after a bad day, a sense of relief.
relief is undertheorized. it's good -- the pain has receded, you can think clearly again, moving is possible, life is possible -- but it's not simple. relief is not really the present; it's the fulcrum between a difficult past and a promising future. you could take the experience you've just had and use it to re-create yourself from the ground up. to feel relief is to bargain: i will drive more carefully, i won't drink red wine, i will stretch my muscles religiously. under the terms of relief, you could be anything. if everyday life rehearses st. augustine's plea 'lord, make me good, but not just yet,' relief puts us in the dizzying place where we are ready to be good, now: being better starts this instant, and lasts forever more.
but in addition to a sense of freedom, there is something else, something darker. relief is confusing, disorenting. i'm not surprised that people cry with relief; i'm one of them; i cry with relief. i weep because i can, because i am free enough from pain to focus on something other than the pain itself. i weep at how good it is to live without this pain, for now. pain is difficult; pain is unpleasant; pain is deranging and dismaying. it delimits your world. pain is infantilizing, offering the inchoate frustration of an infant, if also an infant's irresponsibility. pain is trying. and so to feel relief is to be through the trial, to have passed whatever kind of test the excruciation had in mind, to have made it to the next phase, but the complexity of relief has something to do with not knowing what that means, not knowing what the terms of the trial were, not knowing whether you "passed," and, if you did, what that means.
there is also, in relief, a sense of loss. i feel, "thank god that's over. i made it through." but i also feel, "something's missing, it's gone." think of the way you felt at the end of junior high, or when your child exits a difficult phase, or the moment you realize you are well and truly over someone. it's not that i want the pain back, not exactly, not even for the comforting way it grounds me in the moment. perhaps it's that every minor experience of relief puts us in touch with the ultimate sense of relief we know we're heading towards: freedom from these bodies, release from the tedium of human existence, the end of our own and others' suffering. in spite of the 'what's next' excitement, it's impossible to avoid suspecting that this, after all, was living, and there is no going back.
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Friday, March 26, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
One month later
now that I finally have my dragon taking dictation properly, i can fill in some of the gaps from the last long month.
the day of the surgery we watched a lot of curling. although the operation was scheduled for 130, I had to get to the grey nuns hospital by 1030 so they could clip on a hospital bracelet, get me changed into a gown, and... well, i'm not really sure what the rest of the time was for. mo was with me, of course, and we sat in the preop room with about five other patients and their partners watching olympic curling. those of us heading into surgery shared dehydration headaches. time passed quite slowly in that room, although as I think back on it it doesn't quite seem like three hours of curling (I did learn a lot about the game, however).
in a way, the surgical experience starts when they call your name. you give up the bathrobe and your eyeglassses, you get into the gurney, and they wheel you to the ER on the lower level. as the elevator descended, i said to the porter, "wow, it's all very symbolic." but he didn't understand what i meant. in the waiting bay, the surgeon stopped by to see me. i told him i had changed my mind about the surgery, that i was too scared to go through with it, that the shoulder hasn't hurt that much lately, and that i'd trade a little pain later for a drink of water now. he put a hand on the bedrail and said, nicely, "right. we want to do this surgery for your 70s."
they did five or six things. first, they sent in an arthroscopic camera and took pictures of the shoulder joint. at my first follow-up appointment, i got to see these pictures, which were stirringly beautiful. i had no idea what I was looking at, exactly, but the luminous white of bone against the milky backdrop of tissue made me understand, immediately, why someone would want to be a surgeon. they trimmed the labrum. at the follow-up appointment, the surgeon pointed to the photo of a fringe made of flesh, then to the after, all clean lines and absences, and said, "see? all tidied up." as I had known they would, they repaired the supra spinatus, which is to say they reattached that torn tendon to its bone. (i always think of chicken.) in addition, they shaved the bones and cartilage in my shoulder; they drained the bursa; and they repaired, repositioned, and stapled down the biceps tendon. i've been led to understand that this is rather a lot of work.
