I am no positive-thinking Pollyanna.
After sleeping through
the grisly details of this enormous surgical violence
I fully expect to awaken to:
(1) nagging, concentration-nibbling pain;
(2) poor-me psychological depression;
(3) feeble childlike helplessness.
These are the price of a new part,
a xenograft bargain not available to my ancestors,
courtesy Medicare.
A debt I incur in four days, satisfied -- when?
In a month, maybe.
What really bakes my noodle
are the hypothetical pianos dropping from skyscrapers,
three unknowable risks:
(1) weirdly-evolved hospital bugs
crawling inside me through
temporary orifices;
(2) "pumphead" mental deterioration,
so I misplace even more proper nouns and
forget how to fashion a story arc;
(3) cardiac complications of all sorts,
ranging from off-beat percussive wandering to
immune system over-reaction to swampy lung.
But, hey, you take a risk when you walk
out the door in the morning.
Maybe these are the harm's-way bullets I dodged
when I eluded the Vietnam draft
45 years ago.
And Death? Pshaw.
Make practical arrangements
and enjoy life and the people in my life
... longer, shorter -- now.