Recently I was preparing a talk about my experiences as a former heart-surgery patient, who visits people in the hospital who’ve just undergone one. For my talk, I was asked to detail my heart history, its impact on my life, and how it influenced my visiting.
When I am writing or, in this case, preparing a talk, occurrences in my daily life may walk on like a horn player joining an improvisation. In Muriel Spark’s Momento Mori I read, “I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life.” And then in Han Kang’s Greek Lessons, I found the observation that one who faces death at every turn is best able to think about life. Both Kang and Spark were 40-ish when they wrote their sentences. I don’t know that either’d had a health crisis. Imagine, I thought, what an 83-year-old who’s had several could contribute.
He could say, “I don’t recommend open heart surgery, but you can get a lot out of it.”
I. History
In January 2011, I was a 69-year-old workers’ compensation attorney, a few months from retirement. I ate right, exercised regularly, and was, according to all reports, in good health. By October, I’d had one minor and one major heart attack, received seven stents, been “coded” twice, spent three days in a medically induced coma, had a mitral valve repair and a by-pass. I had been a hospital in-patient for 30 days. I’d experienced depression, anxiety, and had double pneumonia. I took up to 20 pills-a-day. I’d been unable to change my socks, raise my arms above my head, move a pen across a page. After my last discharge I had black outs, tacchycardia, afib, received two cardioversions and, in 2013, a defibrilator.
When I recovered, I was so grateful and so amazed I told my cardiologist I would happily talk to any of her patients who might benefit from hearing my experience. She did not take me up on it, but, in an examination room, I found a flyer from Mended Hearts, a nationwide organization, which fosters interactions like I’d envisioned.
When I told my interviewer what I’d been through, she said, “You’re a gold mine.”
I felt like a Blue Chip prospect being recruited for Division I.
II. Impact
I exercise six-days-a-week now, not three. I have cut down on sodium. No pickles, no pretzels, no pastrami. Each morning, I sit in a café. I have a double espresso, I read and write and schmooze and think.
My life has been transformed. Adele says she is not used to living with someone who smiles so much. I take steps forward and steps back, but change is clear. For one thing, I worry less. I recognize things will happen or they won’t and worry won’t affect which. My friend (and fellow FOM contributor) Budd Shenkin likes to cite the end of Bridge of Spies. The attorney James Donovan (Tom Hanks) has negotiated the swap of the KGB spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) for a U-2 pilot who had been shot down over Russia. In the course of the film, Donovan becomes fond of Abel and, as he is about to hand him over, asks if he fears returning to Moscow. “Would it help?” Abel says.
Related, is the extent I have disconnected from the world. I pay less attention to the “news.” (Mainly, I check if Trump is dead or stroke-incapacitated yet.) I recognize events are important only to the extent I think they are. The simplest example is sports. In my youth, I lived or died on the outcome of baseball, basketball (college and pro), football, and boxing matches. Now, only the Warriors disturb my sleep. No matter the effort the media puts into blanketing me with a World Series or Super Bowl, this or that Grand Slam, or Stanley or Worlds Cup, I pass on.
The same applies to mass shootings, plane crashes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and fires. I ignore events in selected nations, even entire continents. I am not saying I may not become involved. But I try not to have my peace of mind depend on outcomes. Not long ago, I asked the Indonesian woman who sits outside the café reading Buddhist commentary how she thought the world was doing. She placed a palm, open faced, on either side of her body, and raised one while lowering the other, a move I had not seen in public since Harvey Fuqua was selling “See Saw” at the Uptown Theater.
The thing is, I wasn’t expected to be here. After I had come out of my coma, a nurse, trying to reassure Adele, told her a brother-in-law had suffered similar damage and lived another two-years. Adele was not re-assured. (In fact, she kept this information from me until I had well passed its expiration date.) Then, following my open heart, the assistant surgeon told us there was only a one-in-three chance it would help. “One-third of patients do better. One-third do worse, and one-third remain about the same.”
Recent studies recommend that valves be replaced, which had been the plan with mine, not repaired, which is what happened. “It’s been 13-years,” I said to my cardiologist, “so I guess it worked pretty well.”
“You broke the charts,” she said.
Some take-aways: (1) Western medicine is terrific; (2) the human body has great capacity for healing; and (3) motivation is key. You know, in movies, when a policeman shouts to his shot partner, “Stay with me!” That is serious. People find motivation to stick around in faith or family. Let me tell you a story.
A couple years into my recovery, a woman at the café gave me a pot brownie. Forgetting the recommended dose, I ate twice what she’d said and found myself floating up in a corner of the ceiling, being urged by my parents and friends who had passed to join them, while my body lay on the bed below. I fought to get back in my body. I wanted to be with Adele.
My doctor said that often, when people undergo surgery, the anesthesia begins to wear off, leaving them disoriented, confused by lights and sounds, having no idea where they are, trying to make sense of it. “You have probably been carrying this around since and it was good to unload it.” But this does not deny that I was close to dying from internal bleeding and how I may have fought to stick around.
On walks, I look across the bay and marvel that I get to witness the view.
