The temperature swings are just short of maddening, but they are definitively on the cold side. That plus the years lead to more than the occasional creaky bones. But that’s not it.

I don’t remember how long it’s been this way – maybe 20 years? There’s a peculiar pinch at the join of my left shoulder and my neck that shows up from time to time. The best I can tell? That’s where the stress settles.

Shavasana. The hijabbed trainee averted her eyes as I took off my jacket, sweatshirt, and t-shirt, and lay back on the table. I closed my eyes. Soon enough, the oil and the pressing. For the next 20-minutes, the adjustments, the pressing, and the occasional whooshing and whirling sounds of my blood moving through the different valves in my heart.

The echo-cardiogram is every-so-often routine, scheduled sometime around the physical. The first one I had was just a few years ago. I scheduled an appointment with an orthopedist to look at my shoulder. Excessive violin practice, I figured, pinching in the crook of my neck with awkward posture. It was getting worse. The pain was building daily. That resulted in a few weeks of physical therapy… just not before the orthopedist made a call, gave me a slip of paper to hand-deliver, and sent me to the ER across the parking lot.

Blood and urine, EKG, an MRI, and a few hours on an IV and a monitor, as they gathered their data and watched my blood pressure descend to within their tolerances. They couldn’t believe I was alive. They couldn’t believe I wasn’t passed out on the floor. Completely asymptomatic and functioning normally – a marvel they all had to come and see.

In another timeline, maybe I died that day. In this one, there is the constant blood pressure-raising irritation to satisfy the doctors once per quarter or more so they will renew the prescriptions to keep me coming no more than once per quarter, leaving me with all of the side-effects in between.

But that association with the shoulder pain? Lying on the table, shavasana – the “corpse pose” – examining each muscle in my body, consciously releasing the tension everywhere – especially that shoulder as I listened to the valves open and close with that double-tap rhythm, forgetting for a moment why I was there.

Shavasana – it turns out that I was dead in every timeline, if only for a moment. And the resurrection? The hijabbed trainee averted her gaze again as I dressed.