Chile 2002 Day Two: The Long Road





Well, I have had some days off from this blog. The reason is a rather serious pain in my back that makes it almost impossible for me to sit at my computer for more than 5-10 minutes. But solving that problem, but not the back pain, I am returned!

 

Many things to think about while recovering from a setback. The one thing that really strikes me, as it did seven years ago, is that no matter how many people, family, friends, medical staff there is to hold your hand, this little adventure into personal health reform is a solo expedition, and if you don't get your head clear the recovery and one's mental state of mind suffers. That isn't to say support is needed, if not essential, but when you are in the operating room and they put that plastic mask over your face and tell you to breathe deeply, it's you that's breathing deeply, and it's you that suddenly has become a lab specimen for the next five hours.

Campsite, Chilean Coast 2002 - first night

And, when you come out of the delirium of drugs that keep you knocked out, the scars, bruising and otherwise new arrangement of organs and topography of your body is your own little reality to come to terms with.

 

When I was in Chile in 2002 the sense of being alone was dramatic, as the long road up the Pacific Coast saw no traffic, and the Pan-American Highway stretched tightly along the bluffs that lined the coastal road.

 

 The thing that really gripes me is that I will not recover as fast as I would like too, what an inconvenience. It's one thing to have one's life saved by the intervention of medical science, their ability to dig into your chest, in this case my chest, and take a mulligan on the ninth hole and replumb some arteries that were otherwise in-op. However, on top of that, to have to wait to get back to normal operating form, well, I am impatient for that to occur.





Because of that impatience, I overdid it somewhat yesterday. While I am walking a pretty good distance, I decided to throw in a small hill to test my ability.

 

Not Good, Kimoshabee.

 

Sucking wind by the time I got to the top of the incline.

 

So, what seemed to me a recovery on track for my own vision of when and what was going to happen, I recalled the long road up the Chilean coast...long, lonely, and one really has to pace themselves to get to where they are want to be. Sometimes, even superheroes have to take a step back and readjust their view of things.

 

So, still here, and trying to slow down so that my recovery stays on track, a singular road with no detours until I am back to normal, whatever that means.

 

 

 

Vanitas?

Memento Mori was an early devotional subject in Christian art. It depicted St.Jerome contemplating a skull in the solitude of his celibacy, which I guess if you are celbate you are flying solo.

Throughout history, and art history especially, images of the Ars Moriendi - Dance of Death - have served to remind those walking this planet that our time is short and that while human life is brief, eternal life, is well, eternal. I wish they had come up with something more tangible because really, who can grasp eternity? I can't. It's a very elusive concept.

These images morphed into a special type of painting during the Reformation, known as vanitas, taken from Ecclesiastes 1:2 "vanity of vanities; all is vanity." These images were popular or less so depending upon immediate confrontation of existential issues that might be forcing society to contemplate their impending end or not; like the plague, great wars, or the plague again. 

Vanitas paintings of the Reformation period usually included emblems of transience and mortality - a skull (reference St. Jerome here) a candle burnt down, beautiful flowers in the over ripe display of their colors and blossom or in some early or advanced state of deterioration balanced against books, mirrors, and other symbols of human pleasure and ambition. In the details one can find little bugs eating away at the flowers or other objects in early states of withering on the vine, so to speak.

For me, playing on the existential playground, I understand the message. We can live too tightly wrapped within the constructions of our own making, avoiding the reality that exists at the end of the line. We all come with an expiration date. For me, the fates have tried to recall me earlier than I would like, and now having avoided two major health recalls that would have planted me firmly in terra firma, I still have to fight the bugs, worms, and other sundry evils little mutants that seek to demonstrate to me my own limited destiny on planet earth.

Vanitas - 2013 ... what the battleground looks like.

Well, I am not one to go quietly into the night, and while I just missed a seat on the Widow Maker Express (the nickname for the particular type of cardiac problems I had) I am gaining my strength back and will turn my attention to that small outposts of rebel cells that seek to destroy their host: me.

