Happy Passover! Happy Easter!

               Adrienne Rich's passing this week signals the fading of an era of lesbian brilliance and creativity, which she and Audre Lorde led.  I remembering carrying treasured copies of Diving into the Wreck, Twenty-one Love Poems, and The Dream of a Common Language in my back pack carefully wrapped in a scarf or in a bag so as not to crinkle the corners.  I read my favorites over and over, the magic aphrodisiac of her language rolling off my tongue:  "We are, I am, you are /by cowardice or courage /the one who find our way /back to this scene /carrying a knife, a camera /a book of myths / in which/ our names do not appear."  I won't quote the floating love poem here, but this third of the Twenty-One Love Poems brings tears to my eyes: 

Since we’re not young, weeks have to do time 
for years of missing each other. Yet only this odd warp
in time tells me we’re not young. 
Did I ever walk the morning streets at twenty, 
my limbs streaming with a purer joy? . . . 
At twenty, yes: we thought we’d live forever. 
At forty-five, I want to know even our limits. 
I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow, 
and somehow, each of us will help the other life, 
and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.  

            This week Doris and I took a vacation away from Duke Medicine and drove two hours south to IKEA in Charlotte.  We reveled like runaways to be on the open road with the country side of blossoming trees whooshing past.   

Doris the Choreographer

Doris the Builder

            If Doris had rubbed a magic lamp for a tiny wish, this would have been it.  We did need more lights and stools.  Mostly we needed to get out of our boxed in daily grind.  I believe that a day away from intensive exercise was healing spiritually.  We ate turkey and melted provolone on grilled panini in the bright IKEA Cafe, and, in addition to three lamps and two stools, Doris selected stuffed toys--broccoli and carrot--for her great niece.   

            Back home for the next day, Doris was at her buzzing constructive best putting all the pieces together.  A wooden stool she'd just constructed graced the coffee table for half a day as an objet d'art.  I thought that the two white lamps looked like Pixar figures about to break into song and dance with Doris as choreographer.

            On every drive out of our forest we continue to enjoy the changing color palate.  Doris reminded me that I haven't been getting acupuncture--healing that calmed and centered me in NM and FL.  Here in Durham I've found Fang Cai at Oriental Health Solutions.  After Doris changed my oxygen tanks, which run out fast at the rate I'm using it, she snapped a picture of Fang.

Fang treating me at Oriental Health Solutions

Waiting for Transplant

Transplanting tulips or irises feels bright springy earthy.  Transplanting vital organs feels dark and mysterious.  Vital.  Organs.

            Sharing my travels on this dark mysterious journey sometimes seems excessive, but I'm encouraged to write this by believing that some want to share my journey--some of the not-too-gruesome details.  Some have asked when.  Nobody knows.   

            Zeliha, my transplant team nurse, whom I've never met face to  face, has called with team orders  for me to stop taking Plavix.  When I've been off that blood thinner for a week (keeping my ten-month old coronary artery stent open) I can be "listed."

            Nevertheless, they continue retesting me.  Last Thursday I had to prove I could maintain same speed on my six-minute walk test that I had three weeks earlier.  At 8:30 am on Thursday, April 12, I meet with another thoracic surgeon and have more tests.

            "Listing" means being on an official national list of patients eligible for the organ needed.  The greater the need the higher you are on the list.  In order to be called for a transplant, you must be a fit with the donated organ in terms of size and compatibility of blood type.  Duke has a good record of short time (14-19 days average) from listing to the call.  Once I'm listed I must be glued to my cell phone. 

            Please send prayers and peace to the generous person who agreed to donate their organs upon death and to the family who make the decision in the midst of their grief.  

            When a donor organ that fits me becomes available, someone from Duke calls me to come to the hospital in no less than two hours.  Before then, a recovery team has been harvesting all usable organs for several hours.  This must be marvelously gratifying work--to bring out of someone's death several new lives for people who would die without those Vital Organs.  

