Many years ago, I had an operation
to correct a congenital heart murmur.
And this involved some very powerful anesthesia
and four hours of surgery to implant
a mechanical aortic valve.
I don't know why I'm telling you all this.
But I do because if I don't tell you this,
you don't understand the poem.
Apart from the indignity of the surgery,
there is this issue where the blood circulates
outside of the body for some considerable time.
And I was talking about this earlier.
This can cause a psychological disassociation, a kind
of emotional derangement.
And this has been given the name Pump Head.
Anyway, this and its twin poem are for Jim.
This is called "The Halving."
"General anesthesia.
A median sternotomy achieved by sternal saw.
The ribs held aghast by retractor, the tubes
and cannulae drawing the blood to the reservoir
and its bubbler.
The struggling aorta cross clamped.
The heart chilled and stopped and left to dry.
The incompetent bicuspid valve excised.
The new one, a carbon coated disk housed expensively
in a cage of tantalum, is broken from its sterile
pouch then heavily implanted into the native heart.
Bolstered, seated with sutures.
The aorta freed, the heart restarted.
The blood allowed back after its time abroad,
circulating in the machine.
The rib spreader relaxed and the plumbing removed.
The breastbone lashed with sternal wires.
The incision closed.
For hours I'd been away, out of my body made to die,
then jerked back to the world.
The distractions of delirium came and went
and then as the morphine drained,
I was left with a split chest that ground and grated on
itself.
Over the pain, the blackness rose and swelled.
Pump Head, is what some call it.
Debris from the bypass machine migrating to the brain.
But it felt more interesting than that.
Halved and unhelmed, I have been away, I said to the ceiling.
And now I am not myself."