my first sensation back on the ward was in my elbow. i thought, distinctly, i cannot keep my elbow bent like this for 6 to 12 weeks. the second sensation was heat in the shoulder -- the inflammation. mo was there, which was enormously calming, and my parents too. there was a lot of morphine. morphine feels good, but not at first. the best hit is intramuscular, and it burns for the full 90 or so seconds it takes to empty the syringe. i was awake for most of the night, or at least I remember seeing nearly every hour on the clock, though it was difficult to connect those hands on the wall to anything meaningful. it's a strange way to spend time. you're aware of every hour passing, yet the experience has absolutely no narrative form.
everybody tells you to stay ahead of the pain, and this is excellent advice. for the first two or three days at home, I was taking 12 to 14 Percocet a day: an amount that astonishes me now, but which felt barely sufficient at the time.
when you dream about having time away from work, there is a lot of it: days stretch out voluptuously. in fact, i find the days quite short. partly this is because everyday life takes so much time. getting dressed takes the better part of 40 minutes; getting undressed and into bed a good half-hour; and then i have physio exercises that take about 25 minutes per set, and I do three sets a day. add in a walk, an iPhone game or two, and there's your day. i like being alone.
i have good days and bad days. on good days i feel jubilant, excited, triumphant: i am getting the better of this injury. on bad days i feel completely dismayed, convinced that it will never heal. the lesson is that i have good days and i have bad days, and i'm sure there's a wealth of wisdom in that.
there is a lot of frustration. simple things -- like pulling up yoga pants, or putting on a headset, or fixing a bowl of soup -- take astonishing amounts of time, and call on a patience that does not come naturally to me. bathing is extremely awkward and extremely painful. particularly before i got my stitches out, it felt almost impossible. i had to sit in 2 inches of water, and i washed my hair by bending over my knees. i cannot wash my left shoulder very well, i cannot dry my back, and things like hair product and eyeliner are out of the question. if -- heaven forfend -- something like this should happen to you, and you are my friend, here's what I will do for you: i will give you one hour a week in which you can ask me to do anything. i will clean your shower. i will drive you to the river valley and wait for you to walk. i will run errands. i will chop onions so that you can make soup. i will cull your e-mail if that's what you would like.
there is a lot of pain. before the operation we asked how the pain of shoulder surgery might compare to the pain of knee surgery. the guy we were talking to, the hospital's physiotherapist, fumbled for a few seconds and then gave up. "there is no comparison," he said. "it's super painful." i find the pain fatiguing, particularly at the end of the day, and four weeks later it is still hard to sleep.
there is a lot of abjection. i was not prepared for how abject this experience would be. for one thing, it is very dirty. i am clumsy with my left hand, and so routinely spill food -- on me, on the counter, on the floor -- none of which are easy to clean. for another thing, it is hard to feel pretty when you rotate two pairs of yoga pants and can't pluck your eyebrows. the emotional abjection is of course the most difficult. last saturday I had a work party. my responsibility was to bring a course of Spanish cheese; everything else was done by others. buying the cheese was the subject of a specific excursion on friday; indeed, it was last friday's organizing principle, since I can only really do one thing per day. saturday morning I pulled together a serving tray, serving utensils, and laboriously printed little cards to identify the cheeses. (they looked like they were written by a four-year-old.) i planned my shower with enough time for a rest afterwards. mo did the laundry, but together we worked out how to organize the loads so that my best yoga pants would be clean for the event. the party was lovely, but it involved a lot of standing and honestly it was hard to talk to people i work with when i'm not in fact working with them. after one hour I thought I might faint. when i realized i had forgotten the damn cheese, i just lost it: burst into tears and fled out the back door, humiliated.
naturally, i feel guilty. it's a difficult time at the university, with budget woes and layoffs in the offing. i am acutely aware that the work i am not doing is being picked up by others, who are already busy. at the same time, the university is full of workaholics, and the place is redolent with stories about Prof. X., who took no more than a week off, and Prof. Y., who was back at work the day after his operation. i am not immune to the sense of obligation these stories entail, even though my best self scorns them.
whatever difficulties i may have, being insufficiently loved is not among them. friends have been wonderful: solicitous, generous, thoughtful, and attentive. i marvel at my great good fortune.
now my computer battery is running low, and it's time for a nap. believe it or not, composing this post has taken the best part of the day.
