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Miss New Orleans

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Ghost

Last night a doctor who worked eight years in an Emergency Room was confounded to see me alive. He joked that I might be a ghost.

How would I know? Pinching doesn't seem to work.

Statistics

Accute Pulmonary Embolism is the number one "unexpected" cause of death in The United States. More people die each year of PE than breast cancer, aids, and heart attack combined, although PE is usually associated with other medical conditions such as heart disease and cancer. In my typical case, a blood clot formed in my right leg. My leg felt cramped so I stood up to shake it out, the clot rushed to my lungs and prevented them from delivering oxygen to my blood. I passed out.

The mortality rate is not good. %10 die in the first hour. %80 die if they don't make it to a hospital immediately. Only %30 die if they do. Five hours passed between the onset of my PE and when I called an ambulance.

In the ER I amost received thrombolysis (aka clot buster) which would increase my chance of dying but might have been the only choice. (cost: $20,000). I spent two days in ICU on heparin and morphine. Many nurses and doctors treated me as if I was dying in those first few hours. Then I got better.

I will be on the anticoagulant coumadin for 6 months or a lifetime with regular doctor's visits. The possible side effects are not pretty but not too common. The chance of recurrence is %10 in the first year, %30 in the next 8 years. The chance of developing other circulatory problems is fairly high. Coumadin makes me bruise easily, bleed easily, and can cause gangrene. It is the active ingredient in the rodent poison D-Con Mouse Prufe. Coumadin reduces the good coagulating properties of Vitamin K (green vegetables, garlic, liver). Long term coumadin use decreases life expectancy. So does city life, driving a car, and going to work.

Apparently I am too young, too healthy and too physically active for this to have happened. There is likely an underlying cause that may never be determined. I will probably have to live with statistics and how I defy them for the rest of my life.

Time to move on.

Life Force

As I get older my attraction for men in their early thirties only becomes impractical. I worry that it's youth that I desire. But I walk the streets now and see not tall, short, fat, cute, handsome, young or sexy. I see life. Every human body walking down the street, sitting on a bus, taking tickets in a movie theater, I measure in degrees of life. I've come to love Latin men for their passion. Is passion not the vigor of life?

Beyond age or ethnicity, beyond the body itself, there is a fire that remains kindled, or more often, neglected and let fade to ash. Safety. Comfort. Apathy. These things prevent me from exercising my life force. Curiosity, Risk. Adventure. Imagination. These stoke the fire.

Since I was released from the chains of my childhood I've been a stoker. In recent years I've lapsed a bit, but my brush with mortality has focused my attention on the task at hand. Although I don't fear the steps I must take, I have been slow to act. I gotta get my butt into gear.

Follow the light

My brush with death. Was it Divine Karma that sent that blood clot up my leg and into my lungs so that I'd be in the Emergency Room rather than in front of a speeding train? Am I not meant to move to Mexico until next year? Does my pulmonary embulism portend a deeper, viler condition? Was it all inevitible?

There are many unanswered questions. Mexico floats in my mind like a dense fog; deep throated horns echo off the edges of my brain. I'm planted on a bench, absorbing the sun in the Alameda. I'm strolling across the immense Zocalo. I'm sitting at a sidewalk cafe, sipping on a Pacifico, fascinated with the buzz of the busy urban rush.

I am neither here nor there.
I am neither dead nor alive.