Aftermath
How Does it Feel to Have a New Lease?
“So how does it feel to have a new lease on life?”
Honestly, I didn’t know that my old lease was almost up, until I found out after the fact that I’d nearly bought the farm. Sure, I was having trouble breathing whenever I exerted myself, and there was that awful feeling I’d get in my chest whenever I exerted myself.
So, I’d just stopped exerting myself. Other than that, I felt okay. I was having a deeper sense of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) than usual towards the end of January, mainly because I couldn’t get out and really do anything. I was kind of a prisoner in my own body. That was getting to me.
But I honestly don’t feel a whole lot different, just yet. I’m still resting up, recovering from the invasive procedure and still letting the reality of what just happened kind of sink in.
Am I grateful? Oh, yes — very much so. I do realize that I just dodged a major health bullet. That I didn’t have a heart attack borders on miraculous, according to the cardiologist. I still remember his eyes and tone of voice when he exclaimed to his colleagues during the procedure, “Oh my, look at that blockage!” It sent chills down my spine as I lay there, trying to stay still, but leaning up to have a look, myself.
It’s not like it was a condition I was feeling for months, or years. I’d only first noticed something was off in late December, early January. I had fallen, hard, right on my back in my back yard, just before Christmas. I still think that had stirred something up, maybe dislodged a big chunk of plaque or calcium or whatever that blob in my artery consisted of, and it got stuck right there in the “widow-maker” artery. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me, because I was fine before that fall. It was only after the fall that I started feeling this sudden shortness of breath and weirdness in my chest.
I think part of it is, I’ve had similar experiences in the past, near-death experiences where I knew I was close as they happened.
That time, when I was 19, that I was trapped in an engine room fire on my first ship — two other sailors and myself were locked in the engine room of that old destroyer that was filling up with black, acrid smoke, so thick you couldn’t see your own hand right in front of your face.
They’d thought everyone was out and had battoned down and locked the exit hatches in an effort to control the spread of the fire. We all thought the three of us were toast that time. That experience stayed with me for many years in what I would later learn was a case of PTSD.
When they’d finally figured out that we were still in there and opened the hatch, we’d all become engulfed in a flash of fire that propelled us right up that latter and out of the hatch, our coveralls ablaze as we rolled around on the deck while they beat us with blankets to put the fire out.
That time, I knew I was close to buying the farm as it was happening. Nightmares followed for years in which that hatch never opened and we died on that ladder. That was a darkness that stayed with me for a long time. Even while I was most grateful to have made it out of there alive — a part of me hadn’t made it out. A part of me died every night in my nightmares, reliving that moment again and again. I was often afraid to even fall asleep, knowing I might wind up right back down in that smoke-filled cauldron in my dreams.
If PTSD had even been a term back then (it happened early in 1974), I might have gotten therapy and treatment for it. But it wasn’t, and without that, I just self-medicated through that darkness, which helped a bit at the time - until it didn’t. I became a full-blown addict without even realizing it — while I’d managed to blot out those bad memories, I also managed to blot out a lot of other things I didn’t want to blot out — like life itself. Fortunately, that was another close call, getting out of active addiction before it killed me. It certainly would have. When I got out of the Navy, the VA classified my disability as a Nervous Condition. I think that’s what they used to call what is now known as PTSD. It fit, as I was plenty nervous, most of the time, back then.
One of the things that helped me out of that hole was my next near-death experience, which happened when I was 24. I was at a party, and had ingested a little bit too much of what was going around. I found myself on a hallway ceiling looking down at my body, twitching uncontrollably on the floor far below my ceiling perch.
That time, when it occurred to me that I might actually be buying the proverbial farm, I really didn’t care. I liked how it felt on that ceiling — best I’d felt in my life. I just wanted to stay there. There was no tension up there, and I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t felt that tension that I had always just taken for granted.
When they carried my body down to a bedroom at the end of the hallway and I remained on that ceiling, I thought, “good”! I was more than a little annoyed when I felt something pulling me down into that bedroom. When I got there, still outside my body, which was laid out on a bed, I immediately knew what had pulled me down there. It was my friend, Reed. He was the only calm one in the room. Everyone else was excitedly trying to get me to come around, to snap out of whatever was happening to me.
I quickly realized that Reed was the only one in that room who could see me. He knew exactly what was going on with me. He communicated to me, non-verbally but quite clearly, that it wasn’t my time to go, yet. He willed me back into my own body with his eyes and whatever energy force he had harnessed just then.
I knew then, as I know now, 44 years later, that it was his doing. We’d always had this connection, this thing between us that neither of us ever talked about, but both knew and understood was real. I would say it was a psychic connection, but that would just be me guessing at whatever it was.
I felt it the first time I’d met him. We knew each other, and had a bond that went way beyond words. I used to communicate with him when I was on a ship across the ocean on the other side of the world, and we would simply resume the conversation the next time we’d see each other in person.
