The Saddleback Mountains block the dawn each morning when I ride my bicycle to the bus stop. The darkness and the early hour help me focus attention on the sound of the hum of my tires on the street as I pedal; this concentration allows me to listen for the Doppler Effect of approaching cars behind me over the whine produced by the spokes and rims of the same tires while I coast. During the summer, I could look over my right shoulder and see a descending blue: deep navy at the top and progressively lighter and lighter to meet the rising orange over Santiago Peak. But the fall is here and it is nighttime when I leave for work. I know that the clock change is coming soon and I will get a short, "Indian Summer," respite from the dark. But the dark will come again and it will be my morning companion until spring.
Three machines, and some jewelry, helped me through a very difficult fiftieth year. A defibrillator, a CPAP, a bicycle...and some dancing light.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
When I was forty-eight, I had to have a defibrillator installed into my chest. During my very first stress test, the one upon which all the others for the rest of my life would be compared, my heart rate shot up to 220 beats per minute. This is a condition known as ventricular tachycardia (V-tach, for short) and my final ticket could have been cancelled right there in my doctor’s office. Not that I knew about it at the time. All I knew was that the doctor and a couple of technical people were very excited and, because The Cart (yes, that "code blue" cart) wasn’t juiced up, the doctor apologized and punched me in the chest. For my own good, of course.
Anyway, I have this thing in my chest that I can cup with the palm of my hand. The scar is about the size of my palm’s life line and I sometimes smile at this small synchronicity. I carry my own, personal, crash cart everywhere I go. The only time I’m really aware of it is when I fly. I have to be searched from head to toe every time I go to board an airplane because I can’t walk through the security machines and they can’t turn the wand on me. In George Bush’s America, people would avoid eye contact with me as I stood with my arms spread in a stance all-to-close to an "I have been saved!" exhortation. I'm sure they assumed I was on a list; I wonder how many felt uncomfortable later when they saw me on board their flight. Now, in Barack Obama’s America, people smile and offer to watch my stuff. Yes, elections have consequences.
The one and only time this thing in my chest has gone off was this past February. I woke up in the middle of the night as sick with flu as I have ever been. The only time I can remember something similar was when I was in college. My body did everything it could to rid itself of its infection and, after a couple of hours, I was exhausted. I strained through an ugly bout in the bathroom and suddenly found myself on the other side of the room. At first, I thought I’d passed out and hit my head on the toilet tank, of all things. I’d certainly felt a big smack in my forehead but I became aware that I didn’t hurt there. As a matter of fact, I felt tingling in my fingers and toes. As a matter of fact, I didn’t feel all that sick anymore. My personal crash cart must have fried the little beasties inside me when it hit the reset-heart rate button.
So now we’re buddies, now that I know what I’ll feel the next time we decide to play "shock the monkey."
My other, mechanical, constant companion is my CPAP machine, which (oddly enough) came into my life a few days after my defibrillator gave me its mule-kick. Lots of things led me to have a sleep-study, not the least of which was a snore that sent me to the living room couch most nights so that my wife could get a shot at falling asleep first before I came to bed. Rarely being fully rested was also a part of it. Even naps didn’t seem to help.
So I had a sleep-study. A technician hooked me up with a bunch of wires to monitors in the next room and I went to sleep. After a couple of hours, she woke me up with a really worried look on her face and said she wanted me to try a CPAP machine. Damn straight I had a problem. I have a bad case of sleep apnea- bad enough that when morning came, the sleep techs wanted to know if they should call someone to come pick me up because they were worried about my ability to drive. Before I stuck the nozzles of the CPAP machine into my nose, I had been waking up and/or stopping breathing every couple of minutes and my pulse-ox was sometimes in the 80s (every medical person reading this just winced).
Anyway, the old style CPAP is a full face mask and I knew I wouldn’t tolerate that; I can have moments of claustrophobia something fierce. But I did try the one that basically sticks into your nose; it’s kind of like a scuba regulator. I had no problems with it and now I sleep with it all the time. I don’t snore anymore (the machine is like a personal humidifier for your sinus cavities) and I’ve been sleeping so well that I swear parts of my brain have come back to life. If not that, then they’ve certainly awoken. I’m thinking of things again the way I used to, which is interesting for some people and disturbing for others. Hey, I never said my ideas were good.
One of my doctors (my episode with v-tach has produced a team of people looking after me) was so happy to hear that I was going to have a machine shove air into my nose each night that he suggested I find a way to shove some in during the day. He asked if I had a bicycle. Despite receiving a bicycle for Christmas after my v-tach summer (no subtlety shown by my wife and daughters- not one bit), the last time I rode a bicycle with any regularity was almost thirty years ago at U.C. Isla Vista...eh...Santa Barbara. Since February was producing all kinds of moments of clarity, hopping up on a bicycle again at age fifty just made sense. It took me only a few days to decide that I should incorporate a bike ride into my daily bus commute to work. I ride to the bus, load up the bike on the rack, ride the bus to near where I work and then ride to the school. In the afternoon, I do the reverse trip. Heavy-hitter bike riders will probably shrug at this but I ride four to five miles every day I work. I’ve found something snappy in my teaching again, I make jokes more than I get frustrated and I move around the classroom with enough pop in my step that one girl asked me, in all seriousness, "Mr. C., do you ever get depressed?" It took a while to build up to this level of energy but it’s obvious enough that I can look back on the last couple of years and say, "Holy crap; I was becoming an old man!"
And then there’s jewelry. I renewed a friendship this past February and my friend has found her art in making jewelry. She has a gallery on-line and I started really examining her work. She always had a knack for using fusing color and shapes and it has translated into fused glass. I thought of what light would do as it struck the colors in the glass; it would come alive and dance. Perhaps it is my brain alive from better sleep or perhaps it is my senses alive from riding a bicycle, but as I became aware of the details and subtleties in my friend’s art I became awake again to my own art. I treat teaching as an art and not the science that is being pushed down our throats due to high-stakes testing. When I was a coach, I thought of coaching as an art and not a science. I like to read aloud, dramatically interpret flow and change, recite poetry and song lyrics, pantomime instead of speak, draw comics instead of write outlines. I’ve been known to sing and dance, which is doubly strange in my math classes. Hey, go ahead and try to teach about positive and negative numbers without being boring. My colleagues look in wonder at me; who else would teach that the Declaration of Independence was a Dear John letter, right down to a final resolution that says that the united States (small u, then) was available for dating now that the old relationship was over?
This is my art; it gives purpose to my life as I experience its pleasure. The machines keep me alive.