REVERIE
Is there a string to run out?
I’m listening to Van Cliburn play the piano; one of my favorite composers and pieces. It takes me far away and long ago, as they say. The music transports whole decades and continents as my body releases the recordings of injury and insult. This has been a long break from writing. I am in northern New Mexico; have been for three and a half months nearly and my temper has been stressed by a heart attack on May 1st, a Sunday when a quick snow storm here in the Rockies canceled a planned brunch with friends. I’d driven the hour and a half to Santa Fe to spend the day with different friends instead of staying in Las Vegas for the brunch date.
I was sitting on the floor playing with toddlers and tykes when the familiar discomfort crept into my throat. The usual sipping of water didn’t alleviate the sharp pain that began to creep into my breast bone. A few minutes later I mumbled to Naomi that I needed to get to a hospital because I suspected I was having a heart attack. She became superwoman and delivered me tout de suite to St. Vincent’s ten minutes away. Within a few hours I was resting in the recovery room with a brand new stent inserted into an artery of my, sometimes difficult to detect, heart. That familiar discomfort I had been living with for over a year. I never new it was a small warning that blood flow to my heart was being restricted.
Earlier, like a year and a half earlier I was admitted to Mid-coast Hospital in Brunswick, Maine; a lot closer to where I live full time. I’d arrived by ambulance at the order of the duty medical person, a PA, at my doctor’s office. I was unable to catch my breath that morning and I nearly passed out from lack of oxygen at one point in the event. The evening before I was unable to sleep at all, maybe just doze off and then awaken out of breath. When she heard this she told me to call an ambulance and get to the hospital immediately. Of course I did as I was told. I looked up “ambulance” in the yellow pages and called the number listed. The first-responder on the line with me said that I needed to call 911 in order to have an ambulance show up. So, I called 911 and followed the accepted protocol.
I wasn’t at all worried or alarmed at the situation because ignorance is bliss. In fact when the paramedics arrived they wanted to bring the gurney into my house which was ridiculous because the entry to my house is surrounded by long caned rose bushes and narrow gates. How the hell would they fit that huge gurney through all the impediments that I’d designed so carefully to keep out unwelcome visitors. Plus, I hadn’t combed my hair yet and I looked the part of a hermit. If that wasn’t enough to keep them busy fending off my careless attitude by now I’d regained my breath and I was feeling frisky; you know, bright eyed and bushy tailed. By the time I was installed into the back of the ambulance and was hooked up to monitors and IV’s they were exhausted and I was rolling with the side jokes and just yukking it up full bore. One of the neighbors strolled by to see why there was this ambulance in my driveway. When I saw his face peering through the window of the door I called to him to come on in, which he did. He wanted to know what was the matter so I informed him that I had one of those four hour erections and needed to go get emergency medical attention. I’m relating this all to illustrate the attitude I was exhibiting.
It was later discovered through the magic of a CT scan that I was experiencing bi-lateral pulmonary embolism, no small deal. I was lucky to be alive. Both lungs had blood clots preventing the air from passing oxygen to the blood stream. I spent four days in intensive care with oxygen clips on my nose and all the accouterments necessary for sustaining life in a wise-cracking ne’er-do-well. During this period it was decided that my lungs as well as my heart needed monitoring for proper functioning. Many correctable issues were discovered and further tests performed during and immediately after the hospital stay revealed that a full recovery was available. A few months later and now I am happy to announce that I continue to improve, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Lucky? You betcha.
I think the luckiest I’ve been regarding dodging medical bullets was when I’d visited a friend near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This event took place about fifteen years ago. I’d met a very nice person on Match.Com and we had begun a relationship. I flew to small town south of Chapel Hill and we had driven in from Raleigh-Durham airport. I wasn’t feeling well at all. I thought I may have contracted a virus from another airline passenger. I had a slight fever and my wooziness factor was increasing. By the time we had reached her house in Fearrington I was ready to lie down and die. From the top of my head to the middle of my shoulders I was achy and sore and feverish. A couple of calls to my urologist in Maine and a day of treatment with antibiotics he’d prescribed didn’t improve my condition. Finally he told me to go to the closest emergency room. My friend drove me to UNC Medical Center and after triage I was admitted directly to the ICU. The doctor had discovered the onset of urosepsis. You may have to look this one up. Urosepsis occurs whenever a bacteria gets involved with the bladder and then migrates to the blood stream. Yucky things evolve from this. In effect the body has begun to poison itself with germ warfare.
