On the day of my open heart surgery, I walked by a statue of Jesus, another one of St. Francis and a wall-size photograph of the Pope. What did I expect? I am a Jew seeking life-saving heart surgery in a Catholic hospital.
What’s a few crosses during open heart surgery?
Today I’m on the “other side” of the surgery.
That is if you consider I have a seam running from the top of my chest to a few inches above my belly button — “the other side.”
When my wife Lisa planned our beach vacation in freezing January, open heart surgery was not on the summer “To Do” list. We were still concerned about Covid and what the modified rules and regs might be for a week at the beach. The criticality of our concern was focused mostly on would we be required to wear masks on the Boardwalk? Would the arcade rides and games be open to our grandchildren? The French Fry stand. Was it still considered kosher?
Shortness of breath, and the feeling that I could very well pass out just from standing up was not scheduled. It was all too sudden and came on like a pop-up summer afternoon thunderstorm.
Catching my breath instead of the ball was never a concern when I was throwing the baseball around with my grandson. Yet in mid-May I found myself gasping for air after a simple toss and trying to explain to my grandson why I needed to sit down after a couple of grounders and fly balls.
My skin, sweaty and pasty white triggered orders from my wife and daughters to call the doctor. To call the doctor NOW. Suffering from middle-aged male disease, the one with the condition of not calling the doctor when feeling something isn’t right didn’t take over this time. In other words, I did take my condition to my doctor only with a self-diagnosis of allergies or even asthma. Spring, pollen, an out-of-the-blue breathing issue? Had to be allergies.
My family physician would change my world and my bad habit of self-diagnosis…well, in a heartbeat. He said he felt this was a cardiac issue. Ever have your doctor walk you from his office to the cardiac physician’s office down the hall? I was on my way to the principal’s office.
Urgency on his part? You could call it that. Fear on my part? You know it.
“I’m trying to prevent you from having a heart attack,” he said to me when I asked seriously why we were heading to the cardiologist. The cardiac doctor booked me for a catheterization. In less than two weeks, we would all learn that I was in trouble.
Something funny? This would be a good spot for it.
I was on the table in the operating room in an anesthesia-based condition called “twilight.” It wasn’t anything like the hookah days back in my college dorm, but even though I felt no pain, I thought I could hear voices and for sure music somewhere in my anesthesia-induced nap.
“Hakuna matata.”
I thought I heard nurses and doctors singing along with Timon and Pumbaa.
Seriously.
When I emerged from the twilight zone, after I was hit with the need for open heart surgery, after I was told I’d need it as soon as possible, I asked the question most of us have first on our minds after a heart procedure.
“Was that Lion King I was hearing in the background?”
The nurse looked at me with sorrow and puzzlement.
I heard myself say to her, “I was just wondering why not “Frozen”?
No response from the nurse.
I imagine the encounter is still being shared in the break room.
But….there are more hallucinations both visual and audio to share soon.
I was wheeled out without another Disney word back to the changing area. This is where the phases of denial begin settling in. Patients are asked to bring a relative or friend along not only for a safe drive home, but also to really hear what the doctors are about to lay on you.
This is where I’d meet the surgeon who was going to put me on a heart, lung machine, and open me up like a steamed crab with a pitcher of cold beer.
The doctor was young, handsome, and incredibly confident. It was like they sent him from central casting to explain what was going to happen to me in a matter of days. Though he was standing right there, I didn’t process a word he had to say. Everything was being taken in by my wife. I couldn’t handle it. While he was talking survival rates for men my age, I was off in the land of D-E-N-I-A-L going over the infield fly rules…there’s a runner on first and nobody out and the batter pops the ball into the middle of the infield…Every once in a while, I’d nod my head to something I just agreed to hoping that Lisa knew what was going on.
Then came the nurse practitioner and the red and white heart tote bag. Here I would meet “Huggie,” the heart pillow, my new best stuffy for the coming weeks. You didn’t win Huggie at Whack-a-Mole. You “won” the red and white heat-shaped pillow because in a few days with a sawed chest, you’d need to lean into Huggie at every cough or every time you cleared your throat.
Then came the anti-septic liquid soap for showering the morning of the surgery. This was followed by a bottle of carbohydrate drink to help you last through the six-hour surgery.
Questions up to this point?
Anyone?
I had a few. Were they really talking about me? I mean this started with a baseball catch a few days before. What was I doing here?
The surgery would happen in 10 days. The conversation going on in the room typically involved my wife and the cardiac health professional. I was more or less the object of the conversation.
Oh, and my questions had nothing to do with surgery or recovery. I am a teacher of High School Jewish History at Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community High School in Baltimore. I had final exams to give on the very day I was scheduled for surgery. Certainly, heart surgery could wait until after the exams. I did not even get to the vacation reservations we had scheduled 17 days after the surgery.
I asked if the surgery could be pushed back so I could give the exams. I got this look both from my wife and the surgeon of “are you kidding me?” But I was not kidding anyone. I wanted to be there for the finals.
The answer was clearly “no.”
That was a solid “NO” from the good doctor. Too many factors involved, too many unknowns.
The beach? What’s $2,000 non-refundable ocean front condo dollars these days.
So, this is the part of my account where I transition from the hospital to the front seat of my wife’s Ford SUV. This is the part where I ask my wife a serious question.
“Did that really just happen back there in the hospital?”
After about the 7th time I repeated the same question….and got the same answer, I started leaving the land of DENIAL for the very hairy land of FEAR and how many days until this happens.
Did I tell you about the life-size statue of St. Francis in the lobby or the portrait of the Pope on the wall?
I did, right.
The University of Maryland Heart Institute is based at the St. Joseph’s Hospital. No mezuzahs on the doors. Crosses everywhere.
Toto, we’re not in Kansas, not to mention Sinai.
Having never experienced any real surgery before and to go right into heart surgery. Before I told anyone, relative or friend, I prayed to Hashem that this would be okay with an occasional “why me, what did I do wrong?” thrown in there. Then I did what all people of faith do, I got on Facebook and looked for an open-heart surgery support group. Not surprisingly I had my pick of them. The one I chose had an application and an acceptance policy. It took a day before I was accepted, and I appreciated that.
I would learn from this group that men and women of varying adult age groups shared the same fears and concerns I had. There were stories of great personal triumphs and personal accounts that I kind of wish I had not read. Somewhere between the guy who was already running half-marathons a couple of months post-surgery and the other guy who was a year post surgery and ready to give up, I found myself. These were people who had not had the surgery yet, but like me had looked around and had seen FB photos of men and women with the familiar seam in the middle of their upper chest. Some were still attached to IV and drainage tubes. It was seeing the near future on FB and it wasn’t pretty.
“I’m having open heart surgery. Triple bypass. The surgeon is great. No, I wasn’t expecting this.”
Friends reassured me that this surgery is done almost “routinely.” One friend kept calling it a “procedure”. I corrected him explaining that a colonoscopy (I’ve had five of them) is a procedure. A cortisone shot. That’s a procedure. This was six-hours of heart-lung machine, foley cath, heavy anesthesia surgery.
Another friend texted me “You’ve got this.”
I wasn’t so sure. I wish I did not have it.
I’ve had two awful kidney stones; a basil cell carcinoma removed from my forehead, and I’ve ingested five New York Times Crossword Puzzles worth of colonoscopy prep. If you’ve had a colonoscopy, you know exactly where I was finishing the crossword puzzles.
Open heart surgery? Unexpected? That was a documentary on Netflix; an episode of Grey’s Anatomy; but nothing that anyone in my family or circle of friends had experienced.
Lisa comforted me, but let’s face it. This was not comfort territory for me.
I will get to more of that later. Let’s just say that fears that I’ve had for most of my life were about to happen.
I heard from colleagues and students via text and email, and it all would help me in my recovery.
I’m jumping ahead now, which I didn’t want to do so quickly.
Surgery was scheduled for Thursday, June 3. On Tuesday, June 1, I got a call from the surgeon. He asked me if I wouldn’t mind delaying the surgery for a day, because several unexpected emergencies had come up for June 3.
Okay, so I know this is a horrible comparison. But I thought of the soldiers of the Allied Expeditionary Forces who were to invade Normandy on June 5, 1944 only to learn that their hard work in preparation to free the world of Hitler, would have to wait another day. Bad weather.
I was hoping for the best weather possible on June 4.
I was scheduled for surgery at 7:30 a.m. We were told to be at the hospital at 5:30. The hospital is about half an hour from our house.
There wouldn’t be much sleep from the night of June 4 until weeks into my recovery.
At 3:30 a.m. I got up to start the process. I needed to take a shower with the anti-septic liquid soap so that my body would be as germ free as possible for the surgery. There would be no breakfast that morning. The late spring morning was hazy and the high-pitched annoying sounds of the 17-year-ciccades was beginning to awaken the neighborhood.
Our morning newspaper had not even arrived yet as we departed for the St. Joseph’s Medical Center, one of the best heart hospitals in the area.
On one’s way to “the other side” are stops. Stop one is where I am taken to a space behind a curtain. A nurse hands me the gown. You know the one that opens in the back. I am to remove all of my clothing and stuff them into two plastic bags which would be given to Lisa. One’s privacy is over. Here you begin the first of repeating your name and birthdate for the first of like a thousand times to anyone scanning your hospital bracelet.
Next, two nurses entered the curtain each one equipped with a shaver. Like an orchestrated Zamboni pas de deux, the nurses mowed away the hair on both of my legs, my chest and in areas I never intended for shaving.
It was here that I learned that there would be another dragon to sleigh. So without boring you with difficult details, I am a child molestation survivor. I was molested by a Jewish youth advisor as a ninth grader. That time in life is imprinted so indelibly in my mind. Try explaining that to a well meaning nurse just trying to do her job who has undoubtedly seen more than her share of male patients.
When the shaving was done, and I opened my eyes, the IV nurse came in. When the IV is placed in my wrist, I felt that this was really the beginning of what would be five days of a hospital journey I will never ever forget.
Then came the hospital chaplain, a Christian minister. He knew my name and knew that I was Jewish. He asked if he could say the blessing “May the Lord Bless You and Keep You” that I say every Friday night to my daughters. And boys and girls, he said it in fluent Hebrew.
I don’t remember Lisa coming in to kiss me on the forehead and tell me she loved me before they wheeled me to the OR. I don’t remember looking at the ceiling tiles as I was moving through the corridor.
I checked out, asleep, and who knows. Gone.
Six hours later….
To be continued in the next installment of “My Heart, My Faith, the Surgery, the People, Hallucinations and Some Crosses.”
