Springing Up

 

It’s that time of year when everything seems to be springing up – daffodils, cherry blossoms, birds, vaccine dates, feelings of hope. Covid numbers are also springing up, and last week my heart rate decided to rise up… and down… and up even higher. In a highly irregular way.

So it was back to Emergency at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital for me last week, as was the case last summer. At that time, I had a cardio version procedure that served me well up until now. Again this year I had the same procedure and, once again, I’m feeling well. And very grateful to the professional staff who treated me so kindly, carefully and professionally. My nurse, Amanda, Dr. Shepherd, Dr. Lane, the respiratory assistant and other staff were helpful and efficient.

I know a few people who've had very different and extremely frustrating experiences at NRGH, but my own experience was positive. I felt lucky to receive such good care, especially during a pandemic with the additional challenges it brings. I wrote last year that hearts on windows and banging on pots could not begin to express what we owe to our health workers. That’s still true. I’m grateful to all of them. And thankful for the excellent Medicare programs provided by out federal and provincial governments. I feel fortunate.

It looks as though some things may soon begin to open up. Easter is traditionally a time to celebrate resilience and rebirth. Again, we hope for that.

But everything is different now. This Easter, most of us are emerging from one of the most challenging years we’ve known -- a year of uncertainty, isolation, apprehension and loneliness. Part of our resbirth will mean learning to live differently. It’s been a whole year of learning how to live carefully, which should help. It reminds me of an ee cummings poem about spring:

Spring is like a perhaps hand

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere) arranging
a window, into which people look (while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here) and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things, while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there) and

without breaking anything.

Things will continue to change as we move through this spring, into summer, and into whatever is yet to come.

Let’s hope we can embrace all the changes carefully, “without breaking anything.”

And not only with care; acceptance is also needed.  I have to accept that my atrial fibrillation is such that it’s time for me to stop drinking. That’s not too hard. What will be harder, and just as necessary, is learning to accept that viruses have always been with us and that this one and its variants are here to stay.

Instead of fighting the virus, I want to learn to accept it. Farmers I know, and people who live by the water, have learned to accept mice and rats as part of their environment. Just another species. Part of the web of life.

If we can accept these viruses, maybe we can learn to live with them.

But we’ll have to keep being very careful.