Living in Winter Park

For one week, as of tonight, I’ve been enjoying my own space to read, think, write, stretch, do yoga, and venture forth into territory where I lived for 14 years.  Harriet and Bonnie, who live summer and fall in Wisconsin, have graciously given me their winter/spring condo. 

Elegant Winter Park is Orlando’s Berkeley, Corrales, Oak Park.  Wealthy New Yorkers have mansions circling Lake Virginia in the shadow of Rollins College.  Giant oaks drape their branches forming canopies over brick streets where the perfectly groomed putter along in sports cars I can’t identify from golf to tennis to lunch or shopping on Park Avenue at J Jill, Coldwater Creek,  Chico’s, Williams and Sonoma.  A past Rollins president who collected Tiffany glass left his legacy to the Morse Museum, now the finest Tiffany collection on display in the world.

When I lived here in a humbler bungalow bordering WP and Orlando, I enjoyed afternoons grading papers or reading at East India Ice Cream on Park Avenue where the flavors changed hourly, and coffee was strong enough to keep me alert through a pile of freshman comp essays.  I’d bike over (4-5 blocks from my office) and prop my bike against the patio brick wall.  Students and colleagues often stopped to chat.

The previous 12 days at Casa DeVore I jumped to the racing rhythms of three businesses run out of their home.  A few times I took Cheyenne to swim practice, the family to dinner, and Lisa to lunch just the two of us.  Mostly I read and answered email in my room.  Lisa and Cheyenne alternately flopped down on my bed to tell me their tale du jour—Lisa’s bright ideas from a seminar on photographing babies (her favorite human subjects—no bad hair days or pretensions) and Cheyenne’s swim progress and freshman orientation. I enjoyed tuning in to their daily dramas.

My first few days here I’ve revived by reading, resting, unpacking.  Cheyenne snared the last two books in the Hunger Games series at the library, and I devoured them in two days.  If you need to bury yourself in a plot-driven futurist thriller, forget your problems and the whole outside world, go for these books.  The central character, 14 to 17, grapples with grown-up moral dilemmas more complicated than I imagined facing the 13 and up set.  Who knows what fevers the teen imagination today?  Reading Terry Castle’s memoir essays in The Professor provided a reminder to treat even those that I believe injured me with compassion and grace.

Now I’m spreading out my files so that I can get on writing about my life when I first moved here in August 1979.  I’ve excavated a journal June-Dec 1979 detailing my last two months in Missouri, my fears about the future, and my joy at Rollins College.  The journal gives minimal focus to professional mountains I thought I had to climb.  Quite contrarily it harbors tales of floods of attractive women I’m enjoying and the women’s communities I’m joining, especially Pagoda on Vilano Beach.  Alas I’m the Fool stepping off the edge of the cliff—impulsive but visionary, driven by passions and obsessions, miraculously landing on her feet.  Angels buoy up the little fool. 

Now in Week 3 of cardio-pulmonary rehab, I think I’m growing stronger.  Nurses hook me up to an EKG as I warm up, stroll the treadmill, pedal the stationary bike, swirl the upper body hand crank, cool down.  They monitor blood pressure and record oxygen saturation throughout.  I feel like a race horse chomping for more but know I can’t go farther faster sooner until they say.

Old friends have emerged, and my social calendar expands.  Today I missed my colleague Kate at Brio’s in WP (Mercury in Retrograde?)  I arrived 15 minutes early, accepted a table, gave the greeter Kate’s name and description.  Kate arrived 5 minutes later, did the same, but waited for me out front.  When Kate was 40 minutes late, I called her home phone (her cell was off), alarmed her partner, and ordered lunch.  Kate also came in, looked around, didn’t see me, and had her own lunch.  How could the greeter not have connected us?  How could we not have seen each other?

More next time on FL pulmonologists I’m consulting or maybe my musing on Home.  What does Home mean to you?  What have you been thinking, reading, seeing, enjoying?

