It’s been a bit quiet around here. Not at our house, just here on the blog. It hasn’t been so loud at our house since my teenagers got into punk and them or me blasting the music. Enough suspense: we got a new roof.
As a typical German I was prepared with food and drink for the workers, but they hardly accepted anything. My grandmother used to get a case of beer and food whenever a repair project got started at her house. I watched and learned. But people here don’t let me be nice to them, I feel ripped off.
Today, a year ago, I was in surgery. This is what Stephen posted on my facebook page at the time:
“October 15, 2012
After 7 hours of *successful* surgery – quadruple bypass – Marianna 1.4 is inching her way toward consciousness, to be followed by weeks/months of healing. Whewwwww. I’ll report more when we know more; for now, see – and read and repeat aloud – previous sentence; repeat as necessary… -S”
It probably was the most difficult time for my family ever. Both our kids were around, our daughter Liana having flown in from Denver and Toby was able to take a few days off from firefighting. I have no idea how Stephen held it together, whatever the “it” is. Turn this situation around and you can be assured I would have fallen apart.
Some recollections from Stephen who was posting updates to my facebook page then:
“October 13, 2012
Hi friends of Marianna Greenberg… If you’ve got some spare prayers/love/good healing thoughts/golden circles — whatever you’re into — please send ’em her way. We’re at Sacramento’s Mercy General Hospital, where she’s recovering from a massive heart attack and will have open heart surgery within the next coupla days. She should be sleeping peacefully right now, after a very nightmarish few hours. Visited a few minutes ago: tho really weak of course, she seemed to be pretty much back to her full self — enough so, that she asked me to let folks on her 1000-truffle-benefit page (sorry, no handy link) know there’ll be a delay…. G’night for now, happy birthday to Toby who’s sitting/dozing across from me, and LOVE for Marianna — more massive than anything else. – Stephen
October 14, 2012
Update: We’re still deep into the woods, but on a clear path toward home. Probably tomorrow morning (depends on how Marianna’s doing, according to all the tests and numbers and evaluations), the path will become a surgical journey through a triple (minimum) bypass. In the meantime, she’s pretty stable, glad our kids are hanging out with her – Liana’s braiding her hair right now – and really appreciative of your love and support. (She said, “Tell them they’re sending so much light, it’s keeping me awake.”) More thanks from me – feeling much more like me after actually *sleeping* (in a 3-question-mark motel!) last night.
Following up on our previous update – re Marianna’s concern about getting so much light from y’all, see pic. In other news, kids and I moved out of – make that escaped from – the seedy motel and into a nice hospital-related apartment across the street; from homely to homey. And the uppest update: Marianna’s on track for surgery, tomorrow around 8 am till midday. Soon, friends….”
Right now I’m reliving this and trying to process. I’m not aging gracefully. But then I have always totally thrown myself into any experience good or bad. There is no half-way for me. Let’s make this a massive heart attack seems to be my modus operandi. And then go for the quadruple by-pass. And then let’s have a pulmonary embolism to top this experience off nicely. I bet my life will end in the ultimate: death.
Since it’s Halloween season I might as well creep you out a bit with the arm picture after surgery:
All that is left now is the line down the arm, no more Frankenstein look.
Today I get to indulge, indulge, indulge. Just try to stop me. Bored? Come back another time. Though eventually this all leads to knitting.
At some point during my second heart attack or escalating heart attack I was technically dead. I have been asked about the white light and flippantly answered seeing smoke, hearing jazz, etc.
I can report nothingness instead. Whenever I came close to dying, I felt myself falling into emptiness and nothingness, falling asleep without dreams. Often my thought then was, this dying is not so bad, this feels like easy death. Every time I would wake up again and realize that my death would be much more difficult for my family than myself. At some point during my initial stay at Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital I asked the doctor if I would die. He answered: You could. I asked Stephen to call Toby. I had this grand idea of a profound good-bye, but all I managed to tell Stephen and Toby was to take care of themselves and each other and that I’m OK dying.
The image of hell as a 30s nightclub with lots of cigarette smoke and jazz stayed with me for days. In my morphine induced semi dreams and pain state of my body, it morphed into deeper and more desolate pictures. I saw dumpsters and rats and the refuse that used to be people, the music long gone. I wrote poetry in my head about it, but that is long gone too and all I’m left with are the images.
After coming out of surgery, mostly unconscious and breathing tube still in my mouth, I remember Stephen saying that I looked like crying and screaming at the same time. I remember thinking that he can read me well. And then a memory of someone dying behind the curtain next to me. Discussions about DNR and that a decision needs to be made. Next I hear a priest saying a prayer, and then an announcement that it’s over. I could not wait to be able to speak again and talk about this. And the nurse confirmed that it really happened.
Before surgery I assured the surgeon that it would be OK if I died on the operating table. No hard feelings since I brought this on myself. He replied that no one dies in the operating room. Well, but apparently they can a short while after.
I still have the memory of being wheeled to the operating room on my bed. Thoughts of what a big mess this room is, sort of like my house with stuff all over. Not much color though, mostly monochrome. Many, many people bustling about. Then everyone trying to explain what they will be doing until I told them to just put me out and that I’m hoping I will not feel any pain. And that no matter what they explain now, it will make no difference. They will do their job and I’m down the rabbit hole now and hope to find my way back eventually. Next: I’m out. Thanks guys.
After almost 7 hours, I wake up, kind of, almost…. The difficulty was my family waiting all this time. They are the heroes in this story, and of course the doctors and nurses. It’s unimaginable to me what I put them through. I will never, ever be able to show my appreciation and gratefulness and love to them. All I can do is knit whatever they want.
And here we are at knitting, finally. The Zombie BBQ scarf has stopped me. I’m avoiding working on it because it’s not what I wanted and I’m settling for what it is. So many new projects were started until I realized what’s going on. Avoidance. So I made a pact with myself: finish this scarf and you get your knitting freedom back. You’d think this would work, right? No, instead I do all other kinds of crazy stuff.
Here is one crazy project: I signed up for online classes with edx and coursera. 4 of them. Two have started. One is Care of Elders with Alzheimer’s Disease. The reasons for this class is that my life might be affected by people with this disease. The other class I signed up for is Science and Cooking, a Harvard class. Am I over my head in this class! Want to know the molecular weight of food ingredients or the number of molecules in the food? This is the class for you. But they won’t bring me to my knees, though I am close many times. All I have to get is over 60% to pass, I might be able to do that. This is so absurd from someone that had to get the highest grade or feel like a failure. I’ll keep trotting along until the next class How to Change the World and Scandinavian Film and Television.
All this because I don’t want to work on the bloody scarf. There are socks to knit, shawls to finish, mittens to start. Do you realize that Hanukkah starts a day before Thanksgiving this year? Is this crazy or what? It will have to be lots of I-Owe-Yous this year.
Something I believe I did not show you yet is an Ashton shawlette worked in silk for my MIL. I was hesitant to post a picture in case she’s reading here. Her birthday and present giving over, take a look. A silk scarf does not stretch as wool does, but it still turned out.
Pre-blocked and while blocking. One of the next posts will be about my fiber fleece adventures.