And, in the mean time, I intend to enjoy the fruits of this life. FIVE PLUS, it's a reminder to me that yes, while time is limited, go do shit. Some people don't have the do shit gene, but all it takes is a little motivation and anyone can do shit. So, that's my plan in the long and short term, and that's my message for anyone reading this: FIVE PLUS.

Spidey Strikes A Poise

Spidey working on his balance.

My stamina is slowly increasing, but I imagine over the next few weeks it should grow exponentially as the past day has shown me I am able, just don't want to cause any setbacks in my training program, like Spidey pictured here working on his Life Tai Chi.

I looked down at my wound today and knew that an alien probe had implanted some evil in me. My torso is starting to look like a battlefield, the middle earth over which wizards, orks, elves, General Zod and other sundry characters fight out the war of life of the little evils that suck out the light.

When you (figuratively speaking) have become a specimen for medical science, and are put on the treadmill of care that will help, with best intentions, your survival, many thing in life tend to become of minimal importance, like whether or not your butt cheeks hang out of your johnnie. Also the army of different faces that come in and turn this knob, twist that tube, do this test or just take a peak down the wound site for some personnel educational edification. I am all good with the above, even the hands of assorted caregivers fumbling around under my Johnnie for electrodes and the like. As the patient, you become an unsuspecting tourist in the land of your own treatment, conscious and unconscious, although the drugs color that with some strange colors, and time becomes something quite unlike anything we experience while pushing a cart through Walmart looking for a new bag of Doritos. Although Walmart itself is kind of a timeless place and I refuse to go in just for that reason, also run by Aliens seeking to bend time to their will and not yours...but I digress...

While I was waking up, I found I had had my hands tied down, which was a good thing because I desperately wanted to reach up and yank that damn breathing tube from my throat. And, when I did wake up I was in this timeless space of low lights, buzzers, and a clock that seemed to challenge me with my ability to understand time and my Einstein type of relativity to the rest of the cosmos.

Now, when they open your chest and tinker with your heart, it's pretty straight forward stuff. But your mind comes out of it with drug residue trying to pull all the pieces back into some rationale construction upon which realty can be balanced. I would fall asleep, then wake up, feeling like I had slept for hours in the blackness of my drug induced world, but the clock's hand hadn't moved a bit. Now, once or twice was OK, and I thought, that's weird, but after hours of this I was loosing my mind somewhere between Wait a Minute, and Man, I'll never be back...

I will write more, but I have a tremendous charlie horse in my back, and it's hard to sit at the computer to type...but stay tuned ....

CHILE 2002 - DAY ONE: Woke up dreaming I was going to die...

Chile, 2002 - coastline

Eleven years ago I undertook my first solo trip into the Atacama Desert. The sense of space, separateness, and closeness to the will of the cosmos struck me deeply. I am sure it is that feeling solo travelers feel no matter where they are in the world.

The images here are from my first night's campsite, somewhere north of Antofagasta, a city on the north coast of Chile. This coastline is strewn with ghost towns, mining ports, casino towns, but mostly desert and the blank spaces of sea, sky, and being totally unplugged.

Today, I am recovering from my heart by-pass surgery. FIVE PLUS and still going. I can say with certitude that I would rather be on the beach in Chile than laying in a hospital in Boston...now home for recovery. The sad wrecks we become are pitiful and my irreverent personality masks my truly deep sorrow at the folks suffering life changes events over which they exercise no control. 

Really.

Some of this shit we can't control. Especially the older we get. The only hope is that while we are laying there waiting for the next alien invasion of our body is that the memories we have already logged can help us keep perspective on what next will happen: make us one of the Cabbage Patch kids, flush out our brains of clots and thoughts, or keep us medicated until the end comes.

Walking the halls is depressing because the poor souls laying there have no way to convey the hallucinatory sleep of lives lived and dreams of the big dark ahead.