Celebrating Cheyenne's Shakespeare Camp

Duke Lung Transplant Center

Fifty two years ago today, August 4, 2011, I received the white Dominican habit and died to the world as Rosemary Keefe to be reborn as Sister Mary Geralda.  Happiest day of my life! After a year as a postulant at the Motherhouse, I entered the Dominican Sisters at Sinsinawa, Wisconsin.

Three weeks of no blog means I’ve been busy.  Doris and I spent sixteen wonderful days together in Florida and traveling.  Doris arrived in time to help move me out of Indian Harbor Beach condo.  Even though I’d only been there a month, I had not only books, files, clothes, laptop, printer, oxygen tanks, etc., but also bags and coolers of food that Lisa had brought that I hadn’t eaten—enough to sustain us on our trip to Durham, NC, without having to eat out.  My Jeep sagged as we struggled to exit Florida after too many errands.  On I-95 blinding rain battered us all the way to Jacksonville.  We arrived in Savannah with no time to explore that historic town.  From coolers, we enjoyed shrimp, salmon, crusty bread, libations, sweet treats as rains continued. 

Next day we pushed north but hit a standing still traffic jam on I-95 in SC.  It felt as if our resolve was already being tested.  Could we face the rigors ahead?   We followed gutsy fellow travelers making a U-turn back to the previous exit, where I navigated us on two-lane US highways slowly through rural SC toward Charlotte, NC.  We enjoyed seeing small town America.  An old friend of Doris’s from Springfield, now living in Charlotte, brought pizza, stories, and laughter to our motel room. 

When we arrived in Durham on Sunday, we got serious about preparing for Duke Lung Transplant Center evaluation.  Along with my medical history, Doris and I had to fill out separate puzzling psychological evaluations as patient and primary caregiver.  Would we pass? 

Orientation by Transplant Coordinator emphasized pre and post-transplant rigor.  We must live in Durham at least two months before transplant as I’m moving toward being “listed.” During that time I must participate in the rehab program four hours a day five days a week plus constant re-testing.  A transplant might be available in the first month, or it could take many months.  Every day you wait for the call that will change your life.  They advise planning to stay in Durham for a year following transplant for more rigorous rehab.  I must take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of my life, drugs which trigger diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol in 50% of transplants even though I never had these pre-transplant.

We believe we passed our hour-long consultation with the psychologist.  We also passed our interview with the social worker and financial consultant.  Medical costs alone total $157,000 in 2010, not including cost of re-location.  Medicare pays 80%.  My secondary from Wisconsin pays zilch for transplants, so I must now shop for an additional plan to tack on to Medicare.

The nurse warned us that our assigned transplant surgeon Dr. Steele was blunt.  “The best transplant is no transplant,” he said, after he outlined the difficulty of the process and the need for total commitment on our part.  Transplant world must become our total lives for more than a year.  Duke has good survival rates after a year and five years but not so good in my age category.  After chest x-ray and blood (28 vials?), I pushed my way through pulmonary function tests that I loathe: I end up coughing and being re-tested until I’m about to pass out.  My respiratory therapist was kind.

A week later, the lung transplant coordinator announced that we’re accepted.  I must do pulmonary rehab at least three days a week and return to Duke for re-testing in four months.  I’ve begun a program at Winter Park Hospital which combines cardio and pulmonary.  At first I was told next opening for orientation was Aug 22.  I said, “Oh no, I want to start today.”  The head nurse said she’d fit me in on Wed and then called back to say, “Come today.”

My over-medication problem has been alleviated some by changing cardiologists.  When I studied the report by the doc who saved my life, I was impressed with his details.  I remembered his enthusiasm, immediately wanting me to see what he’d done on a video screen without raising my head, which I was told I must not do while the tube was still inserted in my groin.  Why isn’t he my cardiologist?  I found him online while we were in Durham and called his office on our return drive.  Miraculously he was able to see me that Friday.  He’s young (39) from Pakistan and full of energy.  I’m one of his success stories.  He’s changed my meds, and I’m feeling better.  He’s ordered a comprehensive blood profile with a genetic component to determine how my body responds to different drugs.  It takes three weeks to run.  Barriers are dissolving in the flow.