Twenty-seven months sharp after posting my last comment on this blog, in the morning of Saturday March 26th, completely out of the blue the walls of my aorta started to collapse and break. They call it "aortic dissection". It was like having a knife in my chest. In ten minutes time I was almost unable to breath and walk, and I had pain everywhere: head, stomach, back. One hour later I could have been dead - a chance that was made less likely by the perfect reaction of the person who was with me and of the doctors of the Hua Dong Hospital of Shanghai, where I was admitted in "very critical conditions".

I spent one week in hospital in absolute immobility, suspended between life and death, sedated by morphine. Then I had two operations, on Monday April 4th and Tuesday April 5th. There was up to a 90% of chances that I did not wake up from the second one. But everything went well, despite the odds: I woke up, surgery had been successful and the problem is now under control.

I spent the whole following night awake, listening to all those sounds and noises (cars, motorbikes, birds, people, silence) that I had thought I was not going to hear anymore.

The day after, Wednesday April 6th, I took the first picture of my new life, the one here above. Over my head there were bottles, bags, tubes, machines, screens, all of them connected with my body and veins. I thought that the cross on top of the pole holding all those bottles and bags was a bird flying over me. A metallic, sympathetic bird carrying fluids of life for me, the Beatles' Blackbird.

Life, death, pain, fears, hopes, hallucinations: it was the most terrible nightmare and at the same time the deepest, stronger emotional experience of my life. My life will never be the same, I will never be the same: enough to restart to write on this blog, I believe. There are many things to say. And the most important one, the one to celebrate: my trip to Ithaca is not finished yet!

Oh, and together with a new life I have a new name. I am An De Lie now.