I wonder

 

I wonder if some things we don’t think of as related really are.  As I get older, plaque accumulates on my teeth more than it used to.  I accumulate plaque in the arteries of my heart.  I wonder if those two kinds of plaque are related, or if the proclivity to form one kind inclines a person to accumulate the other as well.

 

I’m told I have Small Vessel Disease in my heart.  It’s not so much a clogging of the small blood vessels, but a constriction.  Sometimes the small blood vessels constrict and restrict flow when they should be doing the opposite.  Years ago, while flyfishing, I discovered that my fingers are over-sensitive to cold.  In response to cold, my body doesn’t pump more blood through my fingers to warm them, it over-reacts the other direction and completely shuts off blood flow, so my fingers first go numb, then turn pallid (fish-belly white), then turn blue-black.  It looks like I’ve lost them to frostbite, and it’s disturbing, but when I re-warm them, the normal color returns.  It’s called Raynaud’s Syndrome.  I wonder if the small vessel conditions in my hands and heart are related.

 

Have you ever watched a field of sunflowers?  The flower heads turn to follow the sun.  By evening they are all pointed west.  On Saturday morning we went birding and drove past a field of sunflowers before the sun had hit it yet.  All the flower heads were pointed east.  So I wonder: Do sunflowers anticipate?  When the day is done and they’re all pointed west, do they remember that the sun is going to come up in the east the next morning, so turn themselves overnight to be ready for it?  Or do they spend the night pointed west, then discover at sunrise the next day that the sun is in the east and they need to turn to meet it?

 

I wonder.