Ear Whooshing Haiku Madness

In March 2006, I noticed the whoosh. Now in August 2010, I'm REALLY doing something about it. In two weeks, I will be going to the hospital for a "procedure" to investigate the sound that has plagued me for far too long. The annoyingly loud whoosh of my heartbeat. Every single one. According to NOVA, my heart beats roughly 35 million times per year. So that means I've HEARD roughly 140 million heart beats in the last 4 years. Enough is enough.

The problem? This procedure is a little scary. They're going in through my leg and up through my body into my jugular vein. Um, isn't that the BIG ONE? Yes, yes it is. So now it is my job to NOT think about:

• Bleeding out through my leg and dying
• Accidentally breaking my jugular and dying
• Having some kind of crazy brain hemorrhage and dying
• Some unknown thing happening and dying
• Catching MRSA or some other crazy infection while in the hospital
• Just being in the hospital for 2-3 days in general, twitching.
  

Good times. Luckily, I have a living will.

The way to counter these fears? Make the best of it. I've been trying to remind myself that this is a Good Thing. THIS is what I've been waiting for. A possible cure. I totally trust my doctor and his staff, and I'm excited to see if placing a balloon or cauterizing a vein will stop the sound. Please oh please oh please.

Back when I had a cyst on my tailbone, I was also quite worked up about having surgery. So in order to deal with that chaos, I invited all of my coworkers to a Cyst Going-Away Dinner right before I went on leave from work. And I asked them to write Cyst Haiku. I am so P*SSED right now that I can't actually find the file. I've switched computers since they were written way back when, so I am sure they are gone forever. (My only hope is that one of my coworkers stashed a copy on her computer. That would rock.) Since I worked with a bunch of writers, what they came up with was utterly hilarious. The subject matter helped.

So now I've been thinking about my whoosh. I asked the doctor's assistant to tell me the name of the vein they are looking at because I thought it had a number, but she said it wasn't that specific. I was going to make the vein a goodbye cake with the number on there and wish it farewell, but it might not be that easy. Instead, I'm going to make a Goodbye Whoosh cake. I'm going to pretend that this is going to work for sure. (Watch me come home and have the whoosh in the other ear.) IT WILL WORK!

Anyway, now I get to my point. I would like to invite you to write me Whoosh Haiku. Writing haiku seems easy, but it can be fairly complicated. You have to pay attention. It's 3 short lines of poetry that have a certain amount of syllables: 5, 7, 5.

Example:

Oh, violent whooshing
I can't hear the TV now.
I hate your loud sound.

Or something like:

Sometimes when I whoosh
If I listen too closely
It picks up the pace.

So if you read those aloud while counting the syllables on your fingers, you will find they go 5-7-5. Unless I made an error, which is possible because I'm bad at math.

OK, so your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write me a bunch of haiku that I can print out and hang in my hospital room around my bed to cheer me up while I'm lying flat on my back to make sure my leg doesn't bleed out. And then to read while I'm wandering around the hospital for a day to see if the whoosh is gone. And then while I'm still there figuring out if we should do something dangerous to stop it. Sound good?

And don't go pulling that sh*t with me where you're all: I'm not a writer. You're an editor--you'll judge me. I can't do it! STOP IT. I need this. I deserve the silliness. I don't actually care if your haiku poems have the correct amount of syllables. I'm looking for some inspiration while I'm surrounded by med students with clipboards. Give me something to make me giggle, inspire me, or make the doctors raise their eyebrows. YOU CAN DO IT.

If you don't want to leave it in the comments, email it to me at blondietales@gmail.com.

I'm counting on you.

To read all my posts about the whoosh, click here.