As I said I was rushed to the ICU and a cocktail of antibiotics was fed to me via an IV. Four days later I started to feel slightly better. I was aware of the seriousness of this particular situation because of the fever and discomfort I felt from the beginning. This may be the worst I’ve ever felt for a longer period. The recent heart attack was painful but that lasted for just a portion of the first hour. The urosepsis was forever it seemed.
So listening to Van Cliburn and going at this entry for the better part of the day on this Saturday I’ve lost myself in the stories and had an opportunity to reflect. These close calls with life threatening illnesses have only strengthened my sense that the end is always near and death can be a simple event. What I’ve gained is a feeling of acceptance with whatever it is we will face at the end. I could have gone into a coma from which there was no return in the case of the urosepsis. I could have fallen to the floor unconscious when I was oxygen starved bent over by my bed at home with the pulmonary embolism. Or, I could have croaked while Naomi was driving me to the hospital in Santa Fe during the heart attack. You never know what is around the next corner.
My string is still progressing and hasn’t run out yet. We’ll just see out it all plays out. I hope you day is as gentle and comfortable as mine has been. Spring time in the Rockies is quite an experience. The air is dry and the temp’s vary as much as New England. So far it has been enjoyable. Have a great day.
G. M. Goodwin
14 May 2016
Here’s a short story I wrote a few years ago. It reflects a philosophy of life of mine.
GRAFFITI TO LIVE BY
I was standing outside South Station waiting for the bus. This was in 1981 and I was working in East Boston at a half-way house for alcoholics. I’m not sure why I was there at the bus stop. I only know that I was using the MBTA for practical reasons and I was on my way someplace or on my way back to East Boston from someplace. I was waiting for a bus that would take me either toward or away from East Boston. I was standing on the sidewalk on Atlantic Avenue observing my surroundings. Across the street a building was being modernized. There were four by eight sheets of plywood placed to prevent people from entering the construction site. On the plywood were written several words and phrases; some official, some not. One of the unofficial phrases was more thought provoking. I read it and read it again. I did this several times until I got the phrasing and meter right in my head. I have quoted the phrase often since then and I use it as part of my e-mail signature now.
Boston is a great city for getting around. But, as anywhere else, it helps if you were born there. The Hub is a small contained metropolis that has everything within a few miles of anywhere. If one is healthy and able to perambulate then this is the place to live. I lived in two areas of the city of Boston; Comm Ave out between Hereford and Gloucester and then on the seedy north slope of Beacon Hill. The north slope of Beacon Hill was once known as the West End, a wonderful Italian neighborhood. The West End was demolished as part of a revitalization campaign in downtown Boston. Down came a family neighborhood and up went Government Center. Government Center is a crowd of concrete brutalist architecture for city, state, and federal government buildings. I have trouble with brutalist architecture. It looks like someone didn’t really give a crap about how it looks. It looks simply like the decision makers were not invested in beauty or in pleasing the populace. I would guess that whoever made the call to build these non-attractive buildings got lazy during the final days of city planning and just gave in to the least popular architectural submissions. I have read that the architecture is suggestive of the “honesty of concrete construction”. I think it is a fart in the face of humanity.
The first place I saw brutalist architecture was at SUNY Stony Brook, New York. I was a member of an organization in Port Washington, an anti-nuke affinity group aligned with SHAD and CLAMSHELL. I was in my last year of Navy service and my mind had been awakened by some radical people who owned a bookstore. If you want to get into trouble with the populace-in-general hang out at an independent book store and be part of that culture. Anyway, the affinity group and many others from New York and New England met for several days of protest planning at Stony Brook. I recall during lunch on a grassy quad one of the women mentioning that the buildings there were ‘brutalist architecture’. All of us sitting together at lunch agreed that was a good description. Later that year at the Wall Street protest of 1979 I was arrested 3 times with my affinity mate Emily and on one of those occasions I sat next to Daniel Ellsberg and his son on one of the police buses. (In case you missed it then here it is now.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODCvbn_hUDI
During this protest I met a future reporter for National Public Radio. Margot Adler was working for WBAI an independent radio station in The City. I liked her for her earth-mother persona and beautiful presence. She died this past summer. (Here is her obit.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/28/margot-adler-dead-dies_n_5627883.html
So the graffiti on the side of a construction site near South Station in Boston hit a nerve with me in 1981. Even as I write this short piece in memory of the West End of Boston, Stony Brook, Wall Street protest, and Margot Adler I still am intrigued by the simple transition from word to word of this phrase.
Believe
Be live
Live
Simple, eh?
George M. Goodwin
September 19, 2014
Playing Fair and Being Kind 