Salon.com Books | Dear Mr. Blue

Search About Salon Table Talk Advertise in Salon Investor Relations


	Search All of Salon.com Only Books Directory Hot Topics Book Reviews Garrison Keillor J.R.R. Tolkien Harry Potter Dave Eggers Articles by date All of Salon.com By department



	Arts & Entertainment - The Movie Page Books Comics Life News People Politics Sex Tech & Business - Free Software Project Audio Letters Columnists Corrections Salon Premium - Downloads Salon Plus Salon Gear Personals



	Table Talk [Free, spirited Salon forums] What's your favorite children's book? Read any delicious food writing lately? Posts of the week The Well [Pioneering members-only discussions] The joy of... vegetables? Sound Off E-mail Salon Send us a Letter to the Editor Today's letters


	Downloads Get Salon.com on your PDA

Garrison Keillor
Dear Mr. Blue
Our intrepid advice columnist prepares for open-heart surgery.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Garrison Keillor

July 31, 2001 | Mr. Blue is not filing today, due to a medical adventure that came up suddenly last week. He paid a visit to a cardiologist and learned more about the heart than he was hoping to know and the upshot is a heart operation to repair a leaky mitral valve problem. Forty years ago, a man would've been sent home to endure the problem for the few years until nature mercifully killed him off -- the breathlessness and fatigue and pounding heart and the alarming feeling in the middle of the night that one is about to suffocate. Now, thanks to generations of enterprising research and the bravery of cutting-edge patients, the open-heart operation is performed with great confidence of success. I will return when I return. Have a lovely August.

salon.com

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer
Garrison Keillor is the creator and host of the nationally syndicated radio show "A Prairie Home Companion," broadcast on more than 400 public radio stations nationwide. For more columns by Keillor, visit his column archive.

Sound Off
Send us a Letter to the Editor

Salon.com >> Books












	Current Stories How to read the James Wood way The fiercely talented critic takes us on an illuminating tour of fiction -- but there's a hole in his plot. By Louis Bayard The good humor man Who invented jokes, and why do we laugh at them? Jim Holt discusses the history of funny. By James Hannaham Answering terror with terror In "The Dark Side," Jane Mayer chronicles the terrible, destructive decisions the Bush administration made in the name of fighting terrorism. By Louis Bayard The end of men The cartoon epic "Y: The Last Man," the most entertaining satire about gender in recent memory, comes to its triumphant conclusion. By Douglas Wolk

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"

Salon Search About Salon Table Talk Advertise in Salon Investor Relations

Reproduction of material from any Salon pages without written permission is strictly prohibited
Copyright 2005 Salon.com

Salon, 22 4th Street, 16th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103
Telephone 415 645-9200 | Fax 415 645-9204
E-mail | Salon.com Privacy Policy | Terms of Service

If you are ONLY seeing this and the footer of the page, we believe you are running a Norton/Symantec product which is causing this to happen. Please go to this help page and allow our URL (salon.com)