Dreaming, weaving, and embodying a whole new web of life in the age of Covid-19 amid sweeping social, economic, and political transformation.
A quiet early Spring Sunday morning walk: Where did I go?
Recently on a quiet early Spring Sunday morning, my wife, Jaime, and I were walking our dog. I felt uncommonly dizzy early in the walk and said to her, “Let’s stop and go back home. I really don’t feel good.” We turned around and started back home. Ninety minutes later I awoke to find myself in the Emergency Room of a hospital. I had totally blacked out.
Apparently, I had walked about a block with Jaime, headed toward home, when I let out a huge scream and fell unconscious on the sidewalk. Jaime, the police, and an EMR gave me CPR and put me in an ambulance, and off I went to the hospital.
While I was unconscious, they tested to see if I had had a stroke. Fortunately, I hadn’t. At some point I became fully conscious and the next thing I knew I was in another ambulance on my way to another hospital where a heart operation team was getting ready to perform surgery on me.
Soon after I got there I was sedated and the surgery was performed. It turned out that it wasn’t as bad as they initially thought. A peripheral artery in my heart that had always been unusually narrow and had narrowed even further. So, a very small stent was put in and I remained in the hospital for 3 days as they poked, prodded, and stabilized me.
It was a rather surreal experience to say the least. Jaime having witnessed it all, and talking to all the doctors and nurses along the way, helped me piece together most of the timeline and get some of the facts of what happened clear. Otherwise, I was clueless. It was only when I got home that, with her help, I was able to fill in the gaps.
By the way, had I not received such lightning-fast and expert medical care that morning I would not be here writing this reflection. This was “the real deal” of an experience and I am still in the process of recovering.
But the most interesting part of the whole adventure is…where did I go during the 90 minutes that I was “out?” I’ll continue in Part 3.
The first and the final frontier is the journey within.