the day of the surgery we watched a lot of curling. although the operation was scheduled for 130, I had to get to the grey nuns hospital by 1030 so they could clip on a hospital bracelet, get me changed into a gown, and... well, i'm not really sure what the rest of the time was for. mo was with me, of course, and we sat in the preop room with about five other patients and their partners watching olympic curling. those of us heading into surgery shared dehydration headaches. time passed quite slowly in that room, although as I think back on it it doesn't quite seem like three hours of curling (I did learn a lot about the game, however).
in a way, the surgical experience starts when they call your name. you give up the bathrobe and your eyeglassses, you get into the gurney, and they wheel you to the ER on the lower level. as the elevator descended, i said to the porter, "wow, it's all very symbolic." but he didn't understand what i meant. in the waiting bay, the surgeon stopped by to see me. i told him i had changed my mind about the surgery, that i was too scared to go through with it, that the shoulder hasn't hurt that much lately, and that i'd trade a little pain later for a drink of water now. he put a hand on the bedrail and said, nicely, "right. we want to do this surgery for your 70s."
they did five or six things. first, they sent in an arthroscopic camera and took pictures of the shoulder joint. at my first follow-up appointment, i got to see these pictures, which were stirringly beautiful. i had no idea what I was looking at, exactly, but the luminous white of bone against the milky backdrop of tissue made me understand, immediately, why someone would want to be a surgeon. they trimmed the labrum. at the follow-up appointment, the surgeon pointed to the photo of a fringe made of flesh, then to the after, all clean lines and absences, and said, "see? all tidied up." as I had known they would, they repaired the supra spinatus, which is to say they reattached that torn tendon to its bone. (i always think of chicken.) in addition, they shaved the bones and cartilage in my shoulder; they drained the bursa; and they repaired, repositioned, and stapled down the biceps tendon. i've been led to understand that this is rather a lot of work.
my first sensation back on the ward was in my elbow. i thought, distinctly, i cannot keep my elbow bent like this for 6 to 12 weeks. the second sensation was heat in the shoulder -- the inflammation. mo was there, which was enormously calming, and my parents too. there was a lot of morphine. morphine feels good, but not at first. the best hit is intramuscular, and it burns for the full 90 or so seconds it takes to empty the syringe. i was awake for most of the night, or at least I remember seeing nearly every hour on the clock, though it was difficult to connect those hands on the wall to anything meaningful. it's a strange way to spend time. you're aware of every hour passing, yet the experience has absolutely no narrative form.
everybody tells you to stay ahead of the pain, and this is excellent advice. for the first two or three days at home, I was taking 12 to 14 Percocet a day: an amount that astonishes me now, but which felt barely sufficient at the time.
when you dream about having time away from work, there is a lot of it: days stretch out voluptuously. in fact, i find the days quite short. partly this is because everyday life takes so much time. getting dressed takes the better part of 40 minutes; getting undressed and into bed a good half-hour; and then i have physio exercises that take about 25 minutes per set, and I do three sets a day. add in a walk, an iPhone game or two, and there's your day. i like being alone.
i have good days and bad days. on good days i feel jubilant, excited, triumphant: i am getting the better of this injury. on bad days i feel completely dismayed, convinced that it will never heal. the lesson is that i have good days and i have bad days, and i'm sure there's a wealth of wisdom in that.
there is a lot of frustration. simple things -- like pulling up yoga pants, or putting on a headset, or fixing a bowl of soup -- take astonishing amounts of time, and call on a patience that does not come naturally to me. bathing is extremely awkward and extremely painful. particularly before i got my stitches out, it felt almost impossible. i had to sit in 2 inches of water, and i washed my hair by bending over my knees. i cannot wash my left shoulder very well, i cannot dry my back, and things like hair product and eyeliner are out of the question. if -- heaven forfend -- something like this should happen to you, and you are my friend, here's what I will do for you: i will give you one hour a week in which you can ask me to do anything. i will clean your shower. i will drive you to the river valley and wait for you to walk. i will run errands. i will chop onions so that you can make soup. i will cull your e-mail if that's what you would like.
there is a lot of pain. before the operation we asked how the pain of shoulder surgery might compare to the pain of knee surgery. the guy we were talking to, the hospital's physiotherapist, fumbled for a few seconds and then gave up. "there is no comparison," he said. "it's super painful." i find the pain fatiguing, particularly at the end of the day, and four weeks later it is still hard to sleep.
