The Fragrance of The Heart
I distinctly remember dissecting a pig’s heart in the 6th grade at Springer Elementary in Mountain View, CA. It was like the crescendo of the 6th grade science unit. I remember the stainless-steel dissection trays, the robin’s egg blue rubbery mat that fit inside said tray, and the miniature Vampire stake-like pins that held the membranes and tough skin back like some kind of medieval torture device for an unresponsive object. I would be remiss in reporting that this was also about the time Weird Al Yancovic came out with his “Like a Surgeon” music video which played on MTV all the dang time.
Anyone who has ever dissected anything before can close their eyes and smell formaldehyde. I’m not sure why that smell is so distinct; so pungent- so piercing. But you all know what I’m talking about. My mom has a great story about dissecting a cat when she was in nursing school. Somehow, she got behind in class, so she had to bring the cat home and try and finish it over the weekend. She shoved it under her bed in her dorm room for safekeeping. Later her roommate discovered it and disposed of it in the dumpster outside the building, appalled and disgusted by the smell. My mom failed the class, yet still became a nurse, so yay.
Anyway, I haven’t given much thought to physical hearts- as in the actual organ- since that time. I’ve been so extremely, unnaturally lucky that all my kids have been so healthy- with only a few random blips on the screen along the medical journey of their lives. I once went to Children’s when Ashley was a baby to have a very old Yoda-type doctor who had ears the size of Texas listen to a heart murmur to confirm that it was benign.
So. Onto my recent “brush with death”. Nutshell version I caught a cold, went to Spain with Andrew and my older 4 on a trip. Felt sick but pushed through, and started having breathing issues and major swelling as the week went on. I thought maybe I had pneumonia or something so when I returned home I was sent for a chest X-ray and after a doctor literally chased me out into the parking lot as I tried to leave the imaging lab, I found out it was far more serious than I had thought.
“Come Back Here, Ma’am!” yelled the doctor, and I looked over my shoulder to see this guy running at me as if he was auditioning for Chariots of Fire. Now keep in mind, I’m from California. I actually lived in LA for 4 years as a single female in college. Little known fact that I don’t often mention (for fear of being made fun of) is during those 4 years I worked in Law Enforcement for my University, which, I’ll confirm, IS just as nerdy as it sounds, and yes, it’s just like Paul Blart in “Mall Cop”, but without the Segway. (In my defense, I met my very best college friends at that job- and we had an absolute blast! While it’s the perfect job to make fun of, and yes it officially makes me a dork on steroids, it also came with some great perks and even better stories.) I even tested with the LAPD and passed all my certifications, but life took a sharp left turn when I met Andrew the spring break before I graduated. I suddenly thought instead of heading to the Rampart Division, maybe I’d go home for a bit after graduation and “Go see about a boy.” (Goodwill Hunting line right there, people…. Anyone? Anyone?….Bueller?) I digress.
The point is, I consider myself to have a small to fair amount of street skills. So when someone is chasing after me, my first inclination is to run. As if on autopilot, my adrenaline kicked in and I tried to take off on my summer-sausage-sized swollen feet but tightness seized my chest and I began wheezing. “Ma’am STOP!” Commanded the doctor. I had no choice but to do as he said. “DON’T run, ma’am!” He called sternly. Then he pleaded, “Please, ma’am, come back inside, I need to talk to you.” I felt too shitty to care that he kept calling me “ma’am” (which I absolutely LOATHE- yes, it’s just fear that I’m old now. Because I am). I slowly turned, and shoulders slumped and gasping for air, and began to make my way back inside the building.
Back inside the Imaging joint, Dr. Chariots of Fire led me into a room that had the word “Consultation” on the door. At that point I knew the jig was up. This wasn’t good, and whatever the sickness was that I’d been running from for the past week in Spain had now officially caught up with me.
Dr. Chariots of Fire pointed to a chair. “Please sit down,” he said with an element of pleading in his voice. I guess it was obvious I was somewhat of a flight risk mentally, even though physically it was challenging for me to even take a breath. “Did you drive here yourself?” He asked. I nodded, slumping down in the chair, trying to find a posture that would be comfortable enough to hear what this cat was trying to say. “Well—(insert long pause here)…..your lungs are filled with fluid, and your heart is very enlarged. Have you ever had heart problems before at all?” I shifted around in the chair, uncomfortably gasping for breath, and shook my head. He took a deep breath, and I was jealous because that was something I’d been trying to do for days.
