Irrecoverable

Abstract

Irrecoverable Margarita Saona (bio) "We'll get you back to that," the cardiologist said with a wide smile, pointing to a photo posted on the wall of my room in the Adult Surgical Heart Unit. It was a picture of me breaking a board with a sidekick from the floor of my karate school. I had suffered what a member of the cardiac team called a "fatal arrhythmia." At that point, my heart was being supported by extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and the doctors were pondering the viability of my lungs and kidneys. Doctors, as much as patients, dream of recovery. They want to heal. They want to succeed. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, recovery is "the process of becoming well again after an illness or injury." That definition is close to the etymological sense of the word when it entered the English language in the mid-fourteenth century. Now we use the word in a broader sense to talk about getting back something that has been lost, and thus, we say things like "she recovered her stolen car" or "she already recovered all the money she invested." This shift in meaning is deceitful, however. When we think of lost objects, recovery implies complete restitution: we lose something, but then it returns to our possession. It's gone and then it's back. Not here/now here. But we humans do not recover in this sense from the kinds of loss produced by illness and other forms of trauma. Illness experiences leave marks that reveal the illusory nature of restitution narratives. The use of the active participle, so prevalent among those who struggle with addiction ("I am a recovering X") could apply to many health conditions in which life must be lived one day at a time. We might never regain all that we have lost, a particularly poignant reality for people who suffer from chronic or degenerative diseases. People who have met me in recent years react with a mix of incredulity and elation when they learn that I received a heart transplant five years ago. I don't look any different from most women in their late fifties. I give the appearance of enjoying a full recovery: I work full time, I still practice karate, I travel, I take care of my family. [End Page 61] But I am immunocompromised and, like many others in recovery, at a much higher risk of contracting diseases. My medications have already caused predictable side effects, like carcinomas big enough to require surgical interventions and osteoporosis, which resulted in a fractured vertebra. There are plenty of things that I will never recover. I am thankful that I recovered some of my strength and my muscle tone, after being unable to support my own weight. I can stand up by myself, I can walk, I can exercise some. I am glad I recovered my voice, after having to use an acrylic board and markers to communicate after long periods of intubation, but singing has become harder. I regained several things I now see as great gifts, like the pleasure of taking a shower or sleeping in my own bed. There are, however, things that are forever lost, like the sensitivity of my skin around all the scars that record the history of my surgeries, a history that is for me unrecoverable, shrouded by anesthesia and other episodes of lost consciousness. Events themselves are gone, never registered as memories in my mind. I ask others to tell me what happened on certain days. I was connected to an Impella in one hospital and then transported by a special ambulance to another hospital to be connected to the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine. These things were recounted to me. They can give me facts, but never the experience of what I went through while in the darkness of the self. A common Spanish word for memory is "recuerdo," from the Latin recordari, going back to the heart. That poetic turn, revealed by etymology, is in my case ironic as my original heart is beyond recovery, beyond repair, forever gone. I am in my sixth year of post-transplant survival. The average survival time is between 5...