3rd meeting with the angel of death
Was it a coincidence, or unexpected sensitivity on the part of the boy, my 11 years old grandson who was part of this day on the town; he asked me, what's a heart attack like. I was thinking it was close. I was thinking, if I manage to get home smoothly… maybe I can avoid it. But on the way to the parking garage, walking along the cobble stoned alleyway of the old city, my eyes had met the eyes of another old Jew, and he had seen my suffering. He asked my wife, is he all right? Does he need help? And she said, he's okay. He just has to get to the car, which isn't that far away. But I knew… it was a throw of the dice whether I'd get to the car. I was almost out of it. And then the question of the boy. I started explaining it to him, as we were driving through the parking garage to the exit. So far, all was smooth. About how the blood moved the oxygen from the lungs to the heart and then from the heart to all the different organs. I described the heart as a pump. It was kind of a mechanical explanation. He seemed to understand. Afterwards I managed to get through half of town with a fully loaded car. I was driving, but it didn't take much work. The wife wanted to buy some apple sauce for the potato pancakes at the super. It was one of the first days of Chanukah. While she was in the super, it hit me. I wanted to call her on the cell phone to get right back to the car. But the phone was in my jacket, which was in the trunk of the car, and I knew I couldn't move. All of a sudden I knew it had hit me. I groaned. It was more than a groan. It was some kind of a yell. I was worried about how the grandkids would take it. But I knew that wouldn't change the way I would handle it. I had to let the pain out of my body by way of that free moving yell.
At home, assisted by two doctors, it was clear that the professional opinion was that I should go to the hospital. But I had already done that. This was my third heart attack. I thought I knew what was happening, and that I'd been through it all before. But it isn't like that. The heart dies a little with every heart attack. And the actual attack may be just as bad each time, but afterwards, what's left of you, knocked down and beaten, is weaker than the previous time. Even though this is as close to death as you can get, even at the first time, there really is worse than that, and you find out what worse is, if you manage to live to see the numbers. Number three was a hard one. But I chose to do it at home. I didn't mind dying, if that is what it meant. But it wasn't like that. I was in the care of doctors, and they had the medicines, and they installed an oxygen machine in my room, and I had pure oxygen pumped directly into my nose. I was going to live. Alive but unwell.
Time was elusive. At some point, I was aware that I no longer had any control over my body, and that my weakness was such that I really couldn't choose what to do. It was easiest to sit and breathe. Talking was a little hard because breathing was a little hard. I had water in my lungs. If I tried to lie down, I just choked. What I wanted most in this world, was distraction. Something to take my thoughts off of the fact that I was feeling miserable. This situation lasted about a month. Since then, it has been a very slow path to recovery. There were many states of consciousness along the way, as I went through the torture of this illness. There were times when I thought of friends, and wanted to tell them what was happening, but I just didn't have the strength… so I wrote a bit of an explanation on a blog I keep up. For about six weeks, I couldn't lie down without suffocating. Meanwhile it's been two and a half months and I'm starting to improve. I already take little walks, and so on. It's been a very hard time. From the time of the attack, I've almost stopped photography completely.
Shimon
Sunday, March 04, 2007; Jerusalem