Photo by Marco Forno from Unsplash.
The Colors of My Life
When I was five,
I looked up at the sky,
and my favorite color was blue.
When I was fifteen,
I wandered woodland ways,
and my favorite color was green.
When I was thirty-five,
I paused to smell the roses,
and my favorite color was red.
When I was sixty-five,
I swam in the sea,
and my favorite color was aquamarine.
Now I am seventy-five.
I look up at the sky,
and a rainbow paints the colors of my life.
Copyright© 2024 by Cheryl Batavia
I Have Missed You So Much!
I have been on an extended break due to health issues. This poem was written in early August to mark my 75th birthday. I wanted to share my birthday poem on WordPress at that time, but I knew I still wasn’t quite up to blogging.
When I went to my cardiologist, I was told that I was healthy and didn’t need to go through routine tests this year. I had experienced an extremely mild heart attack 18 years earlier and had years of good test results after that. I had no reason to suspect that anything much was wrong with my heart.
Ten days later, after several days of horrible “indigestion,” I ended up in the emergency room with a massive heart attack. On August 26, I had quintuple heart bypass surgery. I had spent twelve days in the hospital.
Women have different heart attack symptoms from men and often experience heart attacks as “indigestion.” Unfortunately, that can delay going to the emergency room, allowing the problems to get worse. That was my experience. It is practically impossible to distinguish heart attack symptoms from indigestion. Even the emergency room once misdiagnosed me with indigestion after 3 hours of monitoring and intensive tests. We must never be embarrassed to go to the emergency room with chest pain, even if it turns out to be just indigestion!
Robert and I both have multiple health challenges, and we look out for each other, but this time, we were both quite ill at the same time. Ill as Robert was, he made me a salad the day I came home from the hospital. Thank you, Robert!
My two wonderful daughters came from their home in Dallas for a week and took excellent care of me. I did the walking I was supposed to do, and for a while, my recovery was going well. The typical recovery time from open heart surgery is about eight weeks and is very intensive.
After a couple of months though, I started feeling ill and ended up in the emergency room again. Two of the five grafts in my heart were 100% blocked, and I had to have them stented. I was in the hospital for four days this time and slept in a reclining chair because I was unable to lie down without chest pain until after the angioplasty.
I felt very tired and weak for several weeks after that, but my energy has begun to return. Some days are better than others. I am building up my walking distance again. Today was a warm, sunny day, and I walked outside for thirty minutes.
Even though I am not quite up to speed yet, I miss my blogging friends terribly. I may not be able to post often or read posts and comment as much as I would like. Please be patient with me, and know that you mean a great deal to me.
Thank you to those who inquired about my health while I was on break and those who wished me well.
Soon I will report on some ongoing projects I have been working on.
A belated Happy New Year! May 2025 bring you and your family good health, happiness, and success! ❤️
