Well, I haven't had to come here for some time, but here I am. Before me is some sort of operation. I HATE operations. I've worked scrupulously my whole life to avoid them.
But I was born with a bicuspid valve, so I can avoid an operation no longer.
The only option available to one in my position has long been open-heart surgery. Now, thanks to the advance of medicine, there is a far less invasive option, the TAVR procedure, that may be available to me if I can qualify for a study. But either way, I have to have it done, more or less, now.
Now, this is an existential threat. But as such things go, it is the mildest sort of existential threat.
And yet, I am terrified. And horrified.
As I write, I expect that within the next week I will either be done with the TAVR procedure, or setting up the other option. And I find that I have no one to whom I can talk unreservedly. Not just about this present situation, but about whatever is uppermost in my mind.
I don't think I am merely feeling sorry for myself. What I am feeling, more than fear, is solitude.
I was just trying to talk to my wife about an unrelated, and I thought safe, subject. And I saw her face harden.
Wow, that hurt.
My best friend, by an unfortunate coincidence, is out of town. Other friends are keeping me at arm's length. Still other friends are choosing now to be sheep regarding Facebook.
And I have no one with whom I may be frank, or even free-associating. No one who is willing to listen to whatever I have to say with equanimity, and without prejudice.
A harsh indictment of me. I quite obviously don't rate, even among my closest confreres.
And so I am submerged in sadness. Short of breath. I feel I am in narrow straits, acutely needful of companionship, and profoundly deficient in it.
I guess it's true that we enter and exit this world alone.
