Monday is my day off, so I was sleeping in when the phone rang. The doctor had a cancelation and there was an opening this afternoon, if that wasn't too short notice. I made "Joanne" her repeat the appointment time and the doctor's name several times so I could get the information in my phone through bleary eyes. Got up. Had a much-needed shower, and found socks and underwear without holes in them, (for Mom.)
During my meditation this morning, I noticed the economy of breath. Breath is balance. We take away, and we give back. I breathe in life and breathe out what I don't need. The air that comes into my body dissolves into elements my body can't function without. The air that leaves dissolves into elements that support the life around me. In a real sense, each in-breath is a new birth as my body is renewed and restored, and each out-breath is a new birth as the world around me receives the gift of my life.
These are the things that drift through your mind when you are sitting quietly in the morning with a cat in your lap and your mind on... well... breathing.
Morning chores, yada, yada, yada, take out the trash, gas up the car, drive across town, and register at the Clinic to meet yet another new doctor. Drop the "Specialist" co-pay which could have purchased me a ticket to a decent musical at the Opera House, and make my way to the waiting area for Neurology.
Find a respectfully remote chair, (will I ever be around strangers again without thinking about "safe social distance?)
Breathe.
I sat in my comfortable chair, feet flat on the floor, hands folded across my lap, palms up, "like a beggar's bowl," my priest used to say. I was facing a window, and tried to find a soft focus for my eyes by gazing at a smudge on the glass, but soon, that seemed kind of fake to me, like an old white guy in his first yoga class. I noticed that I was breathing smoothly, though my heart was beating hard enough to notice. On either side of me were elderly couples - sick men and the women who loved them, from what I could tell - with two cell phones and four canes between them. I found myself wondering how long they had been together. What was it like to be so old and so connected to another person? I was jealous, sitting there alone on a gray Monday morning. I flicked my eyes over to steal a look at them, and imagined what they looked like when they were young and beautiful. When they were filled with life and lust and couldn't wait to put their hands on one another. The old man on my left slipped from a doze into a dream and his cane clanked to the floor. His wife put down her phone rolled her eyes at me, and stood it back up beside him, without a word. The wife on my left excused herself to go to the rest room, and her tall husband, the one I could see had once been a dangerously handsome man, sat quietly drumming her purse with his fingers.
I breathed in the air of the corridor. The faint smell of new carpet. The sound of sneakers moving in the hall. Perfect temperature. Out the window, I could see pairs, almost always pairs of people walking from the parking lot to the Clinic doors. Some were arm in arm. Others just side by side. Husbands and wives. Mothers and daughters. One pair was almost certainly a granddaughter and her grandma. Very few had the professional feel of client and caregiver. I took them in, glad I had decided to give up on the whole "gazing softly into the middle distance" schtick. I would have missed all the love making its way across my world.
A smart, efficiently friendly lady called "Robert?" from around the corner, and I joined her for the short walk to room 3. We celebrated the liturgy of the exam room, vital signs, list of medications, medical history, why are you here today? Then she did something unusual. "Dr. S is a tall slim man. He rarely knocks, so don't be startled when the door flies open and there he is." It struck me as an exceptionally thoughtful thing to say, and I wish I had remembered her name so I could thank her.
Then came the time of contemplation between the nurses interview and the appearance of The Doctor. All patients know this interlude. We read the posters. If we have a companion, we smile quietly at one another, or sneak a quick squeeze of the fingers if we're feeling especially anxious. I chose to sit quietly and breathe, (once I had checked out the weird little acrylic model of a brain on the writing desk.)
As I breathed in and breathed out, I became aware of the others who had waited here. I breathed in their anxiety, and breathed out comfort. I breathed in anger and breathed out acceptance. I breathed in relief, and breathed out hope. I imagined people after me breathing in the light I hoped to leave. Then the door flew open and Doctor S appeared.
