And Beyond

Now in my 51st year, and I always seem to have to explain the math of that to someone. I'm not going to again. I want to change the title of this blog to "My 50th Year...and Beyond." It sounds lofty, I know, but I need a place to write the crap out of my head, to spill the blood and guts all over a page, a screen. It feels more like spilling when you use a pen and paper, but I think I can manage to spill here.

Saturday was two days ago, and it was a particularly crappy day, and I should have written here on that day, to get all of it out of me and onto or into something else. When priests exorcise demons and the bad spirits depart; that is what writing is: an exorcism. Driving out the demons that make me feel bad, that give me my biting sarcasm aimed at people I love. The demons must go, and yet I know that they will be back. Does the writing really help?

I knew Saturday was going to be bad when I woke up and still had 14 papers to grade. I am teaching online again after taking a break, and I would really love to have my break back please. The day was dark (the typical bad beginning to a bad story) and stormy, tornado watches and warnings in New York. Later in the day two tornadoes would touch down, one in Queens, one in Brooklyn. Crazy.

So I knew it would be bad. I had a pain in my chest. I get them regularly now, about two or three times a week. I've also had a few dizzy spells since the whole PE fiasco and I had one on Saturday. That coming up the stairs and even if I stop my head keeps moving feeling. It's awful and scary and I think, ok, now I'm going to die and what goes through my mind? Where are my children and will I get to say something to them before I go and then, "But I'm not finished!"

I hate thinking of dying so much, and I never did think of it much before nearly doing so. Even after the anaphylactic bee sting event, I didn't think I would die until I was very very old. Now, I know I could have died and I was lucky as so many people keep telling me right after they tell me they know someone who died with a PE. I'm lucky, and I'm unlucky.

That's what the pulmonologist said. I didn't even know that there were doctors who specialized so specifically, but it makes sense I guess. He said, "You're lucky, and you're unlucky." Lucky because I didn't die and unlucky because, well, it could happen again, although unlucky since I'm taking blood thinners. But it could happen again and yes, I was smart not to go on the long trip to Cyprus with Andreas and the kids, that very long two weeks. I'm lucky.

I am lucky, but I don't feel lucky. PE recovery is a wicked little thing, a reminder that it happened and that my lungs are damaged by having blood clots in them at all, where they should never have been, and at the cellular level, the doctor said. Of course there will be pain, and I should just toughen up and know that while I'm taking blood thinners my blood cannot clot and I won't die.

I have to buck up and remember that I am lucky. The hardest part is the not dying. The nearly dying. The part that I remember when I have a pain or when I forget to bring my pills with me at the time I'm supposed to take them. I forget to remember that I am lucky.