Yesterday, a bit dullish and grey going from Bloomington to Indianapolis. Eventually Charles turned on the radio to WZPL which is a station of chatter--morning drive time personalities interrupted by "hits." We were on our way to IU Health Hospital to see the surgeon who had done Surgery 1, and I was daydreaming of Surgery 2.
Surgery 2 is a complicated manuever to cover up failed tissue in my neck--a hole that radiation burned into me, a window into my neck, a grate I cover twice or three times a day with fresh gauze and tape, my own sewage pipe. It's the reason I can't blow my nose, it's the stiff that keeps my neck from its old giraffe-ish tendencies, it's a complete pain in my tuckass, it's the leftovers of treating cancer by killing its victim.
To cover this large hole, Surgery 2 would pull my pec muscle up from the right side and a skin graft would normalize the outside--but there is an artery over there, the carotid, there are risks to this sort of surgery (somewhat big) and there is blood supply to the altered body geography to consider.
The surgeon? Happy enough with my progress after surgery 1; happy enough with my gardening, and general sassiness, my grey wingtips and my polo shirt; happy enough with the decline of pain in my mouth. But not ready to schedule Surgery 2, and not certain it's time to take this risk, and not inclined to work on my "get this shit done" schedule.
And that is me--get this done. Let me heal, let me get back to a normal, let me blow my nose--but I only know what I know. I don't know squat of risk and function--I only know me. I can't look at myself top down, I only see slant upwards. I only know that I want it done, not what doing it costs. So I have to defer to the surgeon, and there's more waiting, at least until we reconvene this session in August.
So I have a surgery free summer, which isn't such a bad thing. I did fear surgery 2 would compress my digging schedule and force it into a box of dates; not so. I now can think of when I might pay more attention to rescue dogs because I have months to ready it for this event. A plan forms around a daily round of events; weeding, walking, working on a book I've started.
Health is an oddity. It doesn't exist as an absolute, and never in isolation from the fullness of the life it measures. Your health is your outlook as much as your temperature; you are more than the fact of your blood pressure. I keep trying to buoy my outlook with events and inch it forward through scenarios. Today, an inch through sunshine and working in the front yard; last night, by laughing at Amy Schumer on Comedy Central; yesterday, by riding back from Indianapolis and admitting to Charles that I was sort of glad I didn't have a huge surgery looming on my calendar just yet.
True, I want the hole fixed...but it's stable, I'm stable, I'm not dying quite as fast as predicted or as smoothly as intended. I keep introducing the turbulence of health that isn't all a collection of stats.
Yesterday I saw a maltipoo I wanted, a pair of shoes that I'd really enjoy, I heard music that made my 20 something body twitch, talked to a surgeon, stopped in Martinsville to buy some Orgain at Walgreens. I had a day of it, the kind of day that ties me to this stupid planet with joy and adds a measure of health to me that cannot be quantified.
I may never have those green leather shoes and it's doubtful that maltipoo and I will get together soon. What will happen is what is supposed to happen, at the time it should: I'll meet the dog I should help who can help me; I'll encounter the surgeon in August who might propose a better timeline, though hopefully one that takes my November birthday into account (a patched neck at 54 is better than one at 53, right?).
I had correspondence with a very old friend recently--perhaps the person in my life who has known me longest. He didn't know that I couldn't talk, and had not ever bounced back to Markhood from the intial treatments. I had shut down telling him or anyone individually as each of my hopes faded, feeling that burden of negativity wasn't something I wanted to enumerate for anyone. I glossed them in an email--"and then I found I would never eat again," and "at that point it was obvious that I couldn't speak, ever." I saw within those words where I've been over the past year.
I realized I'm ready to drop the negativity out of the events and just let them be that--events. Markers that changed me as I moved. Ways to be that are no longer viable replaced by something new. Places I was and people who were there who aren't now, me included. Welcome to the emancipation of not getting what you want, Mark. Welcome to the world of Surgery 2.
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