I keep the blog pretty much to my writing, but I do think occasional personal posts are appropriate. Tomorrow, I've got an echocardiogram scheduled. I'm 33 years old and just a couple months ago the doctor was checking my heart routinely and I watched him go back and forth, back and forth. Never seen that before. I presumed it wasn't good. When he used the word, "murmur," I knew it wasn't. He's not terribly worried, since it never has come up until now, but he's taking seriously enough that I'm getting my heart valves checked out tomorrow.
This is a new one for me. I've been through my share of emotional ringers, of course. (Who hasn't?) And all the stuff I've been part of involving bones and dead bodies has forced me to encounter some some existential realities in a really personal way. And I've had family members in danger before. I've not been a picture of good health, but this is the first time I've really faced the real possibility of a doctor telling me something that has a lot of life-threatening potential.
In my personal life I play it off for the most part. I emphasize the doctor's confidence like the optimist I trained myself to be. I crack Dr. Who jokes like the smart-ass the cops and forensics people trained me to be.
The interesting thing for me, though, and the reason I wanted to posted about this here, is how this impacts my writing. Ever since I first read Camus, I've been really intrigued by the notion of life-defining moments in the face of absurdity. Ever since I first starting working with dead thing, my writing tended to reflect that interest in the form of situations involving death.
Now that I'm sort of looking into the face of one of those moments, it's a little weird. The writer in me is intrigued by the possibility of seeing how I would actually respond, given the worst. The real person in me is terrified of that possibility and a little offended by the writer in me. And I think this is the first time the writer in me and the person in me have been at odds like that.
It feels very twisted.
Anyone else have moments like that? Where the writer personality has an interested in observing and learning from the worst option that the person in you rebels against?
.Nevets.
I hope all goes well.
ReplyDeleteA couple years ago, there was a small tumor -- there still is -- and before I found out the results, the writer in me did examine at the situation from every angle, wondering what this part of my life might look like as words on a page. If I were a character in someone else's story, how would they tell it?
There are past events in my life, too, that would make dramatic story fodder, but I have yet to use them in my fiction. They're bad. They're life-changing. They'd make great fiction. One has been written in story form, but only as a straight-forward telling of fact rather than as a piece of fiction.
Maybe it'll all eventually find a place in my stories. Why let good drama go to waste?
Good luck with it all and I hope everything goes well.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes.
ReplyDeleteI "used" to have a murmur and mitral valve prolapse. I'm, uh, not sure where it went but... it did, according to the cardiologist.
True story.
: )
And then there are those who say that every day is a dance with death. Today is just a spotlight.
ReplyDeleteBest wishes on the test. Every so often, we get a gut check to the reality of our mortality. Don't let the writer part of you force out the gloriously mortal part.
I shall put forth good thoughts for your heart.
ReplyDeleteYes of course! The writer in me pretty much demands that the bad stuff get written. It's not even just the obvious reason of working out the feelings. It becomes a way to assert control over situations or people or events that I had no control over at the time. Even if I write it just as it happened - meaning lousy outcome - I still have a sense of power afterwards.
Thanks all for your comments here and messages on Twitter and e-mail. You guys are great!
ReplyDeleteThe test results will be analyzed by the doctors next week, but the tech who ran the test assured me that if there was an immediate condition, the computer would have thrown up an alert and demanded he call the doctors right away. It didn't, so that means I'm at least not going to drop dead tonight from my heart valves (probably). lol
I'll post more about the whole thing in the blog tomorrow probably, but I needed to push Solitude tonight and I don't want to distract from that. hahaha