Ready

Yesterday I noticed small raised bumps on my ankles and I am thinking it must be fleas, so I spend my last minutes at home before checking in to surgery in Durham, cleaning blankets, vacuuming carpets and this morning before leaving for the hospital, kidnapping my unsuspecting cat, Weenie, zipping her quickly into a small cat carrier and dropping her off at the vet. Two things happened. The vet called-no fleas- and the bumps on my body are slowly but surely taking over. I have hives. It is amazing the utter lack of control one can have over ones body when it comes to stress. I am a person who usually can maintain a semblance of calm and fortitude even during the worst of times, but for some reason this time, my body has its own plan. It started having anxiety attacks a few weeks ago, commanding my attention just enough to procure a prescription for Zanax, my very first, and after becoming completely catatonic after taking just one, it is my last.
I wanted so bad to blame this current outbreak on fleas, spiders or even bed bugs. The thought of having a rogue body acting on its own accord frightens me. Anxiety ruled my day today. My husband Dan encouraged me to breathe through my stress and to try to avoid taking any drugs. I complied, wanting to have a last night of fun, connection and clarity. So we roamed around Durham eating and drinking in some amazing local establishments, eating local food, talking to local folk, counting down the hours to when we had to surrender to the “system”. The time is now. It is after midnight and I can no longer eat, drink or even swallow water when I brush my teeth. Tomorrow at 10:00 am I will have a re-called hip device removed from my body and in its place; a safe, hopefully functional replacement will be installed. As for now, Dan is dozing beside me, I am itching like crazy and almost ready to have this all behind me no matter what it entails. The support and love I feel from all of my friends and family is palpable and I am grateful. And ready.

Loose Ends

I woke up before the sun feeling wide awake, but not ready to face the day, I forced myself to fall back asleep re-entering the world of dreams and mystery. My dreams have been fraught with intrigue, dysfunction, insanity and all kinds of craziness and no wonder! My life is a bit crazy these days. As crazy as my dreams can be, they are never too crazy for me to say. “Hey, wake up, this has gone too far!” I relish in the scenarios, the unconscious connections between everything that is happening in my life being played out in random dream dramas. It’s better than soaps. I had planned to travel to Durham today to settle in and enjoy some time before checking in to the hospital before my surgery on Thursday, but after sleeping until 11:00 am and working on things on the home front, we decided to head out tomorrow and instead spent the afternoon working out, Dan running on the treadmill and me swimming a mile in the pool of our local YMCA. Swimming for me is an old friend. My father introduced me to the water at a very young age-it was in fact in a pool. Being landlocked in rural Wisconsin, my father, an avid swimmer himself, took his children- at that time five girls- to any public pool in the winter months that he could find. Summer in Wisconsin, of course, afforded days of fresh water swimming in a multitude of lakes and that is where we could be found, coolers full of drinks and sandwiches camped out for the day. I was a competitive swimmer in high school, but not very dedicated. I think I was voted the least likely to succeed in the sport or something along those lines, but the swimming, the style of it, the finesse of breathing and reaching out for the stroke, always stayed with me. To this day I have great form and probably good potential as a distance swimmer. Today, I was happy knocking out a mile, but I am also integrating swimming as something important to my future physical well being and it feels good to conquer! The rest of the evening was spent finding the best oysters on the Outer Banks, and why not? I am facing at least five days of no eating and no drinking so Dan and I set out to eat as many steamed local crab slough oysters as we could, all washed down with copious amounts of beer and wine. All I can say is I hope those post surgery days of not eating balances out my present over indulgences! It’s hard to resist eastern North Carolina oysters in season.

