connecting the life line to the heart and head lines

 

In January of 1998, some months before we moved to San Luis Obispo so unexpectedly, I found myself, equally unexpectedly, in New Orleans where, naturally, I had my palm read.

For $5, the palm reader began her reading by sharing a number of things about me that she couldn't possibly have known. A good intuitive, I thought. Then she said I would travel a lot that year, sometimes unexpectedly (already true), that I would change jobs, no, that I would have the same job but in another location (which turned out to be true as well), and that I would live into my 80's (very reasonable) but that I come very close to death once before that. 

In the years since her reading, the palm reader became an integral part of my how-we-came-to-San-Luis story, but I never included the last part. Superstitious. Anyway, if every part of every prediction came true, we would live in a very different world. It's startling enough that so much of the rest of the story came true.

But now that part has manifest, too. On the day of the Grand Opening of Sweet Earth's new store (at Chorro and Palm), my palm was having its own grand opening, my hand, and quite possibly my arm and my life, saved. 

A few days later it happened again. Back in the ER for 7 hours of blood tests, stool cultures and saline solution dripping into my vein, I was so severely dehydrated from an intestinal infection that my blood pressure was 77/48. Some nasty bacteria (C. diff.) had taken up residence in my intestines, so beautifully clean from four days of intravenous antibiotics rushing through them.

Now I am recovering. It's taking quite a long time. I'm still so tired that I sleep for hours every day. My hand is recovering beautifully, though, thanks to Dr. Daniel Woods' excellent work. It's just taking a while for all those complex internal communities to be rebuilt.

Yesterday the sutures were removed from the wound at the center of my palm. What remains is a horizontal line with four tiny stars above it.  A good palm reader would have more to say but it seems pretty obvious that the major lines on my right palm - are now connected: head to heart to life.

What can I be but eternally grateful?