He’d driven me down to the Greyhound bus station in Hartford the next day, we’d said our goodbyes, then 5 days later I dreamed that a friend had died. When I awoke, and went over to my sister’s house for a picnic, I got the phone call that I never expected to get — Reed had died that morning. Right around the time I’d awoken from that strange dream.
What followed was 6 long, lonely months, trying to figure it all out. Why did he bring me back? Why did he then leave? What the hell is the purpose of this life? These and many other questions haunted me as my using really took off that winter. I was working 60 hour weeks, then coming home, getting high, and pondering the meaning of life. Like I thought getting high would help me figure it all out. It didn’t. I just went around in endless circles, deeper down the rabbit hole, until the loneliness I was experiencing, without my best friend around, overwhelmed me and I cried out, “God, I’m alone!” I didn’t expect God to hear that or to care, in fact I didn’t really even believe that God existed, or if God did, I wasn’t one of the “chosen ones”.
What happened next was, I picked up a book, about recovery from a form of addiction, and read all about myself. It was a revelation to me. I finally understood who and what I was. I went looking for help in the rooms of a 12 Step program. I’d been going to those meetings, off and on, for a couple years, but never really got what it was all about. I just went to their meetings and didn’t drink. I thought that was the deal.
But I ran into a guy who made a lot of sense to me. He talked about using things other than alcohol. Hello! He told me about another program, that dealt with addiction, not a particular substance, and suggested I might find what I was looking for there.
I did. At the first meeting I attended, I realized and admitted that I was an addict. I could not use any form of mind- or mood-altering substance if I wanted to recover from my condition. I desperately wanted to recover. Deep inside, I knew that what I was doing was killing me.
After one relapse, 3 weeks in, I’ve been clean ever since. That program saved my life. I still felt my friend’s presence, at various times, those first few years while I struggled to stay clean. Then he showed up in a dream to let me know he had to move on, but that I was okay.
None of it made any sense to me at the time, but I eventually realized that I had an opportunity to carry on and could dedicate my life to thoroughly being alive, and to being the kind of person he had been. A giver. I’d never been that. I had always been a taker. And there was never enough, no matter how much I took. He wasn’t that way. He’d always given to life — never stopped, right down to the last time I saw him, when he gave me life, even though I didn’t want it, nor think I deserved it. There had to be a reason for it, and my job was to figure out what that was, and then to live it. I have.
About 8 years ago, I had another experience that anyone who’s heard about it calls a miracle. I can only relay the details of it, and let you decide what it was. I don’t like to try to guess about these things. I just say “Thanks”, and go on with living. I learned I had a thing in my head called a Facial Nerve Schwannoma — a brain tumor. The rarest of brain tumors. So rare, there might have only been twenty people in the entire world diagnosed with it that year. So rare, there was very little information to be found about it. Unless you happened to have a doctor who was one of the world’s experts on that rarest of tumors. I had that doctor. Dr. Michael Hoa, who ran a clinic at the VA Hospital every Friday. I got assigned to his clinic when they realized what I had was beyond the ENT doctor’s level of expertise.
Turns out Dr. Hoa’s doctoral thesis was on the 30-year history of the treatment of that rarest of tumors. His treatment of mine was spot-on. He did the “wait and watch” approach that he’d learned was most effective with tumors like mine. Since it was presenting on my facial nerve, but was not causing any facial dysfunction yet, they’d learned to apply the wait and watch method. Followup MRI’s, keep an eye on the growth of the tumor. In 50 % of the cases where there was no facial dysfunction occurring, the tumor did not grow to the point of causing dysfunction. If it did, then they would cut it out. The problem with schwannomas was, they embedded themselves in the lining of whatever nerve they showed up in. Any removal would result in permanent damage to the nerve. When I went for the results of my third MRI, which was how they “watched”, I learned that mine just went away. “There is no tumor” he said. He couldn’t explain it. He’d never seen that happen before. He simply said, “but I have heard about these kinds of things.” I just said, “Thank you”, and went on with my newly-tumor-free life.
So, I’ve been here before. I believe I can stick around another 32 years, if I really want to. I do. So, I think I will. I will gratefully accept any help I get along the way to dodge the bullets that would stand in the way of that goal — like a 98 % widow-maker-artery blockage, a brain tumor, and/or whatever else comes along to impede my progress to my goal. And, if one of these things gets me before I reach my goal? Then, as the Native Americans used to say, “It’s a good day to die.” If I drop tomorrow, I will do so without any regrets. There’s nothing I needed to do, that I haven’t done. There’s plenty that I would like to do that I haven’t done yet — but that’s different.
So, yes, I guess I do feel a lot better now, that I’ve put things in their proper perspective. I am glad to be alive!
