Over the last two decades, a variety of surgeons have put me to sleep and carved my defenseless corpus like I was a Halloween pumpkin fourteen times. (The dermatologist used only local anesthetic to remove my melanoma, but despite not being sedated, I count that resection among the unholy fourteen because it left a hole in my thigh the diameter of a baseball). When I was seventy-three, I’d decided enough was too much and vowed no more surgery! However, after working out regularly for two hours a session three times a week for many years, I suddenly could not complete my routine. My exercises didn’t just get more difficult but became impossible. Something was seriously wrong.
My internist ordered an echocardiogram and stress test, but neither disclosed pathology. I’ve had two kidney transplants, the first failing after five miserable years and the second still successfully working seventeen years later. Using the contrast dye required for a heart catheter created a 15% chance of immediately destroying my perfectly functioning, if gifted, organ. However, I had to take action, so, as my ex-air force WW II veteran father often proclaimed, “Off we go into the wild blue yonder,” and a cardiologist performed the test.
I awoke to a highly excited physician proclaiming, “You have terrible disease! You are sitting on the edge of a cliff!” His dire assessment referenced three almost wholly blocked coronary arteries, the infamous widowmaker being 98% occluded. Area cardiac surgeons were unwilling to treat me due to possible kidney failure that could necessitate placing a chest port to begin dialysis instantly. A waiting ambulance drove me directly from the test site to Barnes Hospital in St Louis without allowing me to get my toothbrush. If I’d not been under the influence of familiar friends, Versed and Demerol, I doubt I’d have gone, as I’d worked several hours in my garden the day before, and dropping dead while sitting around seemed unlikely. But perhaps partially due to shock, I went along meekly.
(I still don’t understand why the first two tests revealed no hint of my severe disease. I’ve asked several physicians about this, and they’ve answered with a shrug. The fact is unnerving, as are stories of someone having a clean physical, then dropping dead of cardiac arrest days later.)
Barnes heart surgeons were fully scheduled, and I passed a long, restless five days laying abed before the department head added an extra procedure (me) at day’s end on Friday. The much-vaunted surgeon left the next morning on vacation, just when things got “interesting.”
I’d been declared allergic to morphine when, immediately after my second kidney transplant, I’d repeatedly quit breathing. My then nursing student, now nurse practitioner anesthetist daughter Rachel, pleaded with the staff not to give me Narcan, which would reverse my pain meds. Instead, she sat beside me and tapped my chest whenever my respirations ceased. (Had her plan not worked, I wouldn’t be writing this story). She said I’d regain consciousness, moan pitiously, complain of pain loudly, beg to be left to die, and then fall back asleep. I survived, but future pain control has been difficult without Morpheus’s aid.
Post-cabbage (Coronary Artery Bypass Surgical Graph or CABG to the cognoscenti), I awoke (In this case, a relative term) in a state of narcosis( In layperson language, drugged out of my ever-loving mind). An unseen creature—my best guess, something in the Canus Lupus species—was caterwauling to me. And fullthroat, I answered.
Several people rudely insisted I stop screaming, but they clearly didn’t understand the messages’ import, so my conversation continued. (While vividly recalling the howling, I have only vague memories of any human presence). A pain team was summoned to administer a spinal anesthetic, but as I rolled onto my stomach at their request, I fell asleep. When I regained consciousness, a nurse asked, “Dr. Wilde, do you know what year it is?”
“1946,” I stated confidently.
“And where are we?”
“On a ship of wounded soldiers heading from Europe to America.” I also suggested that if the nurse returned my roommate’s misplaced computer, he might calm down. Later, I spent hours listening to my married suitemate, whom I’d never seen but was separated from me only by a full-length white curtain, have long phone conversations with his young mistress. The content was salacious, and later, when a nurse gave him a sponge bath, he became utterly obscene, claiming his arousal was not his fault, nor was the excessive size of his member.
I was in a single room.
Other merry adventures included realizing I was on a paddle-wheeler and could escape by slipping over the side and swimming to shore. I removed my hospital gown and IV line, then was stymied by, a: Having no idea how to get to the craft’s rail and, b: Being unable to get out of bed. However, I succeeded in REALLY irritating my already unhappy nurses.
I also suffered an incident in which, while drinking with friends in a bar, an older, angry female physician accosted me. (I still have no idea if that unpleasant lady was real or specter, but she was a recurring character). The tavern incident ended when someone rolled me over and inserted a suppository as I tearfully screamed, “Why are you doing this to me?”
