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.