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Blood clot tax

In an effort to start feeling better after a long protracted slog of coping with a slew of little annoying yet draining health stuff that is mostly a residue of neglecting my physical needs for the last long  while, I joined a "pelvic floor exercise class".

This class is a lot harder than it sounds, and yet also incredibly effective given that it is essentially a learning "how to breathe" class.

As I breathed deep into my pelvic floor (or whatever !!) I inevitably had an emotional response during the second class.

My mom died only 3 months ago.  Before that she was very much alive---fully present, even though she lived with discomfort or bothersome side effects. Despite her vitality (or maybe because of it?) , she was very stoic and put up with a lot of nonsense before she died.   We updated each other at least twice a day about things going on in our worlds.  We exchanged tidbits on a continuous basis...what the kids were up to, what they made for a community meal, who was planning to do what at the Christmas Bazaar, her experiences of breathlessness (probably just a cold).  

Due to the nature of her illness, I braced for her death for a long time, and then all of sudden it happened and there were no more messages from my mom, or so I thought.

Learning to live without her has been a very interesting (she would find this discussion fascinating) and not exactly what I expected.  I expected a big crater to open up inside me (and it did), but she is helping me fill it in unexpected ways and also to live in a new way with a big crater inside of me (more surface area for creating art).

As I held a side plank a little longer than was comfortable and I focused as hard as I could on breathing. Just breathing, nothing fancy. I have no ability yet to gracefully channel breath in to my pelvic. I am a breathing weakling and learning to master "in and out" and nothing else. 

As I struggled, I had a sudden surge of memory from one of those messages from my mom.

She messaged that she had gone for a routine visit with the GP who specializes in Cancer and explained she was having trouble breathing all that week. She had interspersed her cheery updates with random reports of breathing trouble. In that one message, I learned that the GP asked her to walk with her and after a few steps, the doctor instantly suspected she had blood clots.  Luckily, due to the doctor's very quick action, my mom narrowly avoided the catastrophic consequence of a pulmonary embolism.  She immediately started treatment and didn't spend any time in hospital.

In that moment, as I concentrated on my breath,  I finally received a message she had sent telling me this story months ago in its entirety.  At the time, I was relieved, of course, but I didn't let myself picture her struggling to breathe.  Her fear was unknown to me, it was completely masked by my own.  But there she was , in her daily life,  telling me about how she was risking and recovering from blood clots to have more time here with us.  Buried deep in the flow of messages about mushroom dip and tulip bulbs was my mom's experience of living with cancer.  

In the middle of a slew of instant messages, I finally received that particular message and now it is deep in my pelvis
, helping me to learn how to breathe properly again.


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