2/6/2010 (some)how life continues.....

My heart attack on the surface did not leave many symptoms to my daily life. Of course I noticed that my energy levels had changed. In the morning I woke up with pretty good energy, which was maybe also due to the extra oxygen I received at night. The doctors had me hooked up to night time oxygen, since my oxygen levels at night were too low. We had the machine placed in the bathroom, so we could not hear the sound. A long plastic tube with two endings lead into our bedroom. As long as this was for nights and temporary only, I did not mind at all.

After one month we did a night monitoring of the oxygen levels, which always should be above 90. The levels still had dropped for 57 minutes to levels down to 85. So I am staying on night oxygen for another month at last. The levels did improve against the monitoring we did at the end of December, but are not high enough yet at night. Day levels are ok. It shows that the heart is not up to 100% strength yet.

My mornings were occupied with the rehab Gym and sessions, so there was not time for much else. In the afternoon my energy went lower and I could feel, that my heart was not up to its usual energy yet. So I spent most of my afternoons on our sofa. From there I could set up meetings with our office stuff, do emails, skype and spend time on facebook or the phone. Due to the medications my blood pressure was low 90/60 and I had an average heart rate of 68.

Waduda was great. Not only did she take care of me 24 hours per day, run the office, drive me - she also accompanied me to the gym all the time. So much, that she joined the spouse program and we are both at the machines at the same time. In on way we both had a heart attack and from her point of view it all must have been much more unsettling.
We are both together walking on a fragile rope of life.

It was now one month after my heart attack and generally I felt, that I was very lucky and things seem to heal pretty well. My emotions had calmed down and I felt much safer. It is strange, since in a way I do not feel sick in the normal way, since my symptoms are not that intervening. At the same time I am quite aware through my mind, that this has been a major event and interference into my life and I feel much more fragile, then I used to be.

It is an illusion to think that we decide anything about our lives. We do not decide how long we are going to live, how long we are going to breathe, we have no influence about this. Each moment can be our last, we just don’t know. I realized this, when my life suddenly nearly came to an end while sleeping. Bum, pain…next moment in the ambulance, unconscious, operation and 24 hours later I woke up. I could also never been waking up again. Gone, gathe, gathe…. I was lucky, it was a signal and it made me understand, how really precious each moment is. How life is full of love, trenched with love energy and how easy it is to miss it all, moment to moment. Just bypassing these deep moments with every day stuff like news and gossip.

But now since I experienced this, life has a different quality. This fake security of living forever, of being in deep sleep has disappeared. Life has become very fragile. I do not know, each moment can be the very last again – or not. So what to do with this new life, what to change, how to stay conscious each moment?

I feel it is about choices. There are many moments, where I can make a positive choice. Do I watch TV, or do I listen to music? Do I read a paper or do I do some fitness workout? Which part of mine do I agree to, the lazy one or the one, that wants to kick me? And at the end the realization, that I am part of the whole and in the hands of a larger force, which is always here, the creator of all, called life.

In the gap day between my Gym days I mostly book sessions with holistic healers. Beside bodywork, acupuncture and lymph drainage, I also started to do some trauma work Somatic Experiencing. Altogether I have been busy with treatments and fitness for 5 days a week every morning.

Last Saturday a treadmill arrived in our house. So now I have home training equipment and started to walk on the treadmill in the mornings. I have been seeing in the rehab gym people coming regular for workouts. Older people, who had bypass operations, heart attacks and heart valve replacements. I felt very touched to see, how much energy everyone put into their physical work outs, to stay connected to life. I felt very honored and it was quite humbling to be part of this group of ‘survivors’.

In my next blog I will write about my inquiry into diets and healthy living, followed by another blog about some very particular experiences with healer(s).

Namaste and stay well, Bhikkhu