Pumping Heart

We learn what loyalty means from our own beating heart and bodies.  

I’m lying down in an examining room in a clinic, tilted on my left side with my gown open in the front. My chest is exposed, left breast sagging onto the thin paper covering the padded exam table, right breast wobbling above my ribcage like a jelly fish.  I’m facing the technician who is setting up her equipment to give me an ultrasound echocardiogram of my heart. 

I come in to have this exam every 2 years ever since contracting endocarditis after surgery.  The bacteria traveled in my blood, and settled in my heart on the aortic valve.  Curing the infection required a month of strong antibiotics pumping continually via a stent directly into my veins just above my heart. Scar tissue left from the infection on the valve keeps it from functioning properly and blood flow is affected. These bi-yearly tests check if the damage has gotten worse or not.

That wobbling right breast is to blame. A routine mammogram revealed the betrayal; cancerous cells throughout meant removal and I opted for TRAM flap reconstruction. My own midsection was called upon to be of service and responded with the healthy tissue and blood vessels that now pass for this impersonation of a breast.

The exam begins and I feel the push of the instrument, slick with gel that helps it slide easily across my chest.  It’s producing the sound waves that bounce back from my body, creating the images on the screen in front of us.  This live pulsing picture of my heart and the blood flowing through it, shows on the screen in a rhythmic splash of colors -  orange and red, black and green.  It’s methodical and deliberate.  I’m watching myself being alive.

I am suddenly overcome with love for my own flawed and reconstructed body and at the center of it, this endlessly beating heart, doing its job as best it can, day after day, strong, simple and unnoticed. If the true test of character is what you do when no one is watching, then my body is my teacher.