Swimming in the Sink

by Lynne Cox

  We lined up, filled our plates, and sat at the long table and listened to family stories about Christmas Eves past. We got up and changed seats so we could sit beside other family members and talk. Laura and Charlie sat beside me.

  Howard made a few funny comments about himself and Laura, and he made me laugh.

  Laura said she was happy that I was laughing again. She told me laughter was good for my heart. It released good hormones and made my heart feel good.

  I told her I was happy I was there.

  Laura’s eyes filled with tears. “Glad you’re here too,” she said and hugged me.

  We opened Christmas gifts from youngest to oldest, and it seemed like each person was as excited about giving his or her gifts as receiving them.

  The evening passed too quickly. We walked outside to say good night. The air was cold and the sky was so clear we could see the constellations. The stars were sparkling like white, blue, and yellow diamonds. It was amazing to look up and see the universe and know we were a part of it.

  We gazed at the moon. It was bright. Howard pointed out Mars and Venus.

  One adult asked the children if they could see Santa and his reindeer flying across the sky.

  The children stared at the sky, searching. They leaned back and looked into the heavens.

  Someone said he thought he saw Santa, and the children did not want to leave until they did too.

  The children were reluctantly climbing into the cars when Howard shouted and pointed, “Look, a shooting star.”

  We watched the star make a wide blazing white arc across the black sky.

  It seemed like a little miracle.

  “It’s a Christmas star,” a boy shouted. His voice was filled with awe.

  “Did you make wish?” a girl asked.

  “Yes, I did,” he said.

  “Did you?” he asked me.

  “Yes, I made a wish,” I said.

  14

  NEW YORK CITY AND THE COUNTRY

  The baking and cooking and feasting continued at Laura’s on Christmas Day. More family and friends arrived to celebrate.

  At one point, I retreated to a guest room and lay down. I was exhausted, but it was a happy exhaustion. I was learning how to slow down and relax rather than to continue pushing myself.

  The party grew louder, and there was laughter, bits and pieces of conversations, and happy voices.

  There was a knock on the door. It was Laura. She wanted to know if I was feeling all right.

  I told her I just needed to take a break. I felt like I was getting better, but I wasn’t feeling quite right. My body was out of sync.

  She asked if I had checked my heart rate and blood pressure.

  I took it three times because I was trying to learn how to use the blood pressure machine, and I wanted to see if there was much variation in the measurements. I waited three minutes between each test to make sure I got good readings. There was considerable variation, which surprised me, but all the readings were low. I was fine.

  She wanted to make sure I was okay and offered to send Charlie to see me.

  Charlie knocked on the door and said that Laura was a little worried about me. I could tell he was too. He asked if I was feeling heart palpitations—skipped or accelerated heartbeats. Was I short of breath or dizzy?

  I didn’t have any symptoms, I just didn’t feel normal. I thought I just needed a break and said I would be back downstairs soon.

  His face relaxed and he left the room with a bounce in his step.

  I closed my eyes and fell asleep. When I woke up it was morning. Laura was already up making breakfast. She had checked on me before she went to bed, and Charlie did too.

  I laughed and thanked her. I felt like a little kid, but I was so lucky they cared that much.

  We visited with family and friends all day, and I was leaving for New York City the next morning. Usually I was excited about going there, but now I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go. I felt physically unstable and unsure.

  Checking my e-mail before I left, I noticed one from Joe with good advice. He said that I was going to have a long trip and I needed to hydrate during the flight, and take walking breaks, and prefly the emotional trip to make it go the way I wanted. He wrote, “Like a plane has a compass heading, you need a positive outcome focus point. There will be stupid thoughts trying to suck up some of your emotional energy. When that comes up, think about you, who you are, what you’ve accomplished, the best is yet to come, what a great vacation you are about to have. Take a deep breath, sigh, and just grin, buddy, one big grin! Those thoughts will vaporize away.”

  When Laura hugged me there were tears in her eyes.

  “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry,” I said, and I felt my eyes fill with tears. I was never this emotional.

  She told me to take good care and stay in touch. Charlie hugged me.

  It was strange traveling without my swim bag. It always went with me. I would sling it over my shoulder and carry it and a small bag onto the airplane. It was a simple way to travel.

  But the bag was too heavy for me to carry. A friend lent me her small travel bag with wheels.

  When I climbed onto the JetBlue flight I opened the overhead compartment and felt awkward. I always packed and carried my own gear, but the incision site for the angiogram wasn’t completely healed. If I tried to lift the bag, it could open and bleed.

  A man around my age, sitting in a seat behind mine, jumped to his feet. He asked if I needed help.

  I felt so lame.

  He lifted my bag with one hand like he was Superman and stowed it in the compartment.

  I thanked him.

  When the plane landed at JFK, before I could ask for help, the man set the bag down beside me and handed it to me with the handle. I thanked him again.

  “My pleasure,” he said.

  I was surprised. He was happy to help. It was nice.

  They say Paris is the City of Lights, but during the holiday season, New York City rivals Paris. The lights on Broadway, above Times Square, in Rockefeller Plaza, and on boats sailing the Hudson River shone brighter than I remembered. The city was filled with holiday cheer, and there was magic in the air.