Since my kidney transplants, I’ve taken eleven different prescription drugs, twenty-five total pills per day, but post-surgery, I was unable to keep them, or anything else, down. Throwing up on myself multiple times a day also didn’t endear me to the poor souls forced to clean my messes. I’d been given Percocet regularly, but on day three, during a lucid interlude, I demanded not to be given any analgesic but Tylenol. (The more effective NSAIDs like Alleve are excreted by the kidneys, so they are forbidden to me).
The hospital staff advised my family they couldn’t properly care for me, so my three daughters, girlfriend Diana, old college roommate and friend Jim, and my deceased son John Jr.’s oldest child, Hunter, pitched in. All resided at least one hundred miles from St Louis, had busy lives, and soon tired of the duty. (My previous surgeries had made me a chronic nuisance). As I neared release, my exasperated family insisted I not return home but be transported to a post-surgical care facility. These were primarily nursing homes that accepted short-term clients.
The terrifying COVID epidemic had recently arrived, and having been immunosuppressed for two decades, I feared the illness would eat me like a cookie. In large part for this reason, I was determined to go home, but having neither a car, money, nor credit card made achieving my desire problematic.
On day six post-op, I launched my escape. Friends who, on short notice, had driven 120 miles one way to bring me home arrived. But my physician brother, Jim, advised them by phone that they would be responsible if anything unfortunate happened. So they greeted me, apologized, wished me luck, and left. I have no idea how Jim became involved, but I assume hospital employees and my family members were working in concert.
Late that afternoon, after a day of mounting contention with hospital staff, I agreed to go to a Hannibal, MO facility twenty miles downriver from my Quincy, IL, residence. Barnes Hospital engaged a cab for the journey, my driver being an older gentleman who had immigrated to America from Togo, Africa, some twenty years before.
We made the 100-mile journey in near silence, as I was exhausted and my heavily accented driver was taciturn. When we arrived at our destination, I insisted the cabbie also come inside, and we entered a Clockwork Orange scenario together. Patients wandered everywhere. A woman in a wheelchair was facing the wall, and though screaming continuously, she was ignored. Not even staff wore masks. Management was a youthful husband-wife team, and when I vigorously advised them I would not be staying, they nervously agreed.
I promised my driver that if he took me twenty additional miles, I would give him all the cash I had in my house. He reluctantly agreed, but I’d failed to comprehend the depth of this expatriate city dweller’s apprehension concerning the dangers of rural America. As we traveled through the darkness, I sensed his growing anxiety and kept encouraging him. I enjoy a large, lovely brick home in a pleasant, upscale neighborhood. The cabbie was as relieved as I was when we pulled into my drive, flanked by a fall riot of red, pink, and white roses.
I entered the house and gratefully returned with all the cash in my possession, somewhere in the two- to three-hundred-dollar range. My driver protested it was too much, but I told him he’d saved my life.
I drank a small glass of whiskey, took a Tylenol PM, and slept fourteen hours. I was disoriented and dizzy when I awoke, but nature was calling. Loudly. Urgently. Perhaps I hurried, but I fell twice within a few minutes, falling face-first on my wired and sutured chest.
My livid kids refused to help and requested that Diana also not aid me. When she (presciently) asked, “But what if he falls?” one of my daughters said, “If he falls, he falls.” Not wishing to anger my children, somewhat apprehensively, Diana helped me anyway, although mainly after she was done with work. Despite her displeasure with me being home, nurse Rachel also assisted when acute illness forced me into the emergency room. Twice.
I made erratic progress, but being feeble and virtually alone in providing self-care wore on me physically and emotionally. However, around three weeks post-op, I began feeling better and was able to eat, which was fortunate as I weighed 130 pounds. (My fighting weight is 152). I’ve since had COVID twice, and last winter, I suffered three illnesses, with leg cellulitis closely followed by C-diff forced me into a pair of three-day hospital stays.
Aging, especially for those with significant health conditions, requires periodic adjustments to the “new normal.” My world contracts as my abilities diminish, but I now routinely complete my workouts. Other than in restaurants, the only meat I consume is venison, and I’ve harvested six deer during each of the last two seasons with my crossbow. I’m able to care for my large yard and its beds and pots of flowers, as well as my garden, which produces more fruit and vegetables than I can consume. (I gift excess venison and vegetables to friends and neighbors).
As a worn, dog-eared, and fraught seventy-seven-year-old persistently beset with evermore complex health issues, my future is challenging. But I have viscerally learned that no breath is guaranteed, and I arise each day eager and able to engage to the best of my abilities. That opportunity is all anyone has, and it’s enough.
Dr John A Wilde has published six books and 240 articles, most of the latter in international magazines with approximately 145,000 subscribers, all dealing with his profession. He has been writing fiction for a decade.
