Cardiac Window

When I was a resident rotating though the ICU, I had patient who was recovering from a medical procedure called a pericardial window. When I lay in bed at night after work, I would imagine that the surgeons had laid a sterile plastic film over his open chest, creating a window to his fragile, exposed heart. Of course, that wasn’t at all what the procedure entailed, but the memory and metaphor persists.

This process feels like my own cardiac window, with my vulnerable heart laid bare to the world. The transplant asks of me all the most difficult things: to ask others to make sacrifices for me, to be needy. It is the diametric opposite of how I see myself, as someone who cares for others.

It’s so, so hard. Covid has taken so much family time away from us, and here I am, asking my family not to gather this year, the third in a row, for our Passover seder. Larry holds me as I cry, then scolds me because it is okay for me to have needs. Because being vulnerable is not the same as being weak. And because the people who care about me want to be there for me, and to deny them the opportunity is to deny their love.

So here I am, trying.