there is a lot of abjection. i was not prepared for how abject this experience would be. for one thing, it is very dirty. i am clumsy with my left hand, and so routinely spill food -- on me, on the counter, on the floor -- none of which are easy to clean. for another thing, it is hard to feel pretty when you rotate two pairs of yoga pants and can't pluck your eyebrows. the emotional abjection is of course the most difficult. last saturday I had a work party. my responsibility was to bring a course of Spanish cheese; everything else was done by others. buying the cheese was the subject of a specific excursion on friday; indeed, it was last friday's organizing principle, since I can only really do one thing per day. saturday morning I pulled together a serving tray, serving utensils, and laboriously printed little cards to identify the cheeses. (they looked like they were written by a four-year-old.) i planned my shower with enough time for a rest afterwards. mo did the laundry, but together we worked out how to organize the loads so that my best yoga pants would be clean for the event. the party was lovely, but it involved a lot of standing and honestly it was hard to talk to people i work with when i'm not in fact working with them. after one hour I thought I might faint. when i realized i had forgotten the damn cheese, i just lost it: burst into tears and fled out the back door, humiliated.
naturally, i feel guilty. it's a difficult time at the university, with budget woes and layoffs in the offing. i am acutely aware that the work i am not doing is being picked up by others, who are already busy. at the same time, the university is full of workaholics, and the place is redolent with stories about Prof. X., who took no more than a week off, and Prof. Y., who was back at work the day after his operation. i am not immune to the sense of obligation these stories entail, even though my best self scorns them.
whatever difficulties i may have, being insufficiently loved is not among them. friends have been wonderful: solicitous, generous, thoughtful, and attentive. i marvel at my great good fortune.
now my computer battery is running low, and it's time for a nap. believe it or not, composing this post has taken the best part of the day.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Still a bit drunk
good friends over for dinner, and cancer-free. the last week of classes. linda goyette, todd babiak, alice major and marshall watson came to this morning's english class. sweet ted writes to say the collages i admired "what seems like a lifetime ago" have just been picked up by the douglas udell gallery. mark's band is playing an iraq benefit on saturday night. adam's made a breakthrough in his writing. eria is crawling. mo and i are heading to the desert.
it took me three decades to commit to the project of being alive, and now it all flies so fast, so final. i feel a wild and impotent despair: how sweet life is.
it took me three decades to commit to the project of being alive, and now it all flies so fast, so final. i feel a wild and impotent despair: how sweet life is.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Homo academicus
i am a bad academic.
i say this without judgment of either myself or the academy, but it is pretty obvious at this point that i simply don't fit. the people i've worked with in the university are amazing. and by "worked with," i mean -- well, these people work work work work work. they love to work. they live to work. and me: i just don't. not no mo', anyway.
i've been at a symposium this weekend that i helped organize. as is always the case when you're an organizer, you hit the event tired to begin with. add to that the week we've had at home, what with the recalcitrant roofers and aunty jo suddenly in the hospital, our trip to buenos aires just a week away, and you've got all the ingredients for a stress fest.
there's something about being this tired that turns me into a human portal. i have a body that i can propel around campus. it's your typical human body equipped with two legs, two eyes and a pair of hands. i myself was in another universe, the parallel universe of the exhausted. but through those eyes, like some kind of extraterrestrial anthropologist, i could see the academic life. and it's ... well, frankly, it's kind of staggering.
one person at this symposium came in spite of the fact that her 18-year-old daughter had just been admitted to the hospital with a brain clot. this colleague is a lovely woman. after apologizing for missing the first half day, she explained that she felt coming at all was a "healthy choice." besides, her husband, who had been in europe, arrived in toronto to spell her off at the hospital. she was in edmonton for something like 36 hours, all told, and faces an all-day journey to get back to the maritimes. it's not that i am scandalized by her decision. if she says it's a healthy choice, i'm sure it is. i am just stunned that she could do it. me, i don't have that much energy.
most academics, from what i can tell, enjoy working on the weekends. i seem to be the only sourpuss who complains that conferences should happen on working days, or that department retreats should take place instead of, not in addition to, our regular commitments, or that people deserve a couple of weekdays (not weekend days, which are a whole other thing) to turn documents around. i don't know how they do it, these colleagues of mine. i find it hard to work five days a week, let alone six or seven.
