I've just finished rereading Double Team, the fifth and last in "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins" series. I released the eBook version to my patrons today and decided to just re-read the book from front to back this week. It brought a lot of things home, including the social strife we are currently undergoing in America. Some of it was painful to read but it is a message of hope and possibility. I've been reminded of late that nothing I wrote, sadly, is beyond the realm of possibility. I hope it's not a reflection of reality.
In addition to making me think about our current situation, it made me think about my situation last year when I was writing the story.
First of all, let me just get this out front right now. I am ANTIFAscist, ANTIRAcist, and believe with all my heart that Black Lives Matter. If you tell me 'All lives matter,' I can only respond by saying thank you for agreeing with me. You cannot believe all lives matter if you don't believe black lives matter. All lives aren't currently in danger. Black lives are. Focus on the problem or be the problem.
Now that I have that out of the way-and I cordially invite all fascists, racists, and people using 'all lives matter' as a means of trivializing the present threat to black lives to stop reading both this post and all my stories-let me get back to when I was writing Double Team. There's more on this subject in my First Exit blog.
I keep surprisingly good records of what I write. I don't know why I can't keep such good records for my taxes. I began writing Double Team on June 30, 2019. From the first of April until the end of June, I wrote and posted for patrons, a chapter of the Jacob Hopkins saga every day. (It's a total of 237 chapters.) I began this book at that pace. On July 5th, I walked off the pickleball court where I played every morning and said I couldn't play any longer because I couldn't catch my breath. That began the summer of hell.
I managed to get a doctor's appointment at my home clinic (a 350-mile drive from my summer camp). I stopped at every rest area to take a nap because I couldn't stay awake for the whole trip. After an examination, my doctor declared I had late-developing asthma. She prescribed albuterol and a steroid inhaler and sent me back to Idaho. That was July 26th. I attended a wedding that evening and driving from Lakewood WA to Lynnwood WA after the wedding (about 50 miles) I had to stop after 20 miles and take a nap. And I left the reception hours early.
My writing productivity declined. I was managing maybe three chapters a week instead of a chapter a day. And it kept getting worse. Twice, I went to the local clinic after spending a sleepless night in a panic attack because I couldn't breathe and expected to die. After the last visit, I booked a flight back to Seattle because I knew I couldn't drive that far and I needed to see the doctor. A friend took me to the airport. When I debarked from the plane and walked to the terminal, I had to stop and rest twice. My ex-wife, with whom I have a very good relationship, took me to my doctor on Tuesday, August 20. The doctor poked, prodded, and prescribed a more powerful (and expensive) steroid for my lungs. Then, as a last-minute check, she ordered an EKG.
When she came back into the examining room and told me my heart rate was 167 beats per minute and the cardiologist in Seattle wanted to see me right now, everything changed. I found out I was in a-fib and had been for two months while taking albuterol-known to cause the heart to race. The cardiologist ordered an echocardiogram, prescribed a heart regulating drug and blood thinner, and told me to be back on October 12 for cardioversion.
By that time, I'd already been in a-fib for more than two months and the drugs didn't seem to be helping. I wasn't sleeping more than an hour at a time, but fell asleep after fifteen minutes of attempting to do anything. Like write. My pace had gone down to 100 words and then sleep. 100 words and then sleep. I knew I didn't have much further to go to finish the book, but I was having a hard time getting there. And that is how the month of September went as I lost appetite and should have lost weight, but retained water pound for pound. My legs looked like tree stumps.
On September 22, I finished the Double Team manuscript and sent it off to my editors. September 27, I turned 70 years old. The next day, a friend drove me back to Seattle where I stayed with my ex and my daughter. When I had difficulty breathing and threw up the hardboiled egg it had taken me over half an hour to eat, on Monday, my daughter called my doctor and they told her to bring me directly to the emergency room. I had cardioversion the next morning on October 1, eleven days before I was scheduled.
My heart was back in correct rhythm, but I still couldn't breathe. I had so much water in my system that I was coughing non-stop and nearly suffocating in my sleep. Lung capacity tests showed I was breathing at about 35% capacity. Enter diuretics. A big dose. I dropped thirty pounds in the next two weeks. I weighed less than I had since I was a sophomore in high school. But I could breathe at last.
There was one more step and that was an ablation where they burned out the bad part of my heart on November 4. Two weeks to make sure everything was stable and I was on the road again.
My writing is not back to the frantic pace of a chapter a day again, but it is moving along nicely. When I read what I'd written during that time of illness, it brought back the pain I was in, the horror and panic over not being able to breathe, the inability to eat, the impossibly long walks from bed to shower. I remember what was going on in my own body as I wrote the climax of "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins." I'm happy to say, we both survived.
I released Double Team to my patrons in eBook today. They are already well into the story in the online serial.
I took and take the pandemic seriously. I still wear my mask because even if it doesn't save me, perhaps it will save someone else. I maintain my social distance. I sit in my trailer and write yet another story (or three) to give to my readers. And I weep for the fact that in sixty years, since we marched for civil rights, protested on campuses and in the streets, and yes, even rioted when forced back by police or National Guard, we have learned nothing. We have turned back the clock on civil, gender, and individual rights. We have become less for having been here before.
Be well.