My sense of taste has returned. My heart's previous symptoms have gone down to a dull roar. It's as if sepsis hit the reset button. Now my heart does other things--it gives a strong "bump," then starts racing, a few times a day.
I'm wearing a 2-week heart monitor to record all of my heart activity. Read about the device here:
https://www.irhythmtech.com/us/en/solutions-services/irhythm-service/zio-monitor.
I wore one last month also, before I got ill.
It's curious to come close to death yet again. When I got home from the hospital, I had a couple of "open eye" visions. The most significant was of a skylight above my bedroom window. The skylight was an ethereal blue-white. It opened and I saw myself go through it (my white hair is unmistakable). The closed-eye visions were of many people proceeding through a tunnel. I just stood to the side as they passed by. I asked these people who they were: apparently, they were distant ancestors. I liked being there, watching them pass by. I suppose I have been given directions, and will know what to do when the time comes.
But not now. My 67th birthday is on the horizon. I have outlived my sister and my maternal grandmother, and other relatives and friends. Something has kept me here: I have a very strong constitution, for good or ill. And perhaps it's simply because the book of my life is not finished. So here I am, working my way into recovery. I am amazed at the strength of my body to have endured so much and yet get better, every time. And yet my recent experience has shown that the rug can get pulled out from under me at any moment. So it goes.
And there is good news: I will go back to the garden I worked at with fourth-graders, to wish them a good summer. I'll be masked and toting along hand sanitizer, but it feels good to at least wind-up the year.
I'm reminded of Issa's poem:
O snail
Climb Mount Fuji
But slowly, slowly!
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