Walking with Death

When I was growing up, I sometimes heard my mom talk about an incident when I was just an infant. She said that I just went limp almost like I was dead. This was particularly frightening for my parents, because this was barely more than a year, if that long, since my brother died as an infant. In a very understaffed ER, it happened again and Mom just prayed, "Please don't take this one." I survived.
While there were some health issues, my elementary school years passed uneventfully until I was 12 when doctors became alarmed at the implications of the murmur that I had since birth. There began years of cardiologist consultations and just about every new noninvasive test that came along. Finally, when I was 16, they decided that I was old enough to have a cardiac catheterization. After they had examined all the test data and the motion pictures of the fluoroscope images, they informed me that I was healthy enough to "go out and chop logs." Years later a surgeon would have taken exception to such a prognosis, but he had the advantage of direct observation, far superior to any indirect test.
Over the years, during my drinking years, there were many "close calls." However, I easily dismissed all of these even one in 1973 which involved a fractured vertebra which the orthopedic surgeon said should have "at least paralyzed" me. That only served to get me to my first alcohol rehab and my first AA meeting. A few days out of the hospital I drank again.
Although this may not be the experience of most people, it really isn't all that different. From the moment we are born, "Death" is not far from us. He is most likely to take us without warning when we least expect it, by a heart attack when we think we are healthy or when someone runs a red light and crashes into us or any of so many ways we couldn't even guess. Just that suddenly he came close to me in the spring 1983. I had been staying up too many hours and gotten too little rest (probably even already manifesting the sleep disorders that were diagnosed years later). While driving home one night, I fell asleep at the wheel, taking an exit unexpectedly. Still sleeping, I took out a stop sign and awoke to the pain of both arms breaking. The van crossed the intersection and perched in a tree where I waited to be rescued. With two broken arms, a fractured knee, a few holes in me, and unknown internal injuries I spent the night until firefighters and paramedics extracted me from my wrecked van. I had barely escaped "Death" once again, but I didn't know how close he still was.
Two weeks into my hospital stay, after so many tests chasing "poor lung function," the day before physical therapy is scheduled to start getting me out of bed, an intern is practicing reading Xrays by looking at the film and then checking the report to see whether he found everything the radiologist had. When he looked at my chest Xray, he saw a shadow that wasn't explained in the re;port. He called whoever was supervising him and asked about it. Up until that time all my chest Xrays had been "portable' chest Xrays because they hadn't had me out of bed. A normal chest Xray and an arteriogram clearly showed a traumatic tear of the descending aorta which was "seeping." A thin membrane was keeping me from "bleeding out" into my chest.
As they are giving me a healthy dose of Valium by injection, the doctors not only explain the seriousness of my condition but also inform me that I have to be transferred to the Army hospital on the other side of the Bay because the Navy hospital doesn't have a heart-lung machine and the helicopter is already on another case.
Not only was my aorta successfully patched but also the surgeon repaired a coarctation of the aorta, a congenital defect. In fact, he informed me that it is a wonder that I had grown to be an adult with such a serious degree of narrowing. "Death" had been walking with me all those years "just out of reach."
After surviving this wreck so dramatically, eventually found that I had also lost all fear of death. Adding to this the fact that I have clear memories from past lives that I have lived, I have complete confidence that not only could I live through anything but also, if I should die, I will live again.
Several months ago, when a high PSA score got me sent to Urology for evaluation and a lump was found and a biopsy was scheduled, my mortality once again came into focus. At my age and with a background of these kinds of experiences and unconstrained by not having a wife or even a girlfriend, how could I not conclude that there is no better way to spend the rest of my life than devoted to the Dharma as a Buddhist monk.
Now with the results of the biopsy showing cancer and a treatment plan set out for me, not only is my decision to pursue Tibetan Buddhist monasticism confirmed but I also can see "Death" hanging out with me just out of reach. I don't fear dying, but I do want to be of benefit to all sentient beings.