Starfish, Chile 2002

Years ago, while I lay in my tent listening to the ocean pound out the heartbeat of nature's pulse on the rocks, I found it hard to sleep. I was alone in the world and nobody knew where I was. I had found a secreted trail from the highway down to the beach, and besides the seabirds, some starfish, and the great ocean in front, I was alone on the beach, protected in my mind from night bandits lurking in my imagination.

There were none.

I lay there listening to life, my breathe, and the surf. I recalled these memories last week as the dull buzz, beep, and faint intonation of some machine having more power in my life's progress than I, and thought, "sometimes it is just good to have done shit than not to have done shit."

Look who's home for dinner.

It's been a week. Motivation for getting behind computer keypad has returned yet, but thought I would check in to say hey to all those out there across the globe wishing me well. Recovery is the name of the game now...I will be back blogging soon...also difficult to talk to anyone because throat is a little messed up and makes me cough everything I try to say something...but, you'll all be hearing from me.

Just trying to blend in with the crowd. How am I doing?

FOOTAGE from the Operating Room last Monday. click here to view. HERE

Greetings,

You know, the thing about being in the hospital is that it is either all action, or complete boredom. All motion and no lotion, so to speak as a friend once said.

I'll get enough action tomorrow, looks like.

Family was here to push up the spirits. Mission Accomplished.

Beautiful today, loved the sunshine.

Wished I could go out and play.

But, today was inside, and listening for the emergent sounds of a fellow trying to live, cry, and otherwise whittle away a few more moments of confinement in the health-o-polis that seeks to keep us living.

This entire episode started seven years ago this week, actually on June 6, 2006, to encompass June 16th when I had my left kidney removed. Now, seven years later, the blind will of life in all its mutant form has returned to remind me of my lightly held grip on this earth.

Being even marginally ill is a terrible inconvenience, and well, it is also difficult to accept what level of illness one has because then you have to accept the outcome. But to weigh against that I think of recovery, not blind to the existential grip we have, but to live when I have the chance and enjoy it for what it is.

So now, I am readying myself for a fairly routine surgery, although as I said to the nurse today, it is not routine for me. I think some ativan will help, which I hope is a nice size dose, which will be supplemented with more narcotics tomorrow. Sometime later when I awake, I will be done with this alien invasion of my chest and think about getting up and back in the game.

Great quote which seems to sum up my experience this past month or so, "You fly in and you think a thing's going to happen one way, and it invariably happens the other way."

Later. Tim

Shutter Island ... or the Tin Man gets a new heart?

Greetings....just cornered this computer again...getting a tad restless...docs told me not to over exert...which means sitting ...but every once in a while...I roam the halls of this unit taking in the sights.

Update: there are a lot of sick looking people in the hospital. And, in my area, which is cardiac vascular unit, most are old, overweight, shitting in the pooper potties, and generally drones of a life long gone and counting the years on the fingers of one hand and wondering if heart surgery will give them any more. But, enter me, bad interstate circling Heart City, with a small slum not far away called Tumor in the Lymph Nodeville, but otherwise a picture of perfect health...it just goes to show, you never know how long one has in this world or what mass of goblins, orks, and general mutant little fuckers are out there to turn a perfectly fine day into a game changer.

Noises, beaps, buzzers quietly coming from the rooms down the hallway. Men twice my size wearing those terrible looking johnies doing the best not to show any ass...although I did my best Jack Nicholson when I got to the unit yesterday, that was before I could find my under garments and slip them back on...and as asses go around here, mine is grade A...and to tell the truth, you see a lot of ass here, but it is the wrinkled sagging type on bodies that haven't used that muscle but for sitting the past twenty odd years.

They say my prognosis is good, mostly because except for heart disease and cancer...yes, take a pregnant pause there, I am healthy otherwise and that with new vasculariture on my ticker, I should be good to go for a while longer, with the cancer thing waiting in the wings. But, as things are shaping up, I have taken quite a fond affection for my cancer. I mean,. really, it is saving my life. Who would have thought that could happen. So the craziness of it is that I am shuttered away, almost not by my consent, although what choice did I have, and awaiting an alien invasion of my chest cavity for a little tinkering and cut and pasteing of my innards.