“OK. Well- I don’t know exactly what’s wrong with you, but I imagine you aren’t feeling very well. I’m going to ask you to please go directly to the ER- do you think you can drive across the street?” I nodded, but honestly between you, me and the kissing tree, I wasn’t really sure about that since by this point a level of anxiety had commenced to kick in. He handed me a copy of the chest X-ray and said, “OK, I’m calling over there and telling them to expect you. Go straight there, OK?” I nodded weakly and had I had enough strength to laugh, I would have- I thought the guy must be telepathic to have instructed me to go straight there. Not only did I have a lunch date I was entirely intending to keep before doing anything else, normal Amy even in this tragic condition would have definitely at the very least gone home first, grabbed some supplies- probably taken a shower, made a few phone calls, ensured I had a phone charger, gone over the after school activity plan, put on some lip gloss…… and then most likely be dead before I even made it there.
I made my way to the ER and called my friends who I was planning to meet for lunch to give them the scoop on the forced change in plans. Now, as freaked out as I was, it wasn’t exactly my life’s mission to have anyone see me in this pathetic state, but before I could argue one of them said, “We’re on our way.” By this time, I was staggering into the ER like one of the zombies in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video, and I didn’t have the wherewithal to protest. Within 20 minutes I had 2 girlfriends, 1 guyfriend, and my Andrew all crowded into the New York City apartment-sized ER patient room. I’m not sure who looked worse- me, all pale and disheveled, or them as they looked at me in this pitiful condition. Three hours clocked over. CT scan, ultrasound, and EKG were performed. I laid there shirtless under a small towel with my skinny, limp, saggy, “golf-ball-in-a-tube-sock” boobs hanging out, who have seen better days prior to breastfeeding 8 babies. I cared not. I sort of wanted to care, but I was just too weak. I couldn’t care. I finally decided it was OK not to care. The pitiful wasteland of topography also known as “The Area Formerly Known as My Boobs” was what it was, and the silver lining was there was ample space for the nurses to affix electrodes to my chest. Eventually the ER doc came in and announced I was at 20% of my normal heart function, he thought due to a virus that for whatever reason ended up affecting my heart. I also received my creepy “Welcome to Hotel Hospital” swag bag, which is that plastic sac for personal belongings whose hidden message when encrypted reads, “You’re not going anywhere.”
I remained a guest at Hotel Hospital for 4 days and 3 crazy nights. My friends who showed up in the ER never left my side- literally. They took turns staying overnight with me and let Andrew go home and be dad so our kids didn’t think anything too weird or serious was going on. At final count, I had 32 visitors swing by during that time. It was astounding; it was moving, it was touching. People just kept coming. It was as if there was some free gift I was handing out, but there wasn’t. There was nothing in it for them AT ALL- except to encounter a gross, sweaty, makeup-less version of myself, at about 50% my normal spunk and energy level.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a prude, but there’s “please excuse my bedraggled appearance”, and then there’s downright #nastygross. My own husband whose 5 senses have experienced everything about every inch of my body, has never been put off by how I look or smell. He will take me in literally ANY state, and has never cared. But for my own self, I have a general sense of basic courtesy hygiene, as defined by brushed teeth and anything that gets sweaty must be, at a minimum, wiped down with soap. You feelin’ me? You hear what I’m saying without me saying it, right? Well let’s just say I had little of that of going on with the much appreciated but not exactly robust set of hospital toiletries.
Even my dear Obstetrician, who has seen me and many other female bodies in various degrees of gross-ness, after 17 years of being my doctor had never seen me at this particular bargain-basement-level state of unkempt-ness. He happened to be on call at the childbirth center that same weekend, and so he checked on me a couple times, which absolutely made my day. I’m telling you guys, it was as if I was a Grade A example of sub-par personal sanitation, totally unfit for public display. Kind soul that he is, my OB didn’t act alarmed at the sight of my #nastygross appearance and the unshowered smell radiating from my general direction-he kept his cool, and even pretended to recognize me, which was much appreciated. And he CAME BACK the next day, so I guess he wasn’t too disgusted.
