Dating : Open Heart Surgery

Him or Me?

The diagnosis is definitive.

The remedy, conclusive.

Immediate heart surgery is required.

There’s no time for second opinions.

This patient is seconds away from succumbing to extensive malignant damages to the heart.

Without open heart surgery, the damaged areas will at best, require a heart transplant or kill her chances of…Becoming Her Best.

The…

Cardiologist is Me.

Anesthesiologist is Me.

Surgeon is Me.

Patient is Me.

Nurses are every version of Me.

Pathologist is Me.

ICU Staff…is Future Me.

My…

Past hurts qualify Me the Cardiologist, capable of diagnosing a broken heart and the degree of brokenness.

My…

Hardhead informs the exact measure of anesthesia for a successful surgery. As my own Anesthesiologist, I will allow the patient some dis-comfort at least, to feel the initial incision. Her body cannot trust the heart to remember the journey or the pain. If a new beau rekindles familiar traumas, the skin must proactively alert the rest of the anatomy of his becoming. Becoming a Heart-Problem.

My…

Experience provides Me the Surgeon, technical capacity to expertly surgically remove the damaged tissue from the healthy.

My…

Daddy-issues have Me, the Patient laying on this surgical table, exposed and near death. Not so, near that the damaged parts of my heart are life-threatening in the physical sense but, in the sense that if those damages are not cut-out, it will damage all of me.

My…

Good, Bad, and Indifferent Nurses, are all showing Me who I am and was. The Good-Me Nurse gives me comfort and encouragement. Bad-Me Nurse warns, “the surgery is extreme”. She too is an encourager but, to rehab his insecurities and inadequacies. “God Uses!”, is her default explanation. Indifferent-Me Nurse expresses nothing. The what, she needs to “care for…my heart or my man” is left up to me, the patient. Either choice, she’s there for both!

My…

African-American Womanhood is my Pathology-expertise. I have identified generational pathologies. Intimately, dissected, and recorded broken hearts too damaged to heal or love. Examined diseased tissue left to seep into the marrow and lives of the sick and deceased. Educated, others on this disease’s intelligence and capacity to lay dormant and/or mutate cause its host, long-reaching external damages. The damaged heart, beget more broken hearts.

Future-self is waiting for me to choose and care for me. Not You.

The ICU is staffed for one.

I am my own rehab!

Please, find your own and dispose of that damaged heart.

It is your artwork.

Not true, we collaborated.

It is ours!

See, the healing has started.

Surgery was Successful.

That damaged heart is history!

And you too!