Letting Go

Today was my last day at work before embarking on a two month medical leave to have my left hip re-replaced due to a device “re-call”. I left work feeling almost completely satisfied that I could face the impending circumstances with almost no work-related stress or unfinished business. In fact the only thing that was left on my plate was creating a Christmas card list of the past year’s donors and supporters of the small non-profit that I work for. I quickly recited a list of worthy recipients to any co-workers who may have been listening as I breezed out of my office into the snowy afternoon. They may or may not get out; I just have to let it go. I’m finding that I am letting go of a lot of things these days. I will no longer be able to run after my bionic-titanium parts are replaced with those more fragile. Ceramic, plastic and metal will probably not invoke words from my surgeon like, “Do whatever you want as long as it does not cause you pain.” Not that pain has ever stopped me before. No pain, no gain, right? I will miss running though, and I’ll have to face any other limitations head on as they come. Since I am returning home from the hospital mere days before Christmas, I am letting that go too. My family, my husband Dan and our two children, have been trying to create a family holiday experience as far from the consumer, commercial version as we can, spending our time making gifts, cooking food, playing games and music- and if we are not on a traveling adventure- staying home and just having fun. Two years ago our kids, they are twenty six and twenty one now, squirreled away and wrapped random objects from our home so when we woke on Christmas morning, Dan and I really thought Santa had come. The gifts were spilling out from under the tree, until I looked closer at the bicycle with the big red ribbon tied around it, noticing the rust and dirty tires-who's bike was that? In the days leading up to this week I have amassed a stack of books to read while recovering. I have selected various tomes for friends and family as gifts this season and that is all I am doing. Cooking, traveling, creating, taking care of family and friends, I’m letting it go. The first time I had total hip replacement surgery was four years and four months ago and three days after finding out my husband was having an affair. It’s amazing how the trauma of that disclosure and the corresponding emotions completely trumped the trauma of surgery. Dan and I are amazed that we have almost no recollection of what happened the first time I had surgery. We are trying to put the pieces together in order to prepare ourselves this time around, but we have hardly any memory of the experience. It really puts in to perspective the depth of pain one suffers from an affair in a relationship. It’s hard for me not to remember those times now as I get ready to go through this once again, but this time I have the full support and care of a loving man-my husband of almost twenty seven years. And it’s funny because this second surgery, this “do-over” is like another chance to make all my stories right, to let go of those stories and parts that “no longer serve me” as one of my wise friends noted. And so here it is, another chance to let go, another chance to continue creating my story.

Falling

I have been home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina from my two month sabbatical in Costa Rica for almost four months now. The memories of my time there, the simple routines, new friendships and the feeling that I would return home and make significant changes in my life after “re-entry” have faded into the urgency of daily demands from work, family, relationships and most urgently-my body. Anytime I am away from home I look forward to the pile of mail waiting for me when I return, most of it is junk, I know, but I still get excited by post that is addressed to me personally. I had pen pals as a girl for this reason alone. I remember one in particular, a dark haired, mysterious young girl of eight, my age, living somewhere out west. She sent me a photograph of herself dressed in white jeans and a white shirt, cowboy hat perched on her small head, looking straight at the camera, unsmiling, seated on her horse. I think I loved her, but not enough to maintain the relationship via pen and paper. Now after two months away from home my stack of mail was significant and I settled into the comfort of my screened in porch in anticipation of what I had missed. After separating the junk from the catalogues, the catalogues from the bills, the personal emerged and that is where I started. What was waiting for me on that September afternoon among the pile of letters that were a combination of known and unknown, was a curious letter from Duke Diagnostic Clinic. I read it twice to make sure that what I was reading was true and then with an unsettling feeling growing in the pit of my stomach, I looked for my husband Dan. “Dan, you are never going to believe what I am reading here in this letter from Duke University. It seems that the artificial hip I received four years ago at Duke Hospital that was manufactured by Johnson and Johnson, has been re-called." The letter went on to say that only a small percentage of recipients would have complications, but I didn’t need to read any further to know that these were going to be my complications-my life- starting now. Since then I have been traveling the two hundred plus miles back and forth to Durham, the home of Duke University and the Duke medical complex to find that every test that I have taken indicates my device has not only failed, but has been poisoning my blood, damaging surrounding tissue, and quite possibly-we will not know for certain until the surgeons are inside-infecting me. In a past post not so long ago, I spoke of bold action and with trust, falling into the arms of the universe. Now, faced with major surgery in four days and all of the unanswered questions surrounding this endeavor, I feel like I am falling, but I’m not sure where.