  Martha Kaplan welcomed me into her apartment. She invited me to go with her to her country home and to spend time with good friends: Vicky Wilson, my editor; Kathy Hourigan, my managing editor; and Andy Hughes, the person in charge of production, would be joining us to celebrate the New Year. Martha said it would be good for me to get away and be with friends.

  We drove to the country along snowy roads with Frankie, her happy black-and-white spotted dog. Her old farmhouse was so cold that we could see our steamy white breath. It didn’t take long for the downstairs area to grow warm once the heater was turned on. Martha carried my luggage up dark wooden steps to the guest room and she told me to sleep as long as I wanted. I followed slowly, not wanting to make my heart work too hard.

  I slept for fourteen hours. I realized I had not slept that well in years.

  Martha was having friends over for New Year’s Day, but I was too tired to help. I felt like I had instantly become an old person.

  Martha told me not to worry and to sleep as long as I wanted.

  Pushing away all thoughts, I relaxed and slept again for almost twenty-four hours, woke up, drank a couple glasses of water, ate an apple, and slept for twelve more.

  Martha couldn’t believe how much I slept.

  Long, thick icicles hung in clusters from the eaves of the house. The earth was covered with a thick blanket of snow and the bright sunshine made the snow crystals sparkle like a billion stars.

  The snow was hard, and it crunched and squeaked when I walked. A breeze blowing across the wide fields lifted the chill into the air and made it colder.

  I walked into the breeze and felt the enormous contrast between the warmth of my body and the icy air. Cold air splashed against my face and slid into my lungs. It cleared my groggy mind. The cold air and the warmth within my
body felt like a contrast between death and life. I walked a little faster to get warmer and gazed across the snowy fields.

  The area was used for dairy cattle, but there weren’t any cows. It was too cold for them.

  The wind increased and lifted the snow in whirling sheets. Birch and maple branches encased in ice clattered, and loud calls from ravens filled the air. They were in the tall pine trees down the road. They shared their food in winter. They scanned the ground until one signaled with a loud caw. The flock suddenly launched and flew along the dark winding road.

  It began to snow. Delicate snow crystals stuck to my eyelashes and melted on my face.

  The wind gusted, and cold cut through my wool scarf. I walked toward Andy’s house, up the road from Martha’s. Smoke was rising from his chimney and the air was filled with the sweet smell of burning wood. If it started snowing harder or grew colder, I would knock on his door and visit with him and thaw.

  Something was missing. It was his stream. In spring, summer, and fall it sang with the flow of the season. The stream was frozen now. Large air bubbles were trapped in the ice. It looked like the stream had frozen in midbreath. In spring the stream would flow and the air bubbles would be freed into the air. I wondered if I would live until spring.

  Crossing the road, I walked into the forest and remembered lines from Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

  The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

  But I have promises to keep,

  And miles to go before I sleep,

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  The woods were lovely, dark and deep, and I had things I still wanted to do. I had miles to go before I slept. Until now I had thought I would have time to go those miles, but now I wasn’t sure.

  We gathered at Vicky’s home for New Year’s Eve. She had a house nearby where she worked, edited, swam, and rode horses.

  Vicky is my editor and I was so lucky to find her. She helped me live my dream of being an author, guided and edited my work, and helped me clarify my thoughts. She is smart, honest, and sensitive, and she has become a good friend.

  Kathy Hourigan, the managing editor at Knopf, was there too. Kathy is my friend and one of the kindest and most enthusiastic people I have ever met. She loves books and stories and I love talking with her about what she is reading and editing.

  We raised our glasses and toasted the New Year and good health.

  Kathy and Vicky cleared the dishes, and they returned carrying a birthday cake. It was decorated with soft blue, yellow, and pink wildflowers and candles. The dessert was to celebrate the new year and my birthday a few days later. They sang “Happy Birthday,” and I blew out the candles. What a year it had been. What a new year it would be.

  15

  SHELTERED

  Cindy Palin picked me up at the airport and drove me home. The house was dark and cold. Emptier than it had ever been. I turned on the lights. Rugs, furniture, and dishes and vases my mother once loved were gone. My siblings had taken their share of the furnishings.

  Cindy asked where the heat was so she could turn it on. She sat with me and listened to stories about my New York travels.

  It was almost midnight, and she had to get her daughter off to school in the morning and then go to work. She told me to call her if I needed anything.

  I walked through the house. It felt like my home was dying as pieces of it were carried away. I didn’t want to stay for the death of my home. I needed to leave, but I couldn’t do it all at once.

  Friends invited me to stay with them for a few days, others invited me to move in with them for as long as I wanted, and one couple told me I was welcome to stay at their home in central California. I could have their house to myself. It was quiet, near the beach. I could get a lot of writing done. I would have loved staying with any of them, but I knew if I did I would be delaying a decision I needed to make. I needed to find a home where I could restart my life. I had not lived on my own since college, and I needed to have my own place and a new beginning.

