Day: July 11, 2014

The Heart Pillow. Every Open Heart Surgery Patient gets one, you hug it to help stand up and sit down, hold it close to keep your chest from expanding, cling to it as you try to breathe.

I think I finally turned the corner this afternoon on my week-long struggle to regain control of my blood, my sleep and  my body temperature. If I’m not there, I’m close. Open heart surgery is not only about the heart, such invasive surgery – especially one that requires powerful anesthetics to keep the patient unconscious for many hours – affects the whole body. I take two basic medicines for my diabetes, Metformin, a grounding medication, and insulin, which works effectively in conjunction with Metformin.

The Metformin does not mix well with some of the dyes injected into my veins last week, I had to stop taking it. Bypass surgery involves trauma, life support, transfusions, all of these knock blood sugar off of it’s pins, and without Metformin, it is almost impossible for diabetics like me to regain control of my blood sugar levels. After the sugar they began rocketing up and down, higher than they had ever been, and with a host of devastating side effects – profuse sweating, kidney and personal issues, sleepnesness, weakness and drowsiness, even disorientation.

I was told I couldn’t take Metformin for at least a month.

For more than two years, I have been scrupulously maintaining control of my diabetes, my numbers were excellent. All that fell apart last week, I was warned by the doctors that my diabetes would shoot out of my control and there was little or nothing I could do about it. I tried increasing my insulin, changing the times, altering my diet, but the numbers kept rocketing up and down. My numbers were frightening, it was hard to see them go higher than they had ever been.  My kidneys, say the doctors, finally nourished with enough blood, are having a festival.

I spent the nights near the bathroom, I didn’t sleep much for days. This morning I went in near desperation to my nurse-practitioner and she said she wanted me back on the Metformin but she couldn’t contradict the will of the surgeons.

The good news is that the infection near my incision is gone. And in two weeks, I’m signing up with a famed diabetes clinic in Albany to learn more about the disease and how to control it properly.

When I got home, I got on the phone and tracked down one my surgeon’s nurse and after some discussion, she said it was okay for me to go back on the Metformin. Curiously, it did not seem a big deal to them, after all the warnings to stay away from it. The insulin began working again, my numbers immediately began to drop, I took a good mile-long walk tonight. I have stopped sweating, my body seems to be returning to itself. The specter of a month like this is receding, and I am hopeful about sleeping tonight.

I am learning that such surgery is not one thing, but many things. I am navigating a complex bureaucracy which can do wonderful things almost effortlessly but grapples mightily with the smallest things. Patience is critical, so is a longer view of healing. I am taking things one at a time, doing well. There is a nurse who works for my health insurance company, she is incredibly helpful, she calls every day and answers the scores of questions Maria and I have, but never quite got the answers to.

This week was a skin infection near the incision and a diabetes riot. Next week may well bring something else. These are not crises, not really, they are all part of the same process, beginning with my tell-tale heart, the producer of life in my body.

(Bedlam Farm Heart Photo By Maria Wulf)

When I came home from the hospital Red came out of the house, veered away from the gate to the pasture where he always – always – goes, and came around to the side of the car. He stood watching, calm but excited, ears down, tail going. Gentle as always, keen. I cannot yet open a car door or get out of one without a fairly elaborate bending and rising procedure and Red took this in, he leaned forward and sniffed my chest, going from the top of the incision -through the shirt – to the bottom, and then across to the heart, the wounds from the tubes.

Inch by inch, he gathered the story, he seemed to know what he needed to know.

I closed my eyes and visualized the surgery, the operating room, the ICU, my wounds. That was our conversation, that was the story. From that moment, just about a week ago, Red has not moved by himself to the pasture unless I go, he has not left my side. His focus has been on me every second of every day.

In the house, Red lies by the sofa I lie on, in bed, he lies by the side on the floor. When I gasp or groan in pain, he appears, he puts his head in my hand or on my knee. In the dark of night, when it is loneliest and the most painful, he spends all night sitting up by the bed, if he sleeps I have not seen him do it all week.

Out in in the yard, where I sit to meditate and steady myself, Red lies behind my chair, if I move, he moves, his head will appear on my knee, then vanish if I am okay.

I have had therapy dogs for five or six years. Izzy and Lenore have done hospice work. Red and I work with hospice and with veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places, this painful and wrenching work. When I saw what we have done to these kids and what they paid for our foolishness and arrogance, perhaps this prepared me to accept my own pain and surgery, all of it so much less painful and debilitating than theirs and the trials of so many others.

