"Take a little breath in for me, hold it, now breathe"

The person doing the echocardiogram yesterday said this to me several times. A little breath, hold it, breathe. I think I have been doing this even without a technician asking me to. After the appointment, I really exhaled and started to breathe again. Given the response to my Facebook post yesterday about the smiling cardiologist and the good results, I'd say a lot of other people have been holding their breath right along with me.

My aortic valve looks good. The murmur is trace to minimal. This means the valve will last the rest of my life. I will be on baby aspirin and a beta blocker indefinitely. Breathe....

Thanks for holding your collective breath with me. Everyone can exhale now and breathe normally.

The significance of scars

Scars. Scars on our skin. Scars on our hearts. Scars on our souls and spirits and psyches. Scars make us unique. They are significant. Scars are signs of healing. Sometimes they ache, feel tight, and pull on the skin around them. Sometimes they itch. A scar is always created by a wound. They are geography. They change the landscape of who we are. We all have them no matter how careful or fortunate we are.

I am fascinated by my new scar. It isn't subtle. It has character and texture. It reminds me that I am stronger and more resilient than I thought I was. It makes me even less perfect than I was before the surgery. It takes me away from who I think I want to be, from who I think I ought to be, from who I think other people want me to be.

I think if people ask me about it, I am going to tell them I got it wrestling my demons.

Hey lookie, a new anxiety!

Wow - the past couple of days...

Yesterday, Monday, I went to see my primary care physician. It was good to see her. She is the person who heard the heart murmur back in late October and set my heart with feet on the path to surgery. I will always be grateful to her.

The nurse took my blood pressure - it was 148/80 something. Yikes! She waited a few minutes and tried again and it was down to 130/80 something. But that is still higher than the nice 112/whatever it was the last time I saw the cardiologist in December. True, I had walked to the appointment and up a long flight of stairs but it still started a whirlpool of anxiety swirling in my brain. I started worrying that my blood pressure was too high and that it would burst the stitches holding the aortic graft in place and that at any moment I was going to drop dead.

This morning I realized that I have to learn to trust the work of the surgeons, trust the stitches, trust the graft. It is one thing to sit at home with a nice calm heart beat and a nice low blood pressure. There is no anxiety in that. It is quite another to return to usual activities and wonder if the stitches will hold.

Then this afternoon, there was a moment of serendipity. I ran into one of the people from my surgical team. She also checked on me every day when I was in the hospital.

I greeted her. I didn't expect her to remember me. I mainly wanted to thank her for taking care of me. She asked what they had done for me. Then she remembered me sitting in the chair by the window and taking the pace maker leads out. She said it is always strange and good to see people feeling better. She took a peek at my scar and tole me to wear it proudly. She asked how I was feeling and how long it took for me to begin to feel more myself. I told her that I still had some pain (very, very mild) and that I was anxious about the stitches. She said the pain takes a long time to go away completely. As for the stitches, she said not to worry about them, that they were already healed in place. The anxiety dissipated a little bit.

I go in to see the cardiologist this coming Monday. I'm hopeful that I will find more reassurance there.  

Six weeks post-op and another trip around the sun

Today I am 6 weeks post op and I have completed another trip around the sun. I have no idea what the unfolding year will bring. I'm sure it will be full of surprises, frustrations, and wonders. No matter what else it brings, I want to be sure there are plenty of stories and poetry, music, laughter, time with friends, and celebrations of all kinds.  Who's with me?

Midnight

Mr R and I went to St Mark's to walk the labyrinth and celebrate the Eucharist at midnight. The labyrinth was still crowded so we sat in the quiet, candlelit cathedral and listened to the medieval music being performed at that time. It is so easy to be carried away by music in St Mark's. The space is an acoustic wonder. At midnight, a table with bread and wine was carried into the middle of the labyrinth. As the fireworks went off, we celebrated Eucharist - we shared bread (challah) and wine (champagne). It felt so sacred and timeless.  It was a very good way to start the New Year.

I love being in the Cathedral at night. I am usually there all night the Thursday before Easter. That night is a very profound, complex, and meaningful time for me.

Tonight these words from T.S. Eliot came to mind:

• At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
  Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
  But neither arrest nor movement.
  And do not call it fixity,
  Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
  Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
  There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.