Underground
I'm in hiding.
You probably sense this if you're one of the many kind friends or family members who has reached out this week with a helpful article about new treatments, a message of support or a voice mail. But I do worry that you may think my lack of or my very subdued response has something to do with you.
It doesn't. My walls are WAY up right now.
We spent all day at UW yesterday meeting with the Transplant Team, including with my actual surgeon for the first time. These were my 9th - 12th meetings and each one has involved what is basically me re-telling my cardiac history as well as me desperately trying to form some sort of bond with each new person. Maybe that's ridiculous and maybe it won't matter what they personally think of or feel for me in this process. But that's immaterial: It's just how I'm built. And right now, I'm exhausted from emotionally dancing as fast as I can.
It's easy for me to talk about everything with Derek because he's in every appointment with me and in a very real way this is happening to him too. I have a couple of friends who I'm very emotionally close to who are getting some details from me (whether they like it or not!).
Otherwise, I'm pretty tight-lipped. The truth is that I don't want to repeatedly discuss the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I don't want to feel the compulsion to reassure you that everything is going to be fine. I don't want to alarm you by sounding depressed and hopeless if that's how I happen to be feeling when we talk. I don't want to feel emotionally responsible for you because I'm barely doing it for me. So I've tried a few times to just put on a happy face and try a conversation with someone in which I push the attention back on the other person. Let's stop talking about me-- what's happening with you? How's work? Are you excited for the vacation you're planning?
But not only is it incredibly difficult for all of us to ignore the elephant in the living room, it's also reallyhard for me to enjoy hearing about how your lives are moving on, how you have things to look forward to, how your job is making you crazy, how you get to use your arms and legs and move about the world like a normal person not standing on the edge of the most insane cliff anyone could imagine.
I want to be happy for you. I want to support you.
But the raw side of me... man, it's just pissed. And it's feeling really sorry me right now and really resentful of you. As I understand it, this is pretty normal for someone in my situation. But I'm hyper-aware that none of you are in my situation and have almost no ability to relate with someone waiting on a heart transplant. Even though you very much want to.
Sue, the nurse on the Transplant Team and the person who has to deal with me at my most frantic I-can't-stop-making-horrible-jokes moments, is reaching out to another patient on my behalf. She tells me it's a woman who is a lot like me: Same age(ish), same sudden change from a normal and very full life to whatever this is. The only difference being that she already has a new heart and is on the other side of all this. Sue is asking her to by my Buddy. My Heart Hero. My Cardiac Confidante. Strangely I don't believe they have a formal program for this and certainly no clever #marketinggenius name for it, but I do hope she accepts this assignment and that I don't self-destruct either way.
Oh, and then there's this: I'm being presented to the Selection Committee on Thursday and I should know by Thursday evening which way the flow chart of my life will go.
Until then, I'm hiding. Part of me wants you to keep looking for me and part of me wants you to leave me alone... and I honestly never know which person is going to show up.