Part One

Two weeks prior I had exhausted myself thinking about the possibility of dying. So naturally, the following weekend I made the 400 mile round-trip to visit with little sister, Donna, and Dr. Cliff as well as HRRT teammate, Glenn, and my two oldest friends, Gary and Eileen. By one week prior I had moved on to less significant issues like what my scar would look like and would I feel uncomfortable running shirt less as I always did for the majority of the season. (Vanity is more of an insecurity in me than a form of conceit). By the Thursday before surgery I was content with how I'd wound up projects at work and very happy to be leaving my job for an estimated 6-week disability. By Friday I had narrowed things down to just getting my stuff in order - living will, beneficiaries lined up for 2 life policies, moving valuables from my house to Vikki's house and packing enough clothes, books and CD's for a month. Donna had arranged to borrow a beautiful and spacious home close to Hanover for the week that she, her daughter and my parents would be staying with me at DHMC. We all spent part of the day Tuesday at Dartmouth-Hitchcock while I got some Pre-Op tests done. I got some serious shopping done at the bookstore that day too, picking up a Dartmouth College cap and matching surgeons shirt. And that is where I spent the night before being admitted, in my own room in a very comfortable bed and falling asleep to the most uplifting music I could think of - "Cross The Heartland" and "Airstream" by the Pat Metheny Group. I mention only these two tracks from the album because that's all it took to put me into a sound sleep. I had built up my strength for several days prior by taking vitamins and cutting back on such wicked habits as coffee and beer ... and now I was ready.

Wednesday morning I woke to the daylight creeping in through my window. We needed to be there by 6:30 AM to get the process rolling. I rose and put on the clothes I had chosen to wear several days beforehand. After all, dressing for the event was as important for my confidence as anything else was: I wore my Cape Ann Classic road race tee-shirt from 1989 (a 10K PR), a pair of Levis 501's I had saved from my college days in Kansas and bound with handsome patchwork by the time I moved to Vermont, the red/white NB665 shoes I trained in for the past 2 years, and of course my new pale green Dartmouth cap. Arriving at the hospital I was on time, I was dressed, I was peaceful, and I was most definitely ready.

Vikki met us at the Pre-Admissions window shortly after. It took her very little time to get acquainted with Donna, niece Amanda, Mom and Dad. They would be spending some tense hours together very soon. Within an hour I was led to a holding room much like the one I used before getting my cardiac catheterization. There I was instructed to remove the garments I had so carefully selected for this event and get into the basic hospital equipment. I defiantly kept my cap on until the very last minute, though. We joked and played for another half hour as I got my IV started. There was time to pose for funny pictures. My spirits went into high gear when Dr. John Jayne stopped in to wish me well and to tell me that my surgeon would be filming the procedure from a camera mounted to his head. He told me he received my e-mail reminder about the angiogram and how I wanted to take a shot at rendering the strange arterial arrangement that the computer had no success with. He encouraged me to do so also let me know that he would look in on the surgery from the overhead window at some point. By the time John departed, I sensed the existence of mutual admiration. Then came Carl, the anesthesiologist who would be handling that first big step. He commented about the unusualness of my coronary arteries in between important questions about my medical history. He explained everything that was going to happen to me before I fell into a deep sleep ... reinforcing the level of comfort I had gained the day before from his superior, that I would in no way experience any discomfort nor have any recollection of the procedure whatsoever. Having assured him I had no questions about what was about to happen, he proceeded to dispense the pre-anesthesia from a hanging plastic bag above me. Though we didn't discuss counting backwards or forwards, I assumed that there would be time for that step somewhere in the sequence. But as it turned out I didn't even make it beyond that room awake! No good byes or nothin' ... less than a minute later I was out.

The next conscious moment I experienced was the warm greeting a nurse named Paula gave me, some four hours after I first received the anesthesia. The encounter is vague in my mind and I didn't learn her name until the next day, actually. But I did recall the standard hospital green of her clothes and the soft wrinkles that surrounded her lips and smiling eyes. My surgery had lasted about 3 1/2 hours total. In the educational video I saw several days beforehand they said that the majority of this time is spent setting up the equipment and preparing for, not performing, the actual surgery. Nevertheless, the procedure was done sooner than the 4 to 6 hours I had expected it would last. When I was moved from the operating room to the Intensive Cardiac Care Unit (ICCU) a host of equipment arrived with me. There was the tall hanger which stood by my head back in the holding area and it carried two bags of fluid, one running to an IV feeding each of my wrists. There was another line of slightly larger tubing running into the right side of my neck inserted into the jugular vein. Instruments for monitoring blood pressure, etc. were connected here. There was oxygen coming from a thin clear tube inserted into my nostrils. A long white bandage covered the length of my incision that ran along the center of my chest from the collar bone down past the bottom of my sternum. A pair of electrodes protruded from my skin over my diaphragm. At the lowest point of my rib cage, two more large diameter tubes ran from inside my chