I will never forget the first crack of light that I saw after waking from the open heart surgery.
“I’m Alive!” I thought in wonder as the first sun ray sliced through the darkness that had filled my head. I opened my eyelids slowly at first, afraid that it couldn’t be true I’d survived, after all the anticipation and dread.
I had gone into the hospital a month earlier for an outpatient day procedure. I remember the doctor, that I’d chosen so carefully, looked like a completely different person as he came in to say hello while they were prepping me that early morning for my surgery. His eyes were red and his eyelids were puffy. He looked as if he’d had no sleep. My chest froze. I did not show my fear, but I thought about it. I thought about canceling and then thought about what a fit everyone would throw. I should have gone with my gut.
Thirteen days later I woke up to the foggy vision of people standing in a circle all around me, asking me questions.
“Do you know where you are?” a female nurse asked.
“Seton Hospital!” I replied.
“Where is that?” the nurse responded.
It was the hospital where I had my lung surgery five years earlier. “Austin, Texas” said I.
The nurse explained to me that I was now in, Peoria, Illinois, and asked me if I understood. I indicated and thought that I did.
“Who is the president?” the doctor asked.
Although Donald Trump had just been elected, the words “Ronald Reagan!” came flying out of my mouth.
“Guess again.” the nurse said.
My memory rolled forward and suddenly clicked, “Obama!” I said.
“Try again.” someone said.
Then I groaned, and everyone laughed.
It was then that they explained to me during the day procedure the doctor had accidentally poked a hole in my heart with the hot laser wire he was using to mend it. I was bleeding to death so they had to do emergency surgery. They cut me from my breastbone to my belly button and accidentally sliced my liver in the process. But the liver was no big deal by comparison because injuries like that will heal on their own. The accident and preventative measures that they had to take caused my body to be sprayed with a good amount of blood clots. My lungs were filled with them and constantly monitored.
Five days after the accident I was still unconscious and they found a blood clot that was threatening my leg so a surgery was performed to save that limb. During all these surgeries of course, I was fed no food or liquid so when I began to wake up, maybe day 13, I began to cry for water. I remember my son walking in and out the room, and the nurses, and all I could say to them was. “Water. Water.” No one would give me water. I was pinned to the bed with all the contraptions but I could see the sink on the wall in my room. I waited till dark, until no one was around. I’d tried to get to that sink before but my son had stopped me. He’d been given strict orders not to let me have any liquid, except for a few scant pieces of ice. I was crazy for water by this point.
But it was evening and I lifted my head to look around and I realized he was gone, or so I thought. He was just sleeping on the chair, but he was sleeping, so this was my chance. I slid slowly off the bed, legs down, feet touching, “now slide off and hold your weight up” I thought. And I did just that but the tubes going into my veins were pulled taut and I was now pinned vertically to the side of the bed with all the tubes sticking into my arms. Exhausted I let myself slide to the floor.
They put on my hospital records that I had “fallen” and for that reason I was punished the next 20+ days, and not allowed to leave the bed. They put an alarm on it, despite that I explained to them over and over again that I had never fallen, that their equipment had tangled me up, but no one ever listened to that or anything else I had to say. My body paid for those hospital restrictions as there was almost zero muscle mass when I got out of the hospital and absolutely no way I could hold my own weight. When the upper torso has been cracked wide open and is newly stitched up, and it is the upper torso that must hold the weight when the legs work like noodles, it’s an added level of pain to the healing. But it still can’t compare to the lobectomy that I got a few years earlier, so for that I am grateful.
The nurses were nice enough and all. They just never took my concerns seriously. I suppose that it’s difficult when you have more than one boss. Nurses have many bosses. Maybe it’s the doctors who should spend more time listening to their patients.
After the accidents, my confidence in the medical world had been shaken so I wanted to have even more control of who would be breaking my chest open and taking my heart out to work on it. There were only three choices there and I knew little about any of them. The first one they sent to me was the most experienced. I looked him up. He had a bad record, a law suit.
He came in the room with the images of my heart and said, “Apparently, you may have had this pseudo-aneurysm in your heart before the accident.”
I thought to myself, “Are you kidding me? I’ve had thorough images of my heart made every year for the past nine years. No aneurysm. This doctor was on the defensive before I had even said a word, so I immediately ruled him out. The next doctor didn’t want to do it because it conflicted with his schedule, or so he said.
The third doctor had gone on vacation and when he returned I learned he was the one the nurses recommended most highly. He had an exceptionally high rate of success with his heart surgeries, they said, but he was selective about who he chose as his patient. When I heard he had returned from vacation, I excitedly requested him for the surgery. This was it, my moment of grace. The most excellent doctor had come back to save me.
I heard a bustling outside my door on the hour the doctor would be arriving. I saw hospital gowns go back and forth through the crack in the door hinge. There was low talking, papers shuffled, and footsteps walking away. The doctor never even came in to meet me. He didn’t like the odds. He turned down the request and walked away without a word to me.
Here it is now, five years later, and I’m healthier than most my age, by the grace of our creator, and I suddenly realize that this guy literally walked away and left me for dead. It’s hard to explain how much extra fear that created in me to realize my odds were that bad. I’m wondering should I let him know I made it alright without him.
The next surgery to be performed would be “exploratory surgery” where a small camera would be taking pictures of the hole in my heart, with no repairs made. It was a risky surgery. My heart was at risk of exploding at any time during my entire stay. No one wanted to do that surgery either, placing an instrument close to a heart that was at risk of exploding. They sent in the head of the whole cardiac team to perform that exploration, only the doctor didn’t tell me that’s who he was. A nurse brought it up after he left the room.
“You must be very special.” she said to me as I lay on the cold steel surgical table, final preps being put in place. “Dr. ‘so and so’ never comes here to perform surgery himself.”
I felt chilled to the bone when she explained who he was and I realized that he’d kept that bit of information from me when he came into my room and asked me in detail what had happened. I couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t explained who he was to me. He listened to me carefully when I explained the accident as I understood it. I suppose he was wondering what my story was going to be, if I survived the corrective surgery.
As I lay there, waiting for this dangerous heart exploration, realizing I’d been strangely deceived by the man about to be prodding into my body, whose career (or reputation) may have been in the balance based on my outcome, my expectations sunk to an even lower level.
The doctor wrote orders to enter with the camera through the wrist rather than the groin, to which a surgical assistant exclaimed in surprise, “But that direction is dangerous!” and my heart stopped in fear, as this shook my confidence at an ever deeper level.
I requested that they go in through the groin, without explaining. I insisted and I got my way. You can do that, people, even while lying in the surgical room all prepped and ready with the team around you. If your gut feelings have been faithful to you most of your life, go with them.
I said goodbye to my son on that morning, realizing, once again, it might be the last time that I would ever see his face.
But I never felt more certain that it was our last goodbye than when I went in several days later for the open heart surgery to fix the damage. After all that I had been through I really didn’t expect that I’d be getting out alive.
That’s why I’ll never forget that first crack of light. Probably the closest feeling to a miracle that one could ever feel.
Oikos 