III. Visiting
I have a capacity, perhaps developed from my law practice, to be comfortable talking to all sorts of people – unless they threaten me. Fortunately, you don’t meet too many threats on the cardiac floor. One guy, under police guard, was handcuffed to his bed, but him I skipped.
And meeting people of different backgrounds delights me. When I was growing up in West Philadelphia, two Puerto Rican brothers showed up in my elementary school. Aside from African Americans, there was nobody else whose heritage wasn’t Western European. Until I got to college, I met no one from South or Central America. No one from Africa or an Arab country. No one from Asia or Southeast Asia. So I still get a kick out of the variety in the hospital, patients and staff.
I feel privileged to be a part of their lives. I recognize we’re all in this business together.
Each Mended Hearts visitor receives a list of patients’ names, ages and procedures. They know nothing about us – not even that we are coming. (Some think us doctors, which, at least, gets their attention.) I straight off introduce myself. (“I’m Bob Levin, a volunteer with Mended Hearts. We are people who’ve had heart surgery and, maybe, can answer questions and discuss concerns you have, as someone who’s been through it.”) I am informal and relaxed. I show confidence, even humor. I try to say nothing scary. (One of my crises was caused by a rare side-effect to a medication. I do not mention that in case someone is on it.) I remember it is okay not to know every answer. Medical questions, I refer, to doctors.
I avoid making it seem I’m selling something. Late in the process, I give them a Mended Hearts flyer. I mention monthly meetings, where members of the medical community address us. I tell them of the on-line forum, where people discuss matters of mutual concern. I let them realize we may offer something of value.
It is important to listen to what a patient wants to say, even if it sounds nuts – which it may be. I let it play before I rein it in. I resist my tendency to respond to words or phrases with preprogrammed words or stories of my own which may foreclose a fresher, more valuable response from me.
I learn things too. Some people have benefitted from treatments or techniques which have become operational since I had mine. Or my learning may be non-technical. I recall having a 90-some-year-old woman on my list, who had undergone a major procedure, and thinking, “What am I going to offer her?” But she was sitting up, bright-eyed and smiling, and ended up making me feel better.
Then there was the 87-year-old gentleman who, besides his by-pass, had a partial foot amputation. He was looking forward to playing golf. “Every day’s a blessing,” I said. “Every hour,” he replied.
There was the former sparring partner of Larry Holmes. When I said I worked out with a heavy bag, he instructed me a sideways stance gave your opponent less chance to strike a vital organ. “It’s also good if someone’s shooting at you.”
Some patients have been through it before or know people who have. Some have had more done to them than I have. But usually we find common ground. Our futures. What we will be able to do. How long it will take.
Nearly everybody is happy to talk. They are grateful you came. They appreciate the company. I like to tell them that, when I was hospitalized, the only non-medical person to visit was a chaplain. “And he was the last person I wanted to see.” “Why was that,” one patient, a retired minister, asked. “I wasn’t ready to think about the hereafter.” “We’re always ready to think about the hereafter,” he said.
I know I have been fortunate how well things worked out. But this lets me speak sincerely to those I visit. If it happened for me, it can happen for them. At the same time, I try not to create a situation where people blame themselves if their result is not as good. Workers’ compensation taught me nothing’s guaranteed. You can be walking across a construction site and a wrench, dropped six stories above, hits you on the head. You can lift a sack of concrete and there goes your back and way of earning a living.
We do the best we can. We get the best information we can. We guide ourselves accordingly. We hope we are lucky.
“STAY POSITIVE!” are my cardiologist’s guiding words.
Here’s a final story.
The woman was lying in bed. The TV was on with no sound. Her breakfast was pushed aside, half-eaten
“I’m with an organization called Mended Hearts…”
“Will you get me a warm blanket?” she said.
“Sure. But we’re people who’ve had heart surgeries and we visit those in the hospital in case we can answer questions or discuss concerns they may have.”
“I have no questions or concerns. I’ve placed myself in the hands of Jesus, and he gives me everything I need.”
Except a warm blanket, I thought. But I am not the wise guy I once was, so I only said, “Well, faith can certainly be important in helping one recover.”
“But I have the true faith. Are you someone who believes?”
I finessed that one, and we had a nice conversation. At the end, she gave me her phone number so I could call in 30 days and see how she was doing. When I left, I went to the nurses’ station for her blanket. And I thought, Maybe Jesus sent me to get it.
Then I remembered the old joke. An elderly man swims out too far from shore and realizes he can’t get back. He thinks, I’ve lived a good life. It’s time for God to prove he exists and save me. He goes under the first time, and when he comes up, a dolphin is nudging him toward shore. The man shoos it away. “No, no, no. I’m waiting for God to save me.” He goes under a second time, and when he comes up, a surfer paddles over and says, “Dude, grab my board, and I’ll kick us to shore.” The man says, “No, no, no. I’m waiting for God to save me.” Then he goes under a third time – and drowns.
He gets to Heaven and God is waiting. “Why didn’t you save me?” the man says. “I sent you a dolphin,” God says. “I sent you a surfer.”
I was the woman’s dolphin. Whether in or out of hospitals, we all can be dolphins for one another.