don't even start me on colleagues with kids. i fare badly on one night's sleep; they are chronically underslept. i need weekends at the end of each and every week, downtime when i dust and vacuum, cruise the blogosphere, catch up with my friends, and, on a good weekend, rent a movie or two. while i am squandering my life this way, they are giving up yet more time to other people, driving to soccer practices, making nice at play dates, and running endlessly for groceries. i keep reminding myself that there must be payoffs to that life choice, but for the most part it looks to me like two full jobs.
it's not just the lack of energy that sets me apart from my colleagues; it's also the lack of patience. you need extraordinary amounts of patience to deal with people, but especially, i think, academics, who, god love 'em, take every opportunity to become their own nightmare students. take yesterday. i announce, "lunch is across the quad. i'll stay in the room so your stuff will be safe." there's already a hand in the air. "heather, can we leave our stuff here?" "yes." another: "will the room be locked over lunch? will our computers be safe?" "yes," i say, but already somebody is tapping me on the shoulder. "heather," she says, "i'm just wondering, do you think i can leave my things in the room over the lunch hour?" there must be some people who don't mind this or are inured to it -- perhaps people with kids?? not only does it irritate me to have people constantly tugging on my virtual shirtsleeve, but i've lost my ability to pretend it doesn't. so by yesterday i found myself saying, snippily, "yes, that's why i just announced that very thing." which is, i think, a pretty significant sign that you've been in it too long. i don't want to be an irritable bitch, and i don't want a job that turns me into one.
this morning, i walk the group through a process. i explain what we hope to get from it. i solicit the group's agreement to the process, and we carry on. i'm in a bathroom stall when a handful of symposium-goers comes in. "i don't think this makes sense," says one. "i know," says another. "we should do it like this," she says, and goes on to explain what she thinks. the third person with them agrees. when i re-enter the room, one of them approaches me and says that she thinks we should do it differently. i say, as pleasantly as i can, that if she feels that way, she should go ahead and lead the group. "oh, i don't want to take over!," she says.
it sounds like a bald lie -- and yet, the logic of homo academicus suggests that it isn't. i think what academics truly love, more than anything, is being right. they don't like the unknown, they don't want to trust processes, they don't want to take a wrong turn and end up in unfamiliar surroundings. they want to know things, and they want the things they know to be correct. critical by habit, by training, and by conviction, they always, always know best.
and this is ultimately the biggest difference between me and the academic world. there are gazillions of things more important to me than being right. for one, being happy. for another, learning. for a third, collaborating. also: taking chances. making things. using my imagination. seeing beauty. listening to other people. trying things out. leading.
so, i disgraced myself. i left the symposium in tears, before it was even over.
the surprising thing is how disappointed i am.
i say this without judgment of either myself or the academy, but it is pretty obvious at this point that i simply don't fit. the people i've worked with in the university are amazing. and by "worked with," i mean -- well, these people work work work work work. they love to work. they live to work. and me: i just don't. not no mo', anyway.
i've been at a symposium this weekend that i helped organize. as is always the case when you're an organizer, you hit the event tired to begin with. add to that the week we've had at home, what with the recalcitrant roofers and aunty jo suddenly in the hospital, our trip to buenos aires just a week away, and you've got all the ingredients for a stress fest.
there's something about being this tired that turns me into a human portal. i have a body that i can propel around campus. it's your typical human body equipped with two legs, two eyes and a pair of hands. i myself was in another universe, the parallel universe of the exhausted. but through those eyes, like some kind of extraterrestrial anthropologist, i could see the academic life. and it's ... well, frankly, it's kind of staggering.
one person at this symposium came in spite of the fact that her 18-year-old daughter had just been admitted to the hospital with a brain clot. this colleague is a lovely woman. after apologizing for missing the first half day, she explained that she felt coming at all was a "healthy choice." besides, her husband, who had been in europe, arrived in toronto to spell her off at the hospital. she was in edmonton for something like 36 hours, all told, and faces an all-day journey to get back to the maritimes. it's not that i am scandalized by her decision. if she says it's a healthy choice, i'm sure it is. i am just stunned that she could do it. me, i don't have that much energy.