After much discussion about the possibility of taking a shower, it was decided on day 3 that I could be without the heart monitors and electrodes long enough to take a real shower, not just a fake, wannabe baby wipe quasi-shower. Praise be to Mary, Joseph, the Baby Jesus, Buddha, Allah and alllllll the saints. Plus, I had instructed my husband to bring my travel toiletries, lotions, and some lavender oil so my room could go from sweaty frat house to almost normal, much to everyone’s relief and delight.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so pumped to take a shower in my entire life. Well, maybe. When we first moved into our current house, I was beyond excited to christen the master bathroom shower-as to this day, it’s STILL the shower of my dreams. It’s a double headed, vichy shower with wall mounted body jets that spray in places where the sun don’t shine if you know what I mean. Plus, it’s massive. You could fit the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir AND the Boston Pops Orchestra in there, with room leftover for a few barbershop quartets. So, as amazing as my shower at home is, I knew beggars couldn’t be choosers, and I was just as stoked for a hospital shower, probably at an unnatural level.
That particular day I had 2 young male nurses. Well, one dude was a tech and the other dude was a nurse. They were pumped that I was pumped about this shower thing. (I think they were extremely motivated for me to get clean since they could most likely smell me from down the hall.) It was like we were all in this together and the excitement for showering was contagious. These guys brought me a bunch of towels, and a clean hospital gown, and announced to me that they were going to change my bed sheets while I was in said shower. The plan was set, the morale was high, and I was beyond ready. #nastygross, be gone!
I entered the shower and disrobed. I smirked at the sign next to the toilet which read, “Call for Assistance. Most of our Falls Happen RIGHT HERE.” I inspected the shower controls, ensuring I could successfully turn the thing on. (This is an important step for those of us who have found ourselves buck-ass naked in some random international hotel bathtub, staring blankly at a temperature gauge which appears to require a PhD to operate.) This one seemed doable, so I cranked it on, and let out an audible sigh as the magical sound of water spraying echoed between the tiled walls. I almost cried as I dipped underneath the cascading sprinkler of joy, and I had to remind myself that I was not really alone, so it was important to refrain from belting out “Your Song” by Elton John in my horrific singing voice.
In my left arm, I cradled an armful of shower supplies: a razor, some body wash, shampoo and conditioner, a loofah and an exfoliant. Anchored to the wall, I noticed an ADA compliant shower seat for the handicapped. Dude- that would be perfect to rest all my shower crap on. With only my right hand free, I attempted clumsily to disengage the shower seat from its’ secure latch. It gave way, free falling south thanks to gravity, and crashed down in a split second coupled with a loud bang. Suddenly the door burst open and there were my kind, young, male nurses. “Are you ok?!” they practically shouted in unison. Oh, man. You just can’t unsee the body of a 42 year old who has given birth to 8 babies. They’ll be having nightmares for weeks. Instinctively I threw my arms over my chest and crossed my legs (like that was going to do anything). “Uh, I’m fine! Yeah! Thanks!” Relieved, they closed the door and called out, “Ok, sorry, we thought you fell!” It reminded me of that scene in “So I Married an Axe Murderer” when Charlie walks in on Harriet’s sister in the shower, mistaking her for Harriet. Gawd. I just…. Oh Gawd. I’ll pay for your counseling, boys, just add it to my hospital bill.
A week after I was discharged, I sat around with a bunch of my friends in my living room, laughing about these stories. Shaking my head, I just kept marveling at how surprised I was that I didn’t care. I mean, I cared but I was actually too sick to *really* care. Like really be embarrassed- I just didn’t have it in me, I was too sick to actually truly give a shit that all those visitors and friends saw me in that state. One friend said, “I knew you were sick when I walked in and saw you in the hospital gown instead of a pair of silk pajamas. I don’t even think I’ve actually ever seen you NOT in high heels.”
“Yeah”, said another one. “I kept waiting for the glam squad to arrive and fix you up, even when you give birth you have full makeup and a fresh blow out from the dry bar!”
