It started on my Shabbat walks to shul.
The steep hill I climb became tougher and tougher. I’d reach the top of the hill and bend over to catch my breath. Sometimes it would be followed with a puff from my asthma rescue inhaler.
It wasn’t only my breath.
More and more just getting up from the comfortable sofa to answer the phone or a knock on the front door made me feel light headed almost like I’d pass out.
I’d catch myself.
Yet the breathlessness, the spinning feeling in my head didn’t happen if I was exercise walking on a track, standing in front of my classes or pushing a cart through the aisles of Costco.
Two weeks ago, however, I felt as if life had to change. Or there would be no more.
Having a baseball catch with my three grandsons which I have been doing now for years and which gives me such joy had to stop short after about 10 minutes.
I just couldn’t maintain a steady breath. To all of our disappointment in the game of catch (some neighbor children had joined in as well), I had to take my catcher’s mitt and head inside.
There in front of my wife and adult children I plunged into the sofa, inhaler in hand and I settled down.
I said “nothing’s wrong” before my family members could finish the question.
I knew, though, there was something very much happening. At age 67, after years of playing ice hockey, softball and walking, I knew that it was not normal to feel over heated and breathless after 10 minutes.
Asthma.
It had to be asthma. This was purely a self-diagnosis.
Even bringing a laundry basket from downstairs was now leaving me winded.
I took the step to make an appointment with my physician, a friend and neighbor.
When I sat in the examination room with him, I explained that I was “sure” it was asthma. Like, what qualified me to be sure of anything medical?
His examination let me down slowly.
It was not asthma.
It was my heart.
He said right there that this was now about keeping me from suffering a heart attack.
In almost an instant, he was walking me over to the cardiac physician of the practice.
This was on a Wednesday. The cardiac doctor gave me a prescription for Nitro. He was concerned about my age and my condition. There would be no stress test. He wanted to know exactly what was going on as did I.
By Monday morning I was in a cardiac catheterization hospital clinic. By Monday afternoon I was told that I had three arterial blockages and needed heart bypass surgery.
That will happen on Thursday.
The rest of Monday was spent getting a chest x-ray, an echocardiogram and an ultrasound of my carotid artery. There was a meeting with the anesthesiologist, the surgeon, the nurse practitioner who gave me a loose-leaf of materials to read and surgical preparations to follow.
As the day went on, each new health professional was talking to me in an empathetic, graceful way.
I could listen, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
Lisa, my wife and best friend for over 44 years who has more of a medical understanding that I do, took notes and took in everything carefully as if she were the one going in for the surgery.
Since that Monday, I have received phone calls and emails from people I love. I have spoken to friends who have had bypass surgery or who have had family members go through it. I’ve even joined social network groups for people who have had the surgery.
My synagogue and my school are saying tehillim (psalms) for me.
A week later I am still denying that all of this attention is coming my way. Yet I look at photographs that some bypass surgery patients have posted of them in bed with tubes and stitches on their chest, and I’m thinking “that is going to be me next week.”
I still cannot get my arms around it.
Now the issues of the world that I follow so closely such as Israel, American politics, Judaism and even “my” baseball team, the sad Baltimore Orioles are almost irrelevant.
Thursday is the surgery.
On Friday, I’m told they will get me out of bed and on my feet.
I met with a hospital physical therapist who will work with my walking.
3-5 days before I am going home. That’s what I’ve been told.
I’ve been told by a couple of dear friends that when I recover I will begin to feel so much better than I did for years before this came up.
I am dreaming already of having a baseball catch with my grandsons, teaching my high school students and taking long walks with Lisa.
See you on the other side.
