The Aneurysm, Part III

Like a fresh idea in an artist's mind,
you fashion things before they come into being.
You sweep the floor like the man
who keeps the doorway.
When you brush
a form clean, it becomes
what it truly is.

— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p. 102



E.'s mom gave me the caringbridge.org information where E's husband and dad have been posting updates regularly.

I know about caringbridge. When it got out on Facebook in 2008 that an old schoolmate/acquaintance had nearly lost his triplet toddlers in a house fire, a caringbridge site offered updates and a place to post messages.

I was wondering if this was a moment to make an exception to my experiment, if this was the emergency I said in the beginning would be a reasonable exception, was I being selfish or bad by refusing to get on the internet.

No. There is no substitute for the human voice. I left E's husband a message on his cell phone yesterday, expressing my love and concern and making it perfectly clear I did not expect a call back. He asked Peter to contact me, too, so I wasn’t calling out of the blue.

But how many times have we said, or had said to us, “It’s so good to hear your voice.” There is nothing like hearing the voice, the inflection, of an old friend. It is a small substitute for being in the presence of the actual person. Internet communications cannot be replaced same as a person cannot be replaced. And internet communications cannot make up for the fabric, tenor, laughter, and idiosyncrasies of a human voice of someone who loves you.

The Aneurysm, part II

[E. & C., 2001]

Let the poor man look deep into generosity.
Let bread see a hungry man.
Let kindling behold a spark from the flint.

— Rumi, Essential Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks, p. 141




Yesterday I was able also to reach Elizabeth’s mom at the ICU after calling Seattle 411 again. I spoke with E.'s mom for about ten minutes and got the facts straight on what is happening with her. Her mom sounded amazingly upbeat considering what has been happening, and didn't seem to mind getting a phone call.

Basically, E. was at a meeting a couple weeks ago and she came down with a bad headache, so bad it felt like a migraine. Her head felt unusually warm and she started vomiting. She told her husband something was wrong. They got her to the ER and eventually got her to Harborview where she was operated on for a deep burst aneurysm and a superficial non-burst one that was found in the brain scan.

Two weeks later she is recovering but does not always know where she is or what year it is. She has thought she was in Spain. She has reported just looking at paperwork and feeling relieved that she’s on my old company's health insurance. I don’t even know if she’s got health insurance right now.

Peter said a few days after the surgery he visited the hospital. A week or more later he visited again and she looked way better but was still confused about where she was. She is on medication to artificially raise her BP to about 180 so that the arteries in her brain will stay open. There are apparently vasospasms, which they are waiting to calm down on their own. Her mom said that her youth and health are working against her here, not having developed the hardening of the arteries that would prevent the spasms from being so severe.

[to be continued]