One year ago today I had myself a heart attack. To be honest I actually had the symptoms of heart failure over a period of about ten days. I honestly believed that I’d pulled a muscle in my sternum while lifting a carry on bag into an overhead compartment when boarding a plane. I made the classic mistake of googling my symptoms. A pulled sternum muscle can, said AI, cause shortness of breath and pain in the center of your chest. Put ice on it, or heat. Take Advil. Etc. I flew from upstate New York to Iowa City to visit a friend who’s been unwell. We walked around the town. We strolled beside the Iowa River. We’d walk a few feet and then I’d have to sit down. I explained my muscle pull. I had no idea I was having a full blown heart attack. When I returned home to Syracuse, New York I again had trouble walking across campus. I asked a friend if she could carry my brief case. It was that muscle thing. I went one more day believing I had simple strain. And then, on Good Friday it came over me, I was having a heart failure. The thing that put me over the top was that I had the compulsion to lie down. And a little voice in my head said, “you’re not going to get up, this is a serious moment.”
My wife Connie drove me to the emergency room. There are multiple hospitals in Syracuse. I chose the closest, “Upstate” a teaching hospital associated with the State University of New York. It didn’t take them long to confirm that I was having serious heart trouble.
My father died on Easter Sunday from a sudden heart attack. Here it was, Good Friday. Would I also die on Easter? I wanted to call Carl Jung on the phone. I wanted someone to tell me about magic numbers and fate.
I won’t go on about the triple bypass surgery, which is physically devastating. It’s taken me a year to feel like myself again. Today on my anniversary I’m almost me. Sometimes when I move my upper body I can feel the wires holding my chest together—there’s a little shift inside me like a transmission that catches when accelerating. This is normal. Its not painful, just weird. And of course while I say I feel like me again I’m not the same me. My rebuilt chest is misshapen. The long incision scar remains tender. I’m told that’s likely permanent. And I take a veritable armada of pills. Blood thinners, blood pressure pills, a daily statin bomb, vitamins, a baby aspirin. And there’s another pill which I don’t remember and can’t say what it does but its small and always drops to the floor and being blind I have to get down on my hands and knees and grope for it lest a dog come along and eat it.
My surgeon, the man who saved me, is a refugee from Iran. He came here as a young man. He’s arguably one of the finest heart surgeons in Syracuse. On the night before my operation we talked about Persian poetry. I felt lucky, even under tremendous stress. I felt cared for.
One of my resolutions is to never overlook the happiness of others. At its core this is pure democracy as Jefferson knew it. You have the right to pursue happiness and my job is to help you find it. I really mean this. I’m currently raising funds in order to publish first rate books of poems by disabled poets. I’ve published six books in this series https://www.ninemile.org/propeland will be releasing two more this summer. In these dark times we each have a job. And because I’ve received a second chance at life I like to imagine I know what to do.
Planet of the Blind 