most academics, from what i can tell, enjoy working on the weekends. i seem to be the only sourpuss who complains that conferences should happen on working days, or that department retreats should take place instead of, not in addition to, our regular commitments, or that people deserve a couple of weekdays (not weekend days, which are a whole other thing) to turn documents around. i don't know how they do it, these colleagues of mine. i find it hard to work five days a week, let alone six or seven.
don't even start me on colleagues with kids. i fare badly on one night's sleep; they are chronically underslept. i need weekends at the end of each and every week, downtime when i dust and vacuum, cruise the blogosphere, catch up with my friends, and, on a good weekend, rent a movie or two. while i am squandering my life this way, they are giving up yet more time to other people, driving to soccer practices, making nice at play dates, and running endlessly for groceries. i keep reminding myself that there must be payoffs to that life choice, but for the most part it looks to me like two full jobs.
it's not just the lack of energy that sets me apart from my colleagues; it's also the lack of patience. you need extraordinary amounts of patience to deal with people, but especially, i think, academics, who, god love 'em, take every opportunity to become their own nightmare students. take yesterday. i announce, "lunch is across the quad. i'll stay in the room so your stuff will be safe." there's already a hand in the air. "heather, can we leave our stuff here?" "yes." another: "will the room be locked over lunch? will our computers be safe?" "yes," i say, but already somebody is tapping me on the shoulder. "heather," she says, "i'm just wondering, do you think i can leave my things in the room over the lunch hour?" there must be some people who don't mind this or are inured to it -- perhaps people with kids?? not only does it irritate me to have people constantly tugging on my virtual shirtsleeve, but i've lost my ability to pretend it doesn't. so by yesterday i found myself saying, snippily, "yes, that's why i just announced that very thing." which is, i think, a pretty significant sign that you've been in it too long. i don't want to be an irritable bitch, and i don't want a job that turns me into one.
this morning, i walk the group through a process. i explain what we hope to get from it. i solicit the group's agreement to the process, and we carry on. i'm in a bathroom stall when a handful of symposium-goers comes in. "i don't think this makes sense," says one. "i know," says another. "we should do it like this," she says, and goes on to explain what she thinks. the third person with them agrees. when i re-enter the room, one of them approaches me and says that she thinks we should do it differently. i say, as pleasantly as i can, that if she feels that way, she should go ahead and lead the group. "oh, i don't want to take over!," she says.
it sounds like a bald lie -- and yet, the logic of homo academicus suggests that it isn't. i think what academics truly love, more than anything, is being right. they don't like the unknown, they don't want to trust processes, they don't want to take a wrong turn and end up in unfamiliar surroundings. they want to know things, and they want the things they know to be correct. critical by habit, by training, and by conviction, they always, always know best.
and this is ultimately the biggest difference between me and the academic world. there are gazillions of things more important to me than being right. for one, being happy. for another, learning. for a third, collaborating. also: taking chances. making things. using my imagination. seeing beauty. listening to other people. trying things out. leading.
so, i disgraced myself. i left the symposium in tears, before it was even over.
the surprising thing is how disappointed i am.
Monday, March 3, 2008
How I fell in love with my heart
i know, i know: it's a ponderous title for a blog, "sonography of the heart." but let me tell you the story of today, and maybe you can see why, ponderous or not, i like it.
i've been having some health troubles over the last couple of years. i had a wee breakdown in the late summer/early fall of 2006, after which I was on medical leave for six months. i took effexor (venlafaxine) for 18 months. by december 2007 i was having trouble staying conscious. what i mean is, i was fainting routinely. one time i cracked my head open on a sharp-edged table going down, leaving me with a rakish scar over my right eye. it was worrying. i was worried. my partner was worried. and so my doctor referred me to a cardiologist. (at the same time, i was having hot flashes, gaining weight, and experiencing other unpleasant things, so i decided to quit effexor, which i'm sure you'll hear more about in future posts.)
this morning was my first of four cardiac tests, an echocardiogram, which is an ultrasound of the heart. i was nervous about it. i knew it wouldn't hurt, but what might it mean? i tried to prepare myself for anything.