So, as the heart turns, say a Domino, Nabisco and Shreaded Wheat for me tomorrow at church, and all will be right with the Tin Man come next week...

Into the Abyss...or Saving Private Tim

Greetings.

Well, somethings have changed in the past 24 hours.

Terry and I came to Boston for my catherization that was suppose to be, in my mind, a come and go thing. Besides getting momentarily lost on the way and having to swing around some back streets we made On Time to the hospital at 7am. After a not too long wait they prepped me for the Cath, and in I go. Somewhere between the drugs they had given me and the noticeable change in tone of the doctors doing the procedure, I knew the news was not going to be good. It never is when the chirpy sound of dialogue suddenly go to mysteries low tones...so the doc walks over to me and informs me that my Central Left artery, which then branches into two more arteries that feed my heart, has 90 per cent blockages both in the Central Left and 80-90 % in the branches...

Not Good, Khimosabeee.

Then with no discussion he says there are admitting me right then and there...nothing to say about that as he goes out to tell the little woman that I'm down for the count and will not be making the trip back to Portland today.

So, the long and the short of it is that on Monday morning...critical enough to get me to the head of the surgical schedule, I will be in the Operatiing Room getting cracked open like a cheap lobstah dinnah. Not to happy about that, but the up side is that they caught all this due to my cancer treatment schedule and if they didn't I was a "dead man walking," just waiting for a major MI...

Again, not good, Khimosabeee.

So, the outlook is promising and after the appropriate recovery period I will be back in the game and creating the type of havoc I am like to create in the world. I will try to post a couple more times if I find an unattended computer available to me, like the one I am using now.

Out for now, Tim

Time to get my ass in gear.

My big concern today was to get a haircut. No need to have bedhead in the middle of the day. So, now, focused on getting my ass in gear, and lightening the load some tomorrow. After all, we all take on more than we can manage some days. So, by noon tomorrow I hope I don't have my ass in a sling, and that I will be sitting upright, and getting ready to check out of the hospital, or at least be sitting up right. In all reality I don't see myself getting out of the hospital until late afternoon or early evening, time to go somewhere else and lay down and wait for the hockey game.

Check Engine Light!

Mayan girls with braided hair, Central Guatemala

Well, tomorrow is the day to get something done. My Check Engine Light is on, so my mechanics at the BIDMC are going to pop the hood and see why my carburetor is not running as smoothy as it should.

Jackie Mason on Youtube. Watch this for a few laughs, then come back.

I am going in ostensibly to get a catherization of my heart. They will look at the three main arteries to see where and why there might be a blockage that doesn't allow enough oxygen to my heart in a particular place. If all goes well, they'll put a stint in and call it a day. If...well, the other Ifs Ands and Buts we will not discuss because that will mean more time spent doing this rather than that. Because right now there seems to be a look of this and a lot of that and not getting much accomplished.

This should get me horizontal for a few days, looks like maybe more than I expected. Will update when I can.

What's Next? Tim's Big Adventure.

OK, so I go to the hospital yesterday and get the results of my three hour stress test. They show me that there's a portion of my heart that is not getting the proper amount of oxygen, as it appears dim in the pictures they took last Wednesday. This means that because it did not light up like the rest of the heart, that it was oxygen deprive. After looking at the next step, which is probably a catherization, with a stint or two, they said they could do it this week. So, I think, well, I would prefer to have it done in Portland, but I had serious doubts as to whether or not they could get me in that quick. Now, just waiting for BIDMC to schedule my procedure, because as I told them, I am all in and getting this done sooner than later is my first priority. I mean, really, I do have some other concerns, but at the moment this is potentially the worst of the little demons that are cluttering up my insides. So, it's two, two foes at one time, but I think they are manageable. A pain in the ass, or chest I should say, but manageable.