            At Duke the transplant surgeon examines the lung thoroughly while I'm prepared for surgery (chest x-ray, blood tests, more anti-rejection drugs by IV).  The surgeon may not accept the lung, as happened to two people in my group two weeks ago.  They were sent home disappointed but hopeful of receiving another lung soon.  Both of those people have since received new lungs from one donor.

            Surgery takes about 5-9 hours.  We're told that patients have no memory of  anything the first 12-24 hours after surgery, but your family make view you in ICU.  

            Waking up from surgery, I may have a nose tube draining stomach content, chest tubes draining my lungs, other tubes draining other orifices, and a large IV catheter in my neck monitoring heart function.  I may have a breathing tube in my mouth or nose and thus be unable to speak.  I may be fed through the in the nose for days or weeks.

            When I've reached an acceptable recovery stage after surgery,  I'll be taken from ICU to a step-up room where the nurses will begin to get me out of bed standing and walking as soon as possible.  Average stay in hospital after surgery is about two weeks depending on complications.  Many get released but return when new complications arise.  Almost everyone can expect some rejection of the alien organ.

            You can contact Doris: 505 463 1679 or dorburk@hotmail.com.    

Greening of Carolina Hills

           Belated Equinox blessings.  For most of March, Doris and I have been dazzled with early spring bursting alive like a symphony of greens as we drive the swooping hills so reminiscent of the Ozarks.  First the brilliant yellow forsythia rush at me with memories of walking a mile to St Jerome  School in Rogers Park in April 1940s with sudden surprising hope. 

            Before that yellow weaves into green here in the Carolina hills red bud branches appear with their mauve delicacy deep in the forest.  These give way to big waxy white magnolias dipped in ruby and pear trees as white as communion dresses.  For a week now fresh dogwoods and pink flowering trees I can't identify dot the roads.

            Every chance we get we take drives in different directions.  Last Sunday we discovered UNC-Chapel Hill campus.  Yesterday we spent a couple of hours inside a Verizon store getting me a Droid with keyboard and internet access. I'm determined to figure out how to access email from my new larger heavier multi-task phone.

            If I'd had the transplant in March and if spring hadn't come early, I'd have missed all this luscious color and palate of greens.  Today I celebrate ten months since my heart attack when I'd always thought I'd pass a safe threshold with my heart healed enough to come off Plavix, the blood-thinning drug that's making my skin so fragile for bruises, so they can do surgery.   

            Waiting requires patience I've never really had.  Last week waiting to see the doctor in clinic took an hour in the outer waiting room and another two hours sitting on the uncomfortable metal chairs in the examining room.  If we'd known how long we'd wait, one of us could have stretched out on the examining table and taken a nap.  I took pulmonary function tests at 8 am, and we left the clinic about 12:30.  By then we were ravenous.  They want to do a few more tests.  I'm trying to be grateful for their caution.

            I continue my daily three hours at Duke Center for Living in order to keep up my muscular and aerobic strength in this Olympic-style prep for transplant.  Never have I pushed so hard.  

            One rare day the therapist leading the floor exercises started a brief meditation.  "Relax and deepen your breathing," she droned in that come into alpha state voice.  "Go to a place that makes you feel happy." 

            The old guy on the mat next to me growled faintly, "Hardee's."

            His eyes popped open as he rolled in my direction. "Did I say anything?" 

            "Hardee's," I growled faintly.

            "Oh no," he rolled back on his mat.  I don't even remember who he is, but I've been pondering Hardee's as a happy place ever since. 

            Please send healing calming energy to me and all who need it now.  I'm eager to cross the bridge into my new life so that I can give back to communities here by doing what I love--teaching, reviewing plays, writing my memoirs, performing, and joining in political action.  I'm also eager to be walking and breathing fresh air without needing oxygen, driving places on my own, getting my own groceries, and doing my fair share of everyday tasks.