“STAT, room 4207”
October 7, 2022. 8:30am. “Stat, room 4207” echoes across the loudspeaker that moments ago played a lullaby, signaling the birth of a new baby. I notch up the treadmill speed in cardiac rehab thinking, “if Barb who had her bypass August 8th can already do a 20-minute mile, I must be slacking.” The competitive itch forces my feet to move faster. My heart skips a beat, propelling me back…. to my own STAT, September 23, 1988.
I hear faint whispering around me, “oh that poor woman” and I wonder what happened to that poor woman? Drifting in and out of consciousness now I vaguely remember, I just gave birth to a 9lb. 11 oz. baby girl with black whispers dancing on her head. “Number 3,” I would fondly call her later in life. But in this moment, all I can think about is her health. The memory comes into focus, “How is she Dr?” “Does she have all her fingers and toes?” And the question stuck in my throat, “Does she have Down Syndrome?” Etched in my brain is the fold of extra skin on the back of Rachel’s neck, the gentle curl of her baby finger on each tiny hand where the “Simeon crease” draws a straight line across each palm. Her almond shaped hazel blue eyes still wet with eye drops placed in them at birth. “Number 2”, born three years earlier, and my eyes are wet too now as I anticipate the Dr’s answers to my questions. “She’s fine, but it’s you we have a problem with.” Without hesitation, “oh don’t worry about me, God’s taking care of me!” Little did I know that God’s work taking care of me took a turn I could never have foreseen.
More whispers, “Excuse me, what’s happened?” Like the mantra in a meditative chant, “Oh the doctor should be in to talk to you” echoes around me, over and over and over. Jim joins me as the hospital bed rolls into the elevator bound for its recovery room. Frustrated and confused, as soon as the elevator doors seal, “what the f*** happened, Jim??” “No one is answering me!” He reaches for my hand, squeezing it gently. “I had to make a call, Shar.” “You were hemorrhaging, the doctor had to do an emergency hysterectomy to save your life.”
Looking down, the time on the treadmill shows 22 minutes as the distance simultaneously rolls over to 1 mile. I did it, a mile on the treadmill. Covid has us wiping down every machine used, and the nurses have us rotating across equipment with their whispers today suggesting things like, “you won’t notice the difference in incline from .5 to 1.0, I’m not kidding!” July 22, 2022, God takes me for another ride in his pocket….
“Jim, can you come upstairs, something’s wrong…” Clutching my iphone with a search for women’s heart attack symptoms still in view, Jim comes running up the two flights to our bedroom. The pain is emanating across my chest and down both arms like hugging a huge barrel stuck between my arms with more pain shooting across my upper back. I can’t breathe in without pain. “Let’s go, we’re going to the hospital”, he says. Decisive, no questions, just “let’s go.” Still wearing my orange writing dress with the white flowers, I can’t bear the thought of putting on a bra. Just, “let’s go” reverberates.
Down the stairs, into the car, a wheelchair, lights, sounds, and so dizzy still clutching the big barrel, struggling to focus. An EKG, back in the waiting room, lugging the barrel. By the time I’m in a room waiting to talk to someone, feeling a little lighter, all I can think about is the house we just bought to downsize. I’m hoping I will make the inspection walk-through scheduled for tomorrow…
Flash forward, incredibly, I survived the widow maker. 99 % blockage, a triple by-pass, and this time as I awaken, I know for sure, God has been in charge, yet again.
September 21, 2022; 4:39 am. The laptop screen is clean reflecting only light. It rests on my lap. There is a rumble of sound, the heartbeat of the house. Candles flicker surrounding me in a warm yellow light. My mind wanders…. what must it have been like with no electricity? The Carriage Light from Martha’s Vineyard comes to mind with the wheels of the carriage clacking over cobblestone roads. This industrialized world so different from that of our ancestors. Yet the pandemic these past two years has slowed life to that pace of the past. People spending time at home, jobs and workers barely chugging along, restaurants and grocery stores delivering food and meals. Fallout from more isolation in the young children with anxiety as life has begun to move forward again in 2022. A reset has tugged at the economy, housing prices went through the roof and now threaten recession as the interest rates rise and values begin to drop.
The world around me goes on, but today, I wake with no pain just shy of nine weeks after my sternum is cracked open. Today, this is my center, my breath is coming back, the barrel is gone. My body having been starved of the life-giving blood and oxygen lying stagnant along clogged arteries. Clarity of thought, the by-product of the now flowing river of red within, begins to return, I’m anxious to get words to the clean white page.
But all I can think about is how quickly life can change from the expected smooth highway we all dream of with a perfect (dont tell her!) first child bringing daily joy to the birth of a 2nd child with Down Syndrome. We’re propelled onto an unknown bumpy road filled with cracks our life now wobbling to and fro, with uncertainty and anxiety. Then just when we begin to navigate with God’s help, the loss of the ability to have any more children and the anguish of this loss followed by breast cancer and another near death with open heart surgery. We don’t realize as we make the daily checklist, put away the groceries, or plan the next birthday party, just how fragile this life can be. In a blink everything you know can change. And yet we are never quite ready for these seismic shifts, mumbling to ourselves, “Why me?” Surprisingly, God answers each time with a steady, “Why not you?”
I’m suddenly jolted forward. There must be something else. Why am I still here? I thought my work was done, Rachel settling into her own life with Ashley her roommate, sent to us from above with the loss of her parents. A multi-year housing plan built with supports around the girls to help them realize their dreams. Like their siblings, both girls filled with the joy of independence, now on their own paths.
I thought Martha’s Vineyard was the jump start of my own chapter. My ‘Awakening’ finding my true voice. The road east taking me back to my childhood, the spirit of my dad along for most of the ride, his favorite thing to do. My sister’s heart beating with mine reminding me how much we shared together. Touchpoints of encouragement with new people met along the way. Feedback on my writing, stories and the gifts God has graced me with from friends and other writers. A confluence of events I could never have orchestrated that came together over this past year, an unwritten book, I am told.
By-pass surgery, needed only a couple weeks after returning from being ‘Gone with the Winnie’, driving 2200 miles with only the company of my dog, Sami, itself is a message. Apparently, God had me in His pocket for this life-changing journey, returning me safely for the next chapter. And so it has gone, my entire life, always looking for clues in this life size puzzle. The pieces appearing along each curve in the road. This time, healing breathes life in unexpected ways and I listen for inspiration.
