Yet another interesting time...
In mid-June I saw my HIV doctor, the kind, meticulous Scottish one, the one who managed our large teaching hospital's COVID care through much of the pandemic. (The department is Infectious Diseases, so, there you go.) I was surprisingly tired and weak – I'd asked to see him out of the usual rotation of appointments, and he was kind enough to indulge me.
He took my complaints of weakness more seriously than friends did, which was a bit surprising but made me pay attention to him – he was focusing on my lungs: he heard crackling through the stethoscope, near the bottom of the lungs. I think of war movies and such where someone has 'water on the lungs' and gets weirdly weak. This was, obviously, startling news....
Two weeks later, after a handful of tests, he shifts the focus a bit: something between heart and lungs – perhaps more about the interface between intake of oxygen and its pumping into the blood than any problem with either of those systems. He tells me that really, heart and lungs are better understood not as two things, but one – one single system of oxygen transmission, of energy creation. I think of the whole process of putting life into the body, which is so obvious that we forget about its centrality: it recalls the time I pushed a class of neophyte writers to bend and stretch before an afternoon of first-time readings, and how much better, how much more articulate they sounded, just because they had moved the body more – the automated birth-to-death action of breathing was given more raw power than they usually knew....
There will be a variety of heart and lung tests, a more in-depth x-ray – and he is a bit, well, off, to be frank. Distracted. He tells me he will be off work for six months, in treatment for a cancer of his own, and he needs to refer me to another doctor in the HIV ward.
This is a bit startling, but we pick another doctor – I choose the big, talkative, gay, fairly rambunctious one who, like many people on the ward, has become a familiar friend over two decades of teaching by our patient group, as well as being cared for. This man is opposite in terms of technique – my usual doctor wanted to go step by step, ruling things out before going to the next set of tests, but the new one will blast through all the paths he can think of at once. That sounds all right to me, I wouldn't mind moving ahead at full speed.
***
After I go home that day, I have two patients of my own, and then go to lie down – as happens daily this summer, a deep sleep of several hours, waking in the late summer twilight to think of what to do for dinner. But when I do wake from this nap, I am angry: after years of being reasonable about health and death and all, I don't feel at all reasonable about suddenly worrying about my heart.
Really?
I feel ambushed, to be frank: another of those times when it is as though I am in a dogfight, and a third dog bites me in the butt, and I spin around in confused, activated rage....
There is passion and intensity in this anger – it’s another kind of ‘body that wants to live’ – and not despair. I feel that I won’t be able to move to Barcelona, or anywhere, because a heart condition may tie me to local health care. That pisses me off – though it isn’t a shock, and doesn’t lead to any grayness…
M. is out of town, and I feel weak, so I don't go into town; instead I spend a couple of days luxuriating in this rage, which feels like it's full of life. I don't go for rage enough, I suppose. And over the weekend it fades, I recover... there is life in having the feelings, in being willing to be angry, and the graceful curve of a natural recovery seems better for me than would blocking it with anxiety and reason.
***
Various heart and lung tests, one of which is especially peculiar – a breathing test is a closed glass booth, gases pumped in; a young woman pleasantly but quickly explains a bizarre series of steps to me. She clearly gives these instructions to everyone who does this, and everyone finds it counterintuitive, so she just make sure we listen as she fires these bizarre orders at us – which include taking deep breaths several times, but in a couple of them the breathing tube is suddenly blocked, so you're trying to breathe in a wall of nothing.
I get a compliment, though – there's still some of the breathing left from my years singing, and I can fill more deeply, and am somewhat less clumsy with the instructions than most, so we finish in half the scheduled time.
When I ask what the results look like, she refuses to say anything – results are sent to the consultant, who will talk to me about them. I often ask the people testing for results – they aren't supposed to tell me, though the woman who gives me the first of two cardiology tests (also young but quieter, more serious; she was wearing a head covering in the week of the anti-Muslim demonstrations in the UK that fortunately fizzled out dramatically, but seemed thoroughly focused on what she was doing) did let me know she wasn't seeing anything remarkable.
***
11 July, fragment of a dream – mostly remembered in bed, but after some mild restlessness I get up, and by then have forgotten most of it: I am in some kind of hospital/clinic; I am figuring out what tests they are giving me. At one point I walk down a corridor and around a corner – at the corner there is a room where a woman is at the back of the room, staring in my direction; I try to say hi, but she doesn’t seem to register me; her area is well-lit, but mine is not.
***
I have received an email for an HIV long-term survivors retreat – I've ignored these for a few years; they are far to the south and didn't seem worth the time and expense. But it occurs to me that this time I want to go: I want to lean on people who know what I'm going through, and see if it helps. The timing is good because this is one of the first retreats in the north rather than the south – it is in a large monastery up in Perth, further up Scotland than I usually go.
