“TRUE. nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them…Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story.”

– Edgar Allen Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart.

This morning, as soon as I opened my eyes, I woke up Maria and we both walked hand in hand together on Macmillan Road, the same walk that I could not finish a week-and-a-half ago, that nearly brought me to my knees and began this extraordinary and unexpected chapter in my life.  I went to the doctor, was given an EKG, ended up in am ambulance rushing to the Albany Medical Center. Apart from losing my tonsils when I was four, it was my first visit ever to a hospital as a patient.

My male cardiologist, tired of yet another man who hadn’t had his heart checked in several decades, looked me in the eye and said. “Here’s the good news. You are not dead.” I was, he said, just one more walk away. I thought I had been catapulted into space.

According to my new fitbitflex wrist monitor, Maria and I took 4,065 steps this morning, we went 1.94 miles, perhaps the best walk of my life, true journey of recovery. This has been the most extraordinary experience of discovery and recovery, of pain and healing, love and connection. The richest tapestry imaginable.

I thought I was dreaming when my drop-dead gorgeous cardiac surgeon, Dr. Adanna C. Akujuo, walked into my room in her four-inch spiked heels. The nurses all said she provoked great shoe envy, even I felt it. She was raised in Nigeria, trained in New York City and had the poise and charisma of a movie star. We clicked right away until she told me I could not use my big new camera for at least three months or lift any other thing over five pounds. There was a lot of steel and wire in my chest now, she said, and it needed time to heal.  She would break open my sternum, she said, and if it didn’t heal, I would know what it felt like to be in Hell. I asked her if I could bring a camera into the operating room, and she said no, but she did take some photos of my heart – she told her assistants that she knew I would love it (I do).

I’m sorry if the photos are hard for some people to take but they are beautiful to me and I want to share them. They show one of my two major new arteries. I had open heart surgery, a double bypass, which means two arteries were shut down, one 100 per cent, one 90 per cent. They were removed and two arteries were taken from my legs and attached to my heart.  My heart had created a few new small ones to keep me alive, and Dr. Akujuou says my heart is in good shape, it suffered little damage from my lack of care.

The night before my surgery I apologized to my heart for neglecting it, I had a long talk with my body about our future together. A time of rebirth and renewal I thought, a new chance, a miraculous gift from the fates, a great adventure to the other side of the world. Maria and I had much fun in the hospital, walking around, meeting people, loving each other in the purest and most meaningful way. She is truly an angel sent to teach me the meaning of love.

For reasons I do not understand, I was not afraid before the surgery, I slept well and easily, more comfortably than usual. I know this surgery is one of the most commonly practiced in the United States, and the Albany Medical Center is one of the best places to have it done. Some people urged me to go to New York City, but that didn’t feel right to me. I was where I belonged.

I was curiously at peace with it, I had accepted the surgery and was ready to heal my heart and live a healthier life. I love walking, I want to do it until I leave the world. My nurse in the ICU told me that when I woke up at 4:20 a.m., my first words were “let’s take a walk,” and we did, and many more. Yesterday, three days out of surgery, I did 20 laps around the ICU and the resident cardiologists threw me out of the hospital and sent me directly home. The nurses could not remember that ever happening before, they were nervous about it, I was not.

From the first, I sensed that walking and moving were the key to my healing, I was focused on healing, not beating myself up for my tell-tale heart.

I don’t understand many things about this experience, it’s soon and I’m too close to it, I want to share my journey of healing and discovery. Although the surgery is common, it is also brutal and I have a long, often painful and complex recovery. I do not underestimate it and I don’t want to trivialize it. It was not a walk in the park. I have never imagined such pain, which comes and goes with every breath.

I see that many people on social media are relating their own heart experiences or those of their fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins. Social media promote the idea that we all share the same things, but the heart, like the brain, is the most personal of things, the most individualistic. My doctor is not your doctor, my heart is not your heart, my vessels not your uncle’s, my spirit my own, my healing is very personal. as is yours. No one’s heart surgery is like anyone else’s. I learned that within hours of entering the hospital. I was touched and shaken by the people around me, mostly men, some younger, most older, and the degree of depression, exhaustion and surrender was palpable. Few people want to walk.

I was surrounded  by people who just didn’t want to deal with their hearts, and I was chagrined to find that I was one of them. Self-awareness is not just about spirituality, it can be much more mundane.

I see that I am different from most people, for better, for worse. That has caused me trouble and sorrow and sometimes, joy and comfort.  I learned once more the poisonous and toxic effects of old people talk – at our age, as we get older, when you are our age, don’t ever get old.This talked convinced me that I was simply getting old and could no longer walk up a hill. That’s the rationale I used to keep from getting my heart checked – I had been losing strength for years, the doctors said my heart had been struggling for a long time, and I just thought I was getting old. Yuk. It nearly cost me my life.

I was reminded once more to never speak poorly of my life or my work, they might be listening.

The doctors now say I can walk as much as I want, my heart has the fuel to sustain my ambitions for life again. I don’t intend to waste one joyous drop. There were many memorable moments, and I will share some of them in the next few days, but one that keeps coming back to me is when Dr. Akujuou turned to Maria  and said that my  brain was about to be re-oxygenated.

“My God,” said Maria.