I am nothing but lucky, and I knew it from the first.

But still, the tables have been turned, a new perspective. I will never feel quite the same when we walk together into a nursing room or hospital. I can see it from the other side of pain and need.

Now, for the first time in my life, or at least my conscious life, I am in need of a therapy dog, and I have a good one. Red and I are almost always together, so his presence is not as unusual for me or as much of a surprise or delight as it is to the patients we see in veteran’s groups and homes and dementia wards. I think I take him for granted, except at those moments when I need him, and he is there.

It is his presence that is comforting and steady to me. Maria will rarely leave me alone, but sometimes she trusts Red to be alone with me, and she will rest. I think Lenore is her therapy dog, sometimes the donkeys.

The donkeys are the only other animals at Bedlam Farm that I am certain know what has happened to me, they carefully sniff my chest, gather the story, trade images with me, as animals do. Simon stares at my chest, my face, he is keenly aware of the changes in my body, of my discomfort, he is always pressing himself against me. Lulu and Fanny too.  Otherwise, life goes on for the animals, they are busy eating and surviving.

Open heart bypass surgery has helped me better understand something I saw but never fully understood – the healing power of an intuitive animal. A dog does not compare to the love of someone like Maria. Nor does it replace one’s own attitude. I am determined to heal, I do not ever feel sorry for myself, I am lucky to be alive and heave a healthy heart.

Having a therapy dog of my own also helps me understand what a therapy dog cannot do. He cannot ease pain, heal wounds, keep track of medicine, dress me, help me sleep, make me well, fix my heart. When this is said and done, it will not have been Red who got me through it. It will have been me, with the help of a wonderful lover and friend, good doctors and a heart that was not ready to quit on me. In our time of emotionalizing animals – this is how the carriage horses got into so much trouble – we need to remember that they are animals, there are limits to what we can project onto them or expect them to do, or attribute to them.

Red is very much a spirit dog, a creature of the heart. He makes a difference.

As I look back over this first week home, I see that Red has merged into the experience with me, become a quiet but profound part of it. When I think of this week, I will always think of Maria and of Red, two generous spirits holding my hand, sitting by my side.  I know Red is always there, there is something very healing about his life and presence. His love is no more conditional than Maria’s but it is offered freely and readily, Red and I are connected in a very powerful way.

Animals can help us heal, for sure. Red shores up my spirit, brings smiles to me, keeps me from feeling alone, brings his great heart and loyalty to bear on me, he makes me feel worthy of healing sometimes. I never imagined I would need a therapy dog, yet another gift of my heart – the chance to see what it really means. How useful to see it from the other side, to have the tables turned.

A new and more stylish me has emerged nine days after my open heart surgery. Maria has been trying to get me to brighten up my attire a bit, especially in warm weather and so this morning she appeared with a classy pair of white linen pants – me and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. She found them online. They fit me as if they were made for me and were sort of shockingly stylish and right and comfortable. I do not know how she does it.

I rushed outside to parade around with my posse – Red, Simon, Lulu and Fanny and Maria grabbed my camera. Simon drooled on my pants, a sign of approval. You can take the man off of the farm…but…

I love the whole thing, I had a bumpy night but am feeling strong this morning. Stylish, too, not a word I have often used in connection with myself. Maria says it has been inside of me all along, I wouldn’t want to take it too far. I felt grand, writerly, healthy. There is already less of me.

There are plenty of reminders of my surgery – my body is pockmarked with holes and scars and my chest is still very much healing. There are issues relating to sleep and other things that are difficult. Last night we went out to dinner with our friends Kim an Jack Macmillan and that felt so good. A sign I am returning to life. I didn’t get tired until the very end. We are thinking of a movie this weekend or even tonight. I’m thinking Planet Of The Apes. My daughter Em is coming next Wednesday to visit for a few day. I’m encouraging her to drop her New York City stance and love a donkey a bit, she says she just doesn’t get them. Sounds like me.

Off to the doctor this morning in my linen pants. Can pants make a man? Maybe a stylish carved walking stick is next, maybe I’m growing into me. Maria says this is the real inner me, just waiting to come out. Going to he Round House Cafe for breakfast, then to see a doctor about some wounds.