One of my dear friends turned to me and said, “I hope you realize it was important for us to see you in that vulnerable state. Plus, you’re ruining everything for the rest of us, you do realize that right?” I shook my head, confused. “Now when we say we’re ‘sick’ and can’t come to a meeting, you’ve already set the bar way too high for ’sick.’ Now the rest of us are going to have to rip out our appendix with a butter knife in order to not show up!”
I laughed but shook my head. “No way. You know I’m always the world’s biggest wimp.”
My friend looked at me straight in the eye and said “Amy, shut the F up. I call bullshit on that. You’re not always the biggest whimp. In fact, you’re rarely the biggest wimp. You’re just constantly rolling yourself under the bus. Most people in heart failure don’t hike all over Spain and figure they will deal with their illness when they get home. Most people would never, ever go through 8 pregnancies and give birth and breastfeed 8 times. You’re making the rest of us look bad. Stop saying you’re a whimp. You’re de-valuing the rest of us, because some of us go through way smaller-scale things and I don’t think you realize that you’re tougher than you think.”
Finally, he leaned in and said, “Amy, it’s like the sewage smell at Mt. Hermon. You don’t have to be dressed up and witty and have fresh makeup all the time, ok? We liked seeing you normal. We don’t get to see both sides of you very often- both are necessary. The perfectly clean AND the #nastygross.”
I got the point immediately. When I was in the 4th grade, my family began attending a family camp at a place called Mt. Hermon for a week in the Santa Cruz mountains, just up the hill from where I grew up. If you’ve seen Dirty Dancing, think of Mt. Hermon as the Evangelical Christian “Kellerman’s Resort”. Cheezy skits, games, multi-generational activities. You get the picture. Anyway, Mt. Hermon is set in the redwoods, just a few miles from the beach…..and there is the most amazing smell there. It’s this fresh, pine-y, salty, beach-y, intoxicating fragrance that I really can’t explain any better than that. It’s the kind of smell that makes you immediately put the windows down in your vehicle as you drive onto the property, because you just need that smell in your lungs.
What my friend was eluding to was the fact that this peculiarly wonderful smell gets poisoned by the occasional whiff of sewage. There are some, ahem, plumbing challenges at Mt. Hermon. It’s partially because the area is old- many buildings are clumsily built on hillsides and I don’t know anything about construction, but it doesn’t take a genius to ascertain that it’s highly doubtful those buildings are in compliance with current building codes. At any rate, as you hike around the property, breathing in the addictive Mt. Hermon fragrance, there are a couple areas around the terrain that one just has learned over the years to avoid, because for some reason, there must be some issue, underground or otherwise, that causes a pungent stench to leak into the otherwise aromatically inebriating air. But it is what it is, and it all kind of adds to the whole unit of what Mt. Hermon is. It’s kinda classy and kinda ghetto, like all of us, multi-faceted. So yeah, one of my defense mechanisms is to be self-deprecating and laugh at my insecurities or way over exaggerate them, and that’s OK. We all have our stuff, and that’s what makes us unique.
The gross slimy-ness and the mystery, the wonder and the magic of the dissected heart, and the smell of the formaldehyde that make up the whole memory of my pig’s heart dissection in the sixth grade. I think after my recent health scare, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about memories and what makes them sweet- I realize it’s all parts of the memory, the good, and the not so good. In the moment, no one likes the formaldehyde smell. But later, at least for me, it triggers the entire memory, and that’s amazing.
Andrew and I have been married 20 years next month, and really, that’s what love’s about, right? It’s all parts. It’s not just the amazing and wonderful parts, it’s the formaldehyde smell and the sourest of grapes— all the times we’ve build together, all the experiences we’ve had together- the high of the fantastic ones and the working through of the shitty ones. All those little memories make up the fragrance of the heart.
“I’m barely human. I’m more like a creature; to me everything gives off a scent. Thoughts, moments, feelings…words left unsaid, words barely spoken, they all have a distinct fragrance. To inhale is to capture, to experience. And so am I made up of all these scents, all these feelings. An illumination of nerve endings.” —C. JoyBell