Hello my friends, readers, people, fam and and lurkers.
This is more a notice than a blog entry. You see, I have been away because of my health. I have literally been at Death's Door for much of this year... (no jest) and for most for this year I was not even aware of it.
Congestive Heart Failure Ain't No Joke!
May 18th is now the day I think of myself as running away from home. I ran from feeble excuses, from confusions, from ignorance and from pat answers. I ran from fear, ran from the sound my own frightened heartbeat, ran from my own fearful voices and straight into the arms of the good doctors at Greenwich Hospital in CT.
After an an immediate EKG, it was deterimined that I had indeed suffered from heart failure, and I was told by more than one doctor that I was a "very, very ill man."
This is serious. This can and has been the death of far too many people.
Staying in a hospital, flat on one's back gives you reason to contemplate and to acknowledge just how fragile we are, and how fragile this thing called LIFE can be.
Sometimes those extended hospital stays are necessary, not only for one's health, but for a recharging of the soul. And so that's where I've been relocated for the last 10 ten days. I was TRYING to get well, trying to find my center, my voice, my freakin' Lin-nesss again. The good physicians and nurses have taken EXCELLENT care of me. I can breathe again.
But there's GOOD news too!
The fear I was living in has been overrriden. I don't think I will die today or tomorrow. There was a time when this seemed almost certain, at least in the quiet of my own mind.
I'm on a proper routine of meds regulated for my condition (which I didn't even KNOW I had)... and best of all I've had an operation that has given me a new lease on life! There is something extra inside my chest now. It feels like prayer but in actuality it is a machine will remain there counting my heart beats, making sure they are steady and strong.
I'm about 20 twenty pounds skinnier, and about 20 years more haunted behind the eyes, but I'm grateful.
The irony of this all is that on the same day the world said goodbye to the gifted writer/singer/activist Gil Scott Heron, was the same day that I was given another chance, a second chance at life.
That must mean something, although I haven't quite figured the grand scheme of things out yet.
I wish you all wonderful health. If there is ever something that doesn't FEEL right, please check it out! We lose people every day simply because we take far too many things for granted.
That's it. That's all. That's everything!
Happy Memorial Day!
Snatch JOY!
One.
Lin
