On the screen, a heart is beating.
My heart.
It's less the pounding of a machine pump than a dance akin to the graceful thrust of an ocean invertebrate, an octopus or jellyfish, maybe.
I feel the ultrasound probe rammed into the tender muscle between two ribs, the radiographer frowns in concentration. The syncopated sloshing of my mitral valve, with an inconsequential 'murmur', looks a little like a lid on a bubbling pot of pasta, and sounds a little a very quiet dishwasher cycle.
I read, once, that the people who truly don't have any sense of rhythm often have irregular heartbeats. Its that lack of essential, personal background rhythm that means their brain struggles to hold the stability of an external rhythm. Maybe that's a myth, it helped inspire confidence in nervous adult music students.
I watch the screen and sense the rush of life in me and of me. Propped awkward on my side on the examination table, holding perfectly still, holding my breath (as instructed) yet I know I am dancing with every fibre of my being. I see it in real time.
I live at a time when technology means I can see my own heart beating, when highly trained health workers can use these images to inform my care of this precious marvel. I am awash with a heady mix of awe and tender love. For five and half decades, this organ has kept time in its own regular rhythm.
It is only later I will learn that its pulse spiked dangerously high and began to skip beats, in a flutter of doublets and triplets. My own personal jazz riff. A heart so valiantly trying to serve the cells of my body with haemoglobin and oxygen that it metaphorically tripped over its own feet, only to rise and keep going.
So far.
Celine Dion sang "my heart will go on and on", but that's not true in a literal sense. Written in the graceful, ecstatic writhing of my heart is 'Here and now, I pulse with life. It will not last forever. Be joyful.'
Joy heartens us. That feels like a deep truth. I feel all the splendid terrors of finitude: I will die. This amazing deep sea creature may go awry in oh so many ways either sudden or slow. I know all of this, feel all of this. I know I will die because here and now, I know I am alive.
As the light flickers across the screen, tracing the contours of life in motion, I touch, for a moment, the raw reality of that exultation.
I am alive.
I live. I live. I live. I live.
Thank you for reading, your time and attention are a gift.
Over to You
Have you ever seen your heart - or someone else’s - on an echocardiogram (heart ultrasound)? Did you have feelings about that? Or did you intellectualise that experience? (There are no wrong answers here.) What did you think at that moment? OR Have you ever laid with your ear against a loved one’s chest and been comforted by the steady beat of their heart?
1 in 4 deaths in Australia are attributed to heart disease, because eventually human bodies wear out. Did you know that eating plenty of vegetables may reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease by 17%? Maybe munch on a carrot?
Some interesting research about interoception, our ability to perceive the state of our own bodies. If you’ve ever had an urgent need to pee after a bout of concentrated work or study, you were distracted from or ignoring your interoception. Article includes an easy self-test that involves listening for your own heartbeat.
Michelle, this is so beautifully written. I found my heart cheering on your own, jazzy, heart as I pictured it working so hard to serve you. Tripping, but rising.
Bless your heart, in the most literal sense.
Whenever I lay my head on my beloved’s chest I find great comfort in hearing its rhythm. Such is my way, I also allow myself to acknowledge that there will come a time when it will pulse its last pulse; a thought that always evokes a deep sadness, alongside an even deeper reverence, and love.
Michelle - Beautifully and thoughtfully composed once again. Listening or seeing bodily functions via technological intervention always seems to feel invasive. Not that the information isn’t important but there’s always an element of an alien encounter on screen taking place - which is strange since the alien in fact the patient.