Two days ago I realised it was time to hibernate, something I’ve been doing the last couple of years. This time two years ago I had already slowed down to the point where exercise was difficult thanks to my heart condition and I was expecting to have my aortic valve replaced before the end of October. In the event that didn't happen until the end of February last year. No pain or discomfort, just a case of being overwhelmed by lethargy.
Alongside it I had my ideopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), which had been diagnosed in May 2015 and led directly to the discovery of the fact that I had managed to live with only two cusps in my aortic heart valve instead of the usual 3, which meant my heart had spent a lifetime working 50% harder. And my lung condition was only found because of an x-ray I had at the QMC on the day after the 2015 General Election and within 21 days I was facing the prospect of being dead in three years, but here I am battling on, although as of yet it doesn't seem much of a fight.
I started doing what I was told by the medics and my open heart surgery marks the first day still in my Filofax diary. I have been more amazed by the experience than overwhelmed. Even looking death in the eye, and it was a dramatic as that, I felt like an observer, never a victim, but that moment passed in hours thanks to the care and support I received whilst in Nottingham City Hospital.
At the beginning of November last year I had my vanity appealed to (not that the person asking me knew that) and I went to a meeting. Within two days I was in bed with a chest infection that felt as if my lungs were being squeezed shut. Two weeks of antibiotics helped me through it and it was close to Christmas before I felt well enough to go out again. I actually remember that experience more vividly than anything else — which is why when I got the first signs of winter two days ago, the cold, the damp and that tightness of the chest, I stopped!
I will miss the pop-up shop I have been helping Judy Sleeth in and blogged about, but I know the signs and the potential consequences of not slowing down. There will be things I still do, my lung and heart exercise group every Thursday morning, going to Jo in the Local Not Global Deli once a week, but now for brunch and Rosie Lea's on Wilkinson Avenue. I'll walk every day, I'll deliver for the Labour Party and the Civic Society, but I'll avoid crowded rooms and buses, the latter almost the thing I will miss most for the next 4-5 months.
At home I will still cook and go shopping with my trolley, write, draw maps, make bus boxes and watch Christmas films on Channel 5 (as I have done for past two years) if they do them again, even garden a little, not too much as I know the wildlife in our garden depends on it being untidy if they are to make it through the winter. In so many ways I am very lucky. I have Susan and close friends I love and with whom I will do things during my 'hibernation'. Perhaps the word is too dramatic, but it doesn't feel that way if you have spent all of your life being actively engaged with people.
Five days ago I was still in my spring and summer mode, enjoying autumn. Now I am in late-autumn / winter mode busy looking forward.
Of one thing I am sure. It's good to be alive!
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