I feel the older I get, the more I’m learning to handle life. Being on this quest for a long time, it’s all about finding yourself. ~ Ringo Starr

Getting back to me!

The last 18 months have been a long hard road for me. I had planned on being retired from my current gig over a year ago, making a move back east, buying some property, working a smaller job and getting to do many of the things I want to do in life. Then basically everything went to hell. My aortic valve, I was worried about my aneurysm, went seriously downhill. So I went from getting ready to retire, to having heart surgery, then to not having heart surgery but having one more test. After the test we were back to surgery, initially that was going to be August, then I decided to move it up to April, then it got delayed to May.

Open heart surgery was the single most terrifying thing I’ve ever gone through. I had to put together my will, get my affairs in order. I wrote goodbye notes to all of my nieces and nephews. I had a lot of really weird conversations with people. It was quite obvious some people reached out to say goodbye. I was fortunate enough to have a great surgical team including maybe the best heart surgeon in California. Before my surgery, an old friend died from the exact surgery. A colleague had the same surgery, went home, then ended up falling into a coma. I had a plan, I shaved my beard real short before surgery, I was going to touch my face first thing to see if I’d been in a coma. I was so relieved when the recovery nurse said, Mr. Kane, you’re in Kaiser San Francisco, you had heart surgery TODAY.

My hospital stay went incredibly well. But recovery from heart surgery is a terror in it’s own right. Every weird click and your convinced your breast bone has separated. Every cough, every deep breath is pain, every sneeze is like being stabbed with knives. Every weird heart beat is terror, any lightheadedness and you’re convinced your heart is failing. Getting out of chairs, getting out of bed, everything is just hard. Then one night my arms and legs felt like a hundred pounds, I had to call 911. There was never a reason why, and it went away quickly, but it stays in your thoughts. For weeks after I went through, low blood pressure, high heart rates all which convinced me I was having atrial fibrillation which can of course kill you. I had to be on warfarin, a blood thinner, so of course checking my blood in the morning for my blood sugar numbers and my fingers bled like hell, so I wondered what would happen if I fell or cut myself. The fear, the pressure and anxiety were incredibly intense.

Not that there were no good things, some people turned up in my life who were absolutely amazing and I was incredibly grateful for their support and help. The surgery went well, all in all my recovery went very, very well. Three months after my surgery my cardiologist told me to go away and not come back for three years and not just because of my sparkling personality.

As my recovery continued and I returned to the flying monkey circus that my job was and it turned out, the monkeys were on fire. Simultaneously, both of my parents health conditions were declining. My father’s Parkinson was advancing, my mother’s lung cancer was getting worse. Eventually, after several bouts in the hospital, rehab and a nursing home my mother passed away. Happily it happened quietly and without a lot of pain. This of course then brought on dealing with the estate, her home, helping others through their grief, many trips to New York. People responding in insane ways or not getting in touch at all. It’s still not all resolved but we’re making progress.

Throughout all of this I was struggling, languishing seems to be my go to at this point in life. I was doing everything I needed to do. But I wasn’t eating right and honestly after a day of work, walking and working out, I just wanted to sit in front of the TV and not think. The problem is of course that it beats on you mentally and so I was pretty significantly in the well. During this time, three relationships, all very long-term went completely to shit as well. So I fell into the well hard, and I did everything I know to get out of it. But what I really don’t think I took into consideration was the impact that surgery and healing had on me mentally. While you need time to heal physically, you also need time to heal mentally and they are not the same processes, nor to they happen on the same timeline. And to a large degree, you have to heal physically, before you start to heal mentally. The physical piece took six months, then everything else, so I shouldn’t have expected things to happen quickly. It was this realization and the decision to give myself some grace that actually allowed me to finally heal.

My last trip to NY was a few weeks ago and I decided to make a swing to NC for four days to the beach, my first actual vacation in eighteen months. It was exactly what I needed. Coming back from the trip I felt more healed that I had in two years. Work has gotten a bit better and I’ve been in situations the last few weeks where I was being respected for the work I’ve done. Each of these things has pushed me forward out of the well and into the light. I’ve also made some decisions in terms of what’s next for me and that bit of certainty, although it’s not all that certain, at this point also helps.

In eleven days it will be one year since my surgery, it’s taken until this week for me to feel like me again. No lesson tonight, just an update and the hope you are having a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane