop down on Highland Avenue in Knoxville. I had fond memories of that street, it being the first place John had to himself and the first place I could go with my friends to party, so I went there a lot. But John wasn't there that day, so I was just wasting time waiting for him. This man asked me if I wouldn't mind giving him a lift, and I said sure. He motioned at a tree, and from behind it came his wife and two children. We went back to my truck, and he and I climbed into the cab, while my 11-year-old sister Maggie, who was sitting in the passenger seat, looked at me with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow and silently demanded, 'What are you doing, crazy brother?' His wife and two kids climbed into the bed.
I drove this family around until the father in the back of the cab reached his arms around my seat and said they'd go ahead and get out right here, on a Cumberland street corner. They hurried out of my truck and ran off, not looking back. I've continued to do this (though never again for that family) since then, and I have never been robbed, per se. So it's not a fatal condition that I have, just a borderline dangerous one.
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