He was indeed tall and slim. If it's not too much of a cliche, he was kind of birdlike. He spoke quietly and with few words, as if he respected their value. He did not meet my eyes for a long time, making me wonder if he might not be a little autistic, or at least painfully shy. His gaze landed on the laptop beside me, and it quickly became obvious that he not only did not know me, but he didn't know my case, nor even the neurologist who had met with me in December. We were both quiet for a long time. He read. I looked at the little plastic brain then noticed that my heart was not beating nearly as hard as it had been in the waiting room.
We talked about my life, first the most recent events, then reaching back to the days of radiation, chemo, and my first fainting episode, almost 14 years ago. He was quiet for a long time, reading test results and radiology reports. He asked some more questions and I added some more information that I had forgotten - fainting after exercise - losing control of my left hand - blurred vision in the right eye like looking through a broken, dirty window. More quiet. More breathing. I realized that he and I were now sharing our breath in this little room. He was a detective, interpreting clues. I was, what, a crime scene? Whatever I was, we were intimately connected in that room, and I became aware that he had been there with me for well over half an hour.
I soon learned that during that silence, he was researching head-and-neck cancer, radiation, and scarring of the carotid arteries. Also orthostatic hypotension (getting dizzy when you stand up) and its relationship to the other two. I sat their trying to be a patient patient, while he was becoming a better doctor. He had me lay down on the exam table and took my blood pressure. It was dangerously high. Then i stood up. Any problems? Nope. He took my blood pressure again. It was dangerously low.
We went back to our chairs. "Well," he said, and this is my first memory of meeting his soft, blue eyes, "you are complicated." He explained that nobody had been able to give me any answers because my equation had so many variables in it. There is the orthostatic thing. The radiation thing. The blockage thing. The exercise. The meds. It's hard to know which knob to adjust first. He offered a couple of things.
Keep doing the things I am doing. Keep exercising. Keep drinking water. Get up slowly. Sit down when you feel shaky. Wear compression hose, which chicks find irresistible, by the way.
He also wants me to track my own vitals every morning. Weight. Heart Rate. BP. He suggested I get data during the day, too, especially before and after exercise.
And finally, he got on the internet and found a "neuro-vascular surgeon" - who knew there was such a thing? - who could give me a reliable second opinion on treatment options.
I looked at my watch. This specialist had just spent an hour with me. I told him how much I appreciated that. His eyes immediately went back to the floor. "Well... you're complicated." I had a distinct feeling that Dr S kind of enjoys the complicated ones.
So, I have next steps. I have another appointment. I have action to take. I have the OK to exercise and instructions to track my workouts and my body's response to them. I have something like hope that I might actually be able to run that marathon next spring. And I have a whole bunch of stuff that I didn't have when the phone rang this morning.
We are all breathing, all the time. I tell my classes, "It's the first thing you did, and the last thing you will do." Today, I breathed in life, and breathed out... well... life, actually. I was born and born again with every breath. I received an inheritance and left a legacy with each puff in and out. Jesus talked about being re-born and the Eastern traditions talk about being reincarnated and I wonder if the three of us aren't all talking about the same thing? We all live and die a thousand times a day. Our breath reminds us, not only how much we need the world around us, but how much we are composed of the elements of that world. Likewise, the world is composed of the breath, the cells, the poop, and finally the dust to which we return to become part of the next living thing that inhales or digests or absorbs us. Our lives are finite. But the Life of which we are a part goes on and on.
Today, I met a guy who couldn't look me in the eye, but saw things inside me that a bunch of other doctors had missed. I met a handsome man who guarded his wife's purse like a family heirloom. I met a wife who loved her sweetheart too much to point out that he had fallen asleep in public, dropped his cane, and was drooling just a little bit. I met a nurse who warned me about something weird ahead, and I met a whole lot of people looking out for one another on a gray Monday afternoon.
All-in-all, a pretty good day to keep breathing.
Keep on keeping on -- and writing about it.
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