I have a phone books worth of restrictions, the things I can’t carry, the things I can’t do, move or lift, but this idea struck me this morning – silly not to have thought of it before – that I was not prohibited from herding sheep with Red. Other than getting knocked over by Zelda or one of the other sheep, it doesn’t require any lifting or pulling, it is not forbidden.
My case nurse called up to check on me and I asked her if could herd sheep. She said she had never been asked that before and it wasn’t mentioned anywhere in my reports and documents. Thanks, I said, getting off the phone quickly. I got up out of my special reclining chair and took Red out to the pasture.
It was hot and there were a zillion bugs swarming all over us, she sheep did not want to move but Red dug them out of the barn and got them to the feeder. This felt wonderful, I’ll begin doing it every day now, herding and healing. It felt so good.
It was a good day, a strong day. We are beating the infection back, I think, the redness is disappearing, my nurse practitioner spotted it before it got to be trouble. I walked over two miles today, the nurse suggests that’s the limit each day for this week. It was the easiest walk, it did not hurt to breathe (until I sneezed) and my movements were the most fluid and easy they have been.
The engine on my reclining chair burned out and this led to more good news, the nurse said I could sleep in my own bed tonight, right next to Maria, for the first time in a couple of weeks. I got detailed instructions on backing into bad, using my elbows, avoiding pulling or straining. That is very good news. Tomorrow, more writing on my “Talking To Animals” book, a massage on whatever parts of my Frankenstein body can be massaged, more walks and more rest. I think I am getting stronger by the day, but I am still weak, my body in transition and unpredictable. It is not my body yet.
I will go to Battenkill Books and get some books signed, and I will go see my friend George Forss, who I have dearly missed, I think this has been hard on him, we need to see each other. After the bookstore. George and Donna were chanting for me every day, I think I heard them in the operating room.
I have established my social media boundaries for open heart surgery. I do not seek or read any online advice about my heart and my healing, I do not read any reports of other people’s surgeries and recovery. Once or twice a day I scan the posts and soak up the good wishes and good feeling, these messages do help, they are healing and uplifting.
In the late afternoons, I crash, body and mind and withdraw from the world. After dinner, I return a bit, then have a creative burst and tire. That is the pattern, I am feeling better and stronger and more engaged with the world every day. Doing more things for myself, Nurse Ratched needs to get back to her studio, I want to take care of myself (but not this week, I just can’t.)
I accept that people will give me unwanted advice, I am through spouting off about it, if they need to give it, they will give it, if I don’t need to read it, I won’t. Sounds like a healthier place.
When I lie still trembling sometimes, or listen to the crickets in the dark, I think back to the night before my surgery and the same question keeps going over and over in my mind. Why wasn’t I afraid? I’ve suffered from chronic and acute anxiety for much of my life. I underwent analysis, conventional talking therapy. I was a valium addict for 30 years and spent recent years seeking therapy and spiritual counseling, holistic and meditative healing.
How could it be that I was lying in that room in the Albany Medical Center hours before having my chest torn open, my heart stopped, and I slept as well as I ever have, I was at peace, accepting and secure? How can I make sense of that? I knew I could die, or suffer from various things associated with such surgery, I knew at best that I would be facing long and painful months of recovery. Why wasn’t I afraid?
I will say up front I don’t completely know, I’m not certain, it will take a long time and some perspective to see that night and those feelings clearly. There was a frightened man in my room, I couldn’t tell if he was older or younger than me, he wouldn’t get up and he refused to take off his street clothes and submit to the surgery. He demanded to go home.
His heart rate was down to 30, he could barely walk, he and his son spent the entire day demanding to leave the hospital, arguing and negotiating with the doctors. He said he didn’t want the surgery, didn’t need it, he had lived with a weak heart for years. After hours of fruitless negotiating, one of his doctors was near tears, she said she would accept whatever decision he made, but she pleaded with him “why won’t you let us help you, why won’t you let us take care of you?”
I listened to this all day, nothing separated us but a thin curtain, he and his family argued with the doctors for hours. I never saw him get out of bed and move, he seemed utterly depressed, as did many of the men around me.
