After the Stroke by May Sarton

fibrillating. Of course I was a little nervous lying on a narrow bed in Intensive Care for a half-hour or so before Dr. Petrovich arrived and the machinery could be set up. Then I was alone again and by now quite tense.
    I decided to invent a game of visualizing, a flower perhaps, but finally I decided on Pierrot’s face and slowly brought it into focus in my mind, thinking, “It looks like a crumpled pansy,” and I smiled because it really does. I felt pleased to have invented a device against nervous tension.
    When the cardioversion finally took place I was anaesthetized for a few seconds and it was over.] Dr. Petrovich said, “It’s fine. It’s done the trick!” Euphoria! I was a prisoner set free. And for an hour I lay there in bliss waiting for a sandwich and a glass of milk—it was near two.
    But then when a nurse brought me the pill, Amiodoroni, the one that makes me ill, I realized I was being asked to go back to hell. It was a traumatic reversal and a storm of tears popped out of me. Late that night, around nine-thirty, after I had gone to sleep, now in a private room with the same lovely view I had had before of a line of trees against the sky, Dr. Petrovich came in. Yes, I have to take the pill or have another stroke. The hardest thing psychologically to take is that he does not believe this drug makes me sick. He insisted it was the fibrillation that did. So I am on the drug, one a day for a week, then one every other day.
    Dr. Gilroy also came in to see me and said if I am still as miserable in two or three weeks to go and see him. This was comforting.
    I woke to nausea and begged for something to help, and they did give me something which unfortunately made me very groggy all day.
    Edythe fetched me at the hospital and it was a help to have her here last night. We had fun making a homey supper together of corned beef hash with a poached egg and a little salad, half a grapefruit for dessert. We watched Pierrot play.
    But that night in the hospital when I lay and tried to face what must be accepted, I realized that a kind of aloneness is with me now. I have to curl up deep down inside myself. For the moment I have no energy even for the telephone. This is a new phase as I wrote at the start today—a phase in which I am more alone than ever before.
    A steady downpour outside this morning matches my mood and I rather like this wild, wet world.

Monday, June 23
    Again Saturday and Sunday I gave up and stayed in bed. I see clearly that the psychological problem is that I see no change —with an operation one gets better, some hard days, but the movement is there towards healing. If I had terminal cancer I would be on my way elsewhere, movement of another kind. But for five months I have been on a plateau of misery.
    So something has to change and I have made an appointment with Dr. Gilroy for tomorrow.

York Hospital, Tuesday, June 24
    As agreed I stopped in at Dr. Petrovich’s office yesterday morning for Lucy to give me more pills—Amiodoroni—and to listen to my heart. She was upset to find it was back fibrillating and called Dr. Petrovich at once—he has put me back in the hospital, has put me on three-a-day of the pill and will do another cardioversion of the heart on Saturday. I was happy to be back in shelter again, not responsible for anything —for Sunday evening I had got stupidly exhausted catching Pierrot—it’s his evening game to run in and out of the bushes playing hide-and-seek. Before that I had chased a huge gray squirrel off the big feeders eight times, running out with Tamas behind me, barking—and back again out of breath. I shall be missing the peonies at their height, but the truth is I have been too sick to enjoy the garden or to pick flowers. I can hardly believe it.
    What I have enjoyed is the wonderful silence at night—the steady throb of tree frogs and crickets and far away the long crescendos of gentle surf as the