Mr. Howard
Central Catholic senior Reyna Ramirez and John We're lucky to teach, my husband John reminds me. Our GICC high school kids keep us young. I like to think this is true. My students regularly introduce words to my vocabulary, like "lit" and "savage". Not as in a lit lamp or a savage tiger but as in, "The homecoming dance was so lit , and the music was freaking savage ." Yeah. I'm hip. Just lately, however, I feel old. It's because of John. One night in August, he wakes me at two a.m. to tell me he needs to be driven to the hospital. "Something's wrong with my heart," he says. There is not, incidentally, a more traumatic way to be jarred awake. If only he'd twist my bottom lip with a pair of pliers instead. It's not a heart attack, the emergency doctor explains, but atrial fibrillation - a heart arrhythmia which, left untreated, can result in stroke - just like all the commercials say. He instructs us to...