but i could not have prepared myself for what i experienced, which is that an echocardiogram is beautiful. stunning, actually. i nearly wept at the beauty of it, my four-chambered heart beating away, valves doing their valvular thing, the mechanism -- no, the muscle of it -- working steadily away and asking nothing in return. the image is the type we've all grown familiar with through two decades, now, of pregnancy ultrasounds: grainy horizontal lines where nothing is particularly clear except the dizzying fact that you are looking at your own insides. the tech (a lovely woman who described some of the tattoos she's seen in over fifteen years of doing this work) took images from several different perspectives during the forty-minute procedure. there was a photoshop-like pallet on the righthand side of the screen. when she turned on the color, squirts of red light and blue light coursed through the centre of the image. occasionally a mustard yellow explosion with a white centre marked -- well, i'm not sure just what it marked, exactly, but something electrifying. the tech looked at the back of my heart through my liver ("nice liver!"). she looked at the top of my heart coming down through my esophagus. she showed me the walls of my heart ("gorgeous!") and measured my diastolic and systolic blood pressure. i felt weirdly flattered -- no one's ever complimented my liver before -- and i felt humble and awed to see everything my heart does projected onto a TV screen.
then the tech turned on the sound, and it was liking being at the aquarium. the sound was dopplerized, turning my heartbeat from the conventional lub-dub into something that, oh, a manatee might say. "don't worry about the sound," said the tech, to reassure me, "sound is good!" but i was already gone on it. i was thinking of that song by Stars, the montreal band, that starts "i am [chris/amy/torq/etc], and this is my heart." i am heather, and this is my heart -- and, i thought suddenly, i'm going to blog this. i'm going to try to capture the resonances normally beyond human hearing, echo and amplify them, cast them in language. i will listen to my heart.
and this is where my blog begins: me, lying in a darkened room, the march snow forgotten, looking at the incontrovertible evidence that i am, simply, alive.
i've been having some health troubles over the last couple of years. i had a wee breakdown in the late summer/early fall of 2006, after which I was on medical leave for six months. i took effexor (venlafaxine) for 18 months. by december 2007 i was having trouble staying conscious. what i mean is, i was fainting routinely. one time i cracked my head open on a sharp-edged table going down, leaving me with a rakish scar over my right eye. it was worrying. i was worried. my partner was worried. and so my doctor referred me to a cardiologist. (at the same time, i was having hot flashes, gaining weight, and experiencing other unpleasant things, so i decided to quit effexor, which i'm sure you'll hear more about in future posts.)
this morning was my first of four cardiac tests, an echocardiogram, which is an ultrasound of the heart. i was nervous about it. i knew it wouldn't hurt, but what might it mean? i tried to prepare myself for anything.
but i could not have prepared myself for what i experienced, which is that an echocardiogram is beautiful. stunning, actually. i nearly wept at the beauty of it, my four-chambered heart beating away, valves doing their valvular thing, the mechanism -- no, the muscle of it -- working steadily away and asking nothing in return. the image is the type we've all grown familiar with through two decades, now, of pregnancy ultrasounds: grainy horizontal lines where nothing is particularly clear except the dizzying fact that you are looking at your own insides. the tech (a lovely woman who described some of the tattoos she's seen in over fifteen years of doing this work) took images from several different perspectives during the forty-minute procedure. there was a photoshop-like pallet on the righthand side of the screen. when she turned on the color, squirts of red light and blue light coursed through the centre of the image. occasionally a mustard yellow explosion with a white centre marked -- well, i'm not sure just what it marked, exactly, but something electrifying. the tech looked at the back of my heart through my liver ("nice liver!"). she looked at the top of my heart coming down through my esophagus. she showed me the walls of my heart ("gorgeous!") and measured my diastolic and systolic blood pressure. i felt weirdly flattered -- no one's ever complimented my liver before -- and i felt humble and awed to see everything my heart does projected onto a TV screen.
then the tech turned on the sound, and it was liking being at the aquarium. the sound was dopplerized, turning my heartbeat from the conventional lub-dub into something that, oh, a manatee might say. "don't worry about the sound," said the tech, to reassure me, "sound is good!" but i was already gone on it. i was thinking of that song by Stars, the montreal band, that starts "i am [chris/amy/torq/etc], and this is my heart." i am heather, and this is my heart -- and, i thought suddenly, i'm going to blog this. i'm going to try to capture the resonances normally beyond human hearing, echo and amplify them, cast them in language. i will listen to my heart.
and this is where my blog begins: me, lying in a darkened room, the march snow forgotten, looking at the incontrovertible evidence that i am, simply, alive.
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