  I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to buy a place or rent. My friends advised me to rent for a while. I didn’t need to rush into anything, and I didn’t need the pressure of owning a house. I wasn’t sure if I was living or if I was dying. It never seemed so difficult to make decisions, but friends helped me. They were there for me.

  I needed to get back into the gym and move and stretch and feel good again, but part of me just wanted to curl up into a comfortable ball and sleep.

  My workout friend Emmy convinced me to meet her for coffee with our workout buddies. She had a plan, but she kept it to herself. She thought if she could get me to meet for coffee, the group could “baby-step” me back to the gym.

  But working out was going to be difficult. I had been an elite athlete. All of that had changed in a few heartbeats.

  I didn’t know what I could or couldn’t do. I didn’t know if I wanted to know. It was frightening facing another loss. Was life about losses?

  Emmy encouraged me to climb on the elliptical machine. We could program the workout.

  We moved our arms and legs back and forth against a set resistance. The resistance and steepness could be increased and decreased. I used to work out at level twenty, the highest resistance and the steepest level. I had worked like an endurance athlete and used well-paced strides and arm pulls. Now I climbed on the elliptical machine and put the resistance on level one—the lowest level.

  Emmy said that it was a good place to start. She began working out on her machine. She set it to level ten.

  I needed to build up gradually.

  Dr. Rawal advised me to monitor my heart during my workout. My heart rate when I was working at a moderate pace was 120 beats per minute. He told me to maintain a heart rate below 110 beats. If I felt light-headed, dizzy, or short of breath, I needed to stop. Part of me wanted to scream, to throw a fit, to give up. I felt so overwhelmed, controlled, and so limited. It seemed like I had to start all over again. I had prided myself on being an elite athlete, and now I had to start from zero. It was sad, sobering, and scary.

  I began moving my legs slowly back and forth to wake them up and start the blood flowing. I checked my heart rate by holding the handles on the machine. The display showed my heart was beating at 100 beats per minute for a few moments. It suddenly increased to 136 and fluctuated wildly.

  It was awful. I was using the lightest resistance and my heart was beating too fast and too irregularly. How much slower could I go? I had never asked myself that question. Never tried to go slow.

  Everything was peculiar. Slow was good. Fast was not. Light resistance was good. Heavy resistance was not.

  “You okay?” Emmy asked.

  “It doesn’t feel like I’m getting any workout,” I said.

  “Just go through the motions. So your body can move and your heart can rest.”

  I slowed down to one pull, one second rest, two pulls, one second rest. My heart rate continued to be between 120 and 130 beats per minute. It was too high.

  What was wrong with me? I couldn’t regulate my heart, couldn’t keep it below 110 beats per minute. I was angry at myself. Why can’t I do this? What if I can’t get my heart rate down? What if I can’t exercise? What if I can’t be with my friends?

  Nothing I was doing worked, and after being on the elliptical machine for ten minutes, I had to climb off. It was so frustrating.

  “You did a great job. Tomorrow maybe you can increase your workout by a minute or two,” Emmy said, and smiled.

  “That would be great,” I said, trying to sound positive. But I thought, You’ve swum across the English Channel, and now you can’t swim across a puddle. This is awful.

  “Want to use the rowing machine?” Emmy asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  We sat down and rowed side by side. She paced her pull with mine. She pulled strongly. I used no resistance. My heartbeat was slower, probably because I was sitting down. We watched the news o
n televisions above our heads, commented on the stories, and rowed for twenty minutes.

  My body felt better after moving, but I was far from the athlete I once was. It was depressing.

  Emmy met me at the gym the next morning for our workout and handed me a birthday gift.

  It was a heart monitor. She gave it to me so I could wear it and monitor my heart while we worked out. It was more accurate than the handheld heart monitor on the elliptical machine and would display continuous readings so I would know how my heart was functioning. That would allow me to adjust my workout by increasing or decreasing my pace.

  I walked into the locker room, put on the monitor, adjusted the strap and sensor around my chest, put the watch that would display my heart rate around my wrist.

  We climbed on the elliptical machines and I looked at the monitor. The numbers were changing more rapidly than they did on the elliptical’s monitor. The display showed that my heart was beating irregularly. It beat at 146 for about ten seconds, then dropped to 90 for a few seconds, and leaped up to 140. I moved my arms and legs slowly but my heart continued beating erratically, and faster than 110 beats per minute.

  It was strange; my body was functioning so differently than it did before I was ill. I used to be able to get into my pace, and I’d felt my heart and lungs working at a constant rate. Now there was a disconnect. I wasn’t working at all and my heart was working too hard.

  Emmy suggested readjusting the band around my chest.

  I returned to the locker room and placed the monitor in a different area. I tried exercising again, and the numbers were as erratic as before.

  Emmy suggested that we leave the machines and take the spin class. If I sat and worked out, my heart rate would be lower than if I stood.

  We sat on our bikes and cycled to the beat of the music. I set the tension on my bike to zero so I could spin my legs without any resistance. I told myself to relax and focus on moving my legs slowly.

  I checked the monitor. My heartbeat was as erratic and fast as when I climbed a steep hill, but it wasn’t pounding in my chest, and I wasn’t breathless. My heart muscle was weak. It was beating ineffectively.