Wednesday, March 7, 2012

I'll Take Eeriness for $200, Please...

I'm hesitant to say anything too declarative -- knocking on wood being, after all, so analog -- but I think that... I may... be getting... better.

It's been six weeks since I was strapped onto a gurney and wheeled into an operating room, in the cardiac wing of a hospital just four miles from here, to have a pacemaker installed right down inside my very own personal body.  The physical one, with the blood and everything.  At six weeks out, I've pretty much reached the end of the various prohibitions -- no reaching, no lifting, no carrying -- and should now be able to resume most of my pre-implant activities.  With the odd exception here and there.  Which I forget what they are.  Oh well...

What I notice, that makes me feel cautiously optimistic, is a certain clarity of motion that feels different -- a fading of the long familiar, paralyzing delay, that used to be standard operating procedure for me.  I seem, now, to be getting an idea to do something, and then actually... doing it. 

Today, for instance.  It was just so nice out.  And there was some work to be done in the yard.  And... instead of thinking about doing one thing and then doing nothing in particular, I found myself letting the idea meld into action.  Opening the garage door.  Pulling out the rake, and then the spade and pitchfork.  (All of which, thank heaven, were lying on top of whatever it is that I filled the garage with, these many months ago) 

And I raked the side yard, so the crocuses would look less overwhelmed by old dry sycamore leaves, and so the deep purple hellebore, which have been blossoming since last month, will actually get some light.  I raked the little sliver of ground that actually belongs to our neighbor, but because it's behind his garage, and faces our house, it makes more sense for me to deal with it, than for him to worry about it.  Lilies should be coming up there, later in the spring.  The weigela needs to be pruned a bit, but it should be sending out its deep red blossoms soon. 

I raked beside the front stairs, pulling out the dried leaves of the giant blue hostas, and breaking off their tall seed stalks.  I enjoyed, again, seeing the little volunteer holly sprig, tucked in at the base of the honeysuckle vine.  I raked as well as I could, around and under the rose bushes, which I planted some years ago, on the strip between the sidewalk and the street -- wiry ground-cover roses, with vibrant dark red flowers, and plenty of thorns for everyone. 

Then I trimmed the roses, so they don't hang out over the walkway.  I keep thinking that we live in the country, where raking is whimsical and unnecessary, and leaves are just a part of life, like gravity.  But we really live in an active suburb, and I can just see the squall, should a rose branch scratch the cheek of a kid in a stroller.  So I clipped, depositing the cuttings in a yellow plastic waste basket half filled with water.  (I continue to hope that the least likely things will take root, you know...)  I transplanted one little multicolor rose that is definitely not thriving where it was originally place, moving it up the row, where it should get more sun.  In its place, I set a big thriving volunteer buddleia, which sprang up unannounced beside the fire hydrant last summer, cascading out with its sage-green leaves and lovely light lilac flowers, sparked with bright orange centers.  Providing still another obstacle for the dog walkers and perambulator crowd.  Though without so many prickles.  We'll see how it likes its new home.  We'll see if the rose cuttings in the yellow bucket decide to send out little tender white hints of root. 

That's the good part.  What I don't understand is my apparent refusal, for most of the day, simply to breathe.  When my heart-related drama first began to unfold, six years ago, I discovered that at night, I was holding my breath, sending my heart rate down to amphibian levels.  Now that I'm wired internally for a steady heart beat, my night-time breathing has become more normal -- no more waking up in a panic, sweating, with a racing heart.  So, should I be surprised or not, to find that instead, I'm holding my breath during the day?  It just seems so strange.

During that time, six years ago, when I was trying to discover an alternative to a pacemaker, I was prescribed two sleep studies.  During the first, I slept normally (for me) and my heart rate dropped, just as it had been doing at home.  During the second one, I was hooked up to a CPAP machine -- about which I've already spoken so admiringly, as to the aesthetic appeal of wearing an aqualung to bed.  During that night's fitful sleep, I woke up crying.  The poor technician, probably deep in his pre-med reading, dropped everything he was doing and came running.  I was sitting up already, trying to disentangle myself from what felt like a dry octopus hanging onto my face.  As as this young man tried to keep me from hurting myself, I was explaining to him, very urgently, the logic behind this dramatic dream I'd been having.  Something profoundly sad, prompting deep exhalation, and tears that, because  the lung machine forced me to breathe, had woken me up.  I think the dream had something to do with my mother.

So, today, here's what I think it is.  Because I'm sleeping more normally at night now, the residual sadness, from many older events, and some more recent, still needs a way to escape.  Which escape frightens me, so, in order to stave off the surfacing emotions, I take a deep breath and... hold it.  

Part of this well of feeling, of course, is the operation.  I don't know about how other people adapt to pacemakers, but six weeks isn't really all that long, as far as I'm concerned.  I've only just begun to be able to look at... It, in the bathroom mirror.  The other day, while I was doing something or other, I think I kind of moved it -- how far is it supposed to go?  How much should it move in any direction, I started to wonder.  The external scar is healing.  The contour of the device becomes clearer.  Some of the subcutaneous bruising is fading.  I remain stunned, however, by this event.

I know, rationally, that I am profoundly fortunate, not only that the underlying problem with my heart was diagnosed, and that a solution was readily available, but also that I live in a period in history when what would have been unimaginable two hundred years ago are now routine operations.  Of course I know this.  

But emotions, as I frequently observe, operate in something like a parallel universe to intellect.  Or perhaps it would be more accurate to describe this other 'feeling' place as a universe at right angles to the mind.  I can't seem to talk myself into feeling gratitude.  Instead, I tend to tear up at... well, at no provocation at all, really.  The multiple griefs with which I seem to be struggling steadfastly thumb their collective noses at all my best efforts at rationalization and internal lectures to 'buck up', and to 'pull yourself together'.  As soon as the lecture is finished, I forget what being pulled together is supposed to look or feel like.  Instead, I seem to be, inside, a great expanse of wet sand after the tide has gone out -- flat, dull, empty, featureless.

So.  For now.  I will continue, to the best of my ability, to allow this new keenness of action, this new clarity of intent, to be my guide.  It certainly seemed to work this afternoon.  The roses are trimmed.  The butterfly bush is in its new home.  The dead dry leaves are all in bags, to go to the town dump tomorrow.  The fact that there's a near-total disconnect, between the sheer muscular activity, and what's going on with me emotionally, seems eerie, but not overwhelmingly so.  And, given the alternative -- that of lying sprawled on the sofa in the den, lip-synching to Law and Order episodes, one after the other -- I can take some eeriness.  In fact, I think I'll be able to take a lot of it.

©  2012       Walter Zimmerman                 

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