And there is no fee for this one: someone in Scotland whose partner died of AIDS is making a major contribution, so the main requirement is a train ticket. I decide I will go....
In the background I think of not moving to Barcelona: a heart condition would make it inadvisable to go to another country without health care. And I think unhappily of the days drawing in this fall in Newcastle, the increasing cold, and mild dullness of winter here, and how my body dislikes it…
***
16 July 2024: not a dream, but – visionary time: a very present, very real imagined state; I’m surprised at how natural and clear it is between dream and waking.
I got up very early, the light is pale, a harmonic drone from a website of background sounds; I have a relaxed communication with a kindly male figure in a light orange robe – asking him questions: what am I doing, what should I be doing, relaxing the body. A sense of what being in the body is for, and finally: learning to accept the tension, the uncertainty of living, is the point.
Visionary experiences, though taken seriously among Jungians, aren't things I generally, or ever, experience, but this one seems extremely transparent: a clear sense that problems on 'this' side simply don't exist in other places, and therefore don't matter....
***
The retreat has several aspects that are unexpected.
The train trip is chaos – unfortunately we are doing this in early August, and going through Edinburgh, with the arts festival and fringe festival, involves crowds of people who are savagely bent on having fun. Even after I'm past Edinburgh, the second train didn't allow me a reservation, though some people do have them... I sit at a table with a woman who also pretends to belong there to dissuade interlopers; we talk about everything for a couple of hours – she is going up to the wedding of one of her sons, a grand and heavily planned celebration. When I arrive in Perth, the station is huge, dark and largely empty. It actually takes some time to get out of the station, as every direction leads me into a different no-man's-land, but two athletic Scotsmen are friendly and helpful, and I finally reach the entrance.
I need to sit, as walking any distance wipes me out; I end up on a bench with a friendly man, talkative, ex-military, a bit skittish, whom I half-recognize from earlier retreats. Various other members of the group show up, we are taken in cars to the monastery...
which is huge, beautiful in a grand 'let's add another turret' fashion. It is a real Catholic monastery with rooms for visitors, and gardens and chapels and meeting rooms; the garden walks tend to deposit you near small shrines with benches and statues of Christ, the Virgin, and scattered angels, but mostly one sees vast green trees down steep Scottish hillsides.
On the second day, walking in the grounds, I realize something I should have guessed: no one here can tell me anything I don't already know. But it is good to talk to them; and it's good to get away – though I haven't been traveling much because I am tired, it is clear that it is worth going places, any place that is not home: the break does me good.
It seems probable that my anger and anxiety from the last couple of weeks has not only faded, but that I may actually be stronger/more together than many of the people here.
By the way, the guy in the room next door is sexy, charming, fun, likes me, in his 50s – but of course he lives in London….
***
On the last evening, most people have gone into Perth to see an unexpectedly gay musical, something based on the life of Elton John. I don't want to go, and end up with the others who stay back, in the grand meeting room with its plush sofas and paintings and fireplace; we sit around talking. The guy in charge has brought whisky and chocolate; everyone relaxes, and things are pleasant; it all coasts along for several hours.
But in the back of my mind I have a sense of determination: what I wanted when I came here is not really here, it’s not among these people. It’s also not in a lot of other nearby places and situations. If I want to move, if I want an adventure – Barcelona would be much better, but even that may be… minor.
Another direction is needed; and it may need to be inwards. The answers to the impatience and anger and anxiety of the past few months/years may not exist in any place that is external to me – which is a bit exasperating, but not really surprising.
***
A few more weeks of quiet, of tests.
Finally, a meeting with the doctor: there are minor glitches in heart test as well as lung tests – but they aren't enough to be different from others my age, and nothing clear is showing up. The lungs are indeed crackling, especially on the lower left – something about brachioles that are damaged; he asks several times if I ever smoked (the answer remains no).
So, no heart problem, hopefully. (More tests to come, though.)
The lungs... he doesn't know what to say at this point. The tiredness is clearly from there, though.
He wants more exercise; which makes sense, there's no heart attack in the near future.
***
Dream, 31 August. Moody, tropical, damp – a family house near the shore, somewhere southern like New Orleans. There are two rooms near the back that are like patios, but locked, rarely used; I finally cross through them to see how the doors and locks and outside windows work; they aren’t really unusual when I finally see them – clean, not used much, with some patio furniture in the middle of the room and a table.
***
Reading in bed at night, I fall into books that seem too grim – I want something else, but it is hard to know what I want to read.
I read up on bronchiectasis, which sounds like what the doctor is suggesting; but I don't really know.
The quietness at home is all right: fewer appointments, more space around each one. I think of the image of the old man in the forest from the early days of COVID – this is the same, isn't it.
Just a bit smaller, a bit quieter....