At night, when it was dark and lonely, he whispered out my name to me and said he had a question. It seemed to him, he said, that I was unafraid. Was I? I said I was, almost unaccountably, not afraid. I have been so afraid of so many things in my life, I said, I think my wounded heart had finally brought me to a place of acceptance, even courage. He asked me if I thought he should have open heart surgery, and I said that was not for me to try and answer, it was not my place, I was not that wise.
I think the question you have to ask, I said, is this: are you refusing the surgery out of fear, or are there good and important reasons why you simply do not want to do it? That’s the key for you, I think. It’s your heart, no one can decide but you.
“Because it is not cowardly to be afraid,” I said, “it is very human.” I was gone in the morning, he waved good bye to me as they wheeled me to the operating suite. Two days later, as I made my first halting lap around the Intensive Care Unit, I walked past a man I did not recognize, tubes protruding from his face and chest, as they were from mine. “Jon,” he sad, “it’s me, it’s me.” It was him. He smiled and waved and whispered “thank you.” I did not see him again.
The word courage dates all the way back to the 1200’s, from the Middle English word corage which, loosely translated, meant heart. In so many ways, I live by the heart. My relationship with Maria is one of the heart. I write about the heart in my books about animals, about our feelings for them, and theirs for us. My photography is all about the heart, about light and color and meaning.
My faith, in part, is this. Words matter. Truth matters. The heart matters. From the first, I saw the surgery as an opportunity to right the great wrong I did my wonderful heart. When I smoked. When I worked 14 hours a day and wolfed down cheeseburgers and fries for lunch. When I refused to have my heart checked out for 30 years.
When I lived a life of panic and fear. I had the longest talk with my heart that night, I said hey, sorry about all of this, I have been given a chance to make things right, you have given me so much in life, and today, I can give something back to you. All the good things in my life have come from you, flow from you, and last week, when I could not walk up that little hill, I knew I had broken faith with you and the world was not punishing me, it was given me the most amazing thing: another chance. Think of all the things we can do together, I told my heart, all the ways we can love Maria, all the friends I can care for, all the words I can write that might touch someone else’s heart, all the photos I can take that might remind people of the light and color in the world.
I cried with my heart that night, we were both so excited to have another chance to right the wrong done to my heart, mostly by me. How could I live in fear of that?
Courage is a fuzzy thing, I think it is a quality of mind and spirit that enables us to face difficult and dangerous things – frightening things – without fear, but with hope and acceptance and gratitude. I had courage that night, and so, in his own way, did the man in the room.
I am very pleased to announce that my new book Who Speaks For The Carriage Horses? The Future Of Animals In Our World will go on sale next Monday, July 14. This is an e-book, it will be offered for sale everywhere e-books are sold for $3.99 – Amazon, Ibooks, Bn.com, all e-book and smartphone readers. There are no plans to offer this book in paper, I am planning some appearances in New York City this summer.
The book is dedicated to the New York carriage horse drivers, I hope it will one day help bring them peace and freedom to pursue their work and way of life. The book is hopefully a comprehensive and reported look at the truth behind this now famous and painful controversy between the carriage trade and the collection of people, politicians and organizations who title themselves supporters of animal rights. It documents a shameful failure of media to check out any truth of facts behind this controversy over the years, to be manipulated and misled by animal rights organizations.
The book explores the reality of the lives of the carriage horses, the truth about working animals, the rage and dishonesty that has shrouded this campaign, the largely unwarranted persecution of the carriage trade owners and drivers, and the failure of our political system to understand what abuse is and to protect people or animals from people who would exploit them for political or personal gains. There is lots of fresh material here, and I’m very proud of the work that went into this, it combined my work with animals with my love of facts, journalism and reporting. I believe words matter, I believe the truth will always emerge into the light.
Beyond the issue itself, the book takes a deeper look at the future of animals in our world. The modern-day animal rights movements seems to be removing animals from our lives more than protecting them and the horses seem to have called on us to consider their fate in a wiser and more thoughtful way. The carriage horses have been in New York City as long as people have, and if there is no will to keep them in their safe and busy stables, what does this mean for the future of animals who are not just pets? Will domesticated animals exist only on rescue preserves and the homes of TV celebrities?
I was shocked when I began exploring this story, almost nothing about what I had been told about the horses was true. I care about facts and truth, I believe the book presents both. The book will go on sale next Monday morning, I am as excited about it as any book I have written. It will cost $3.99, a portion of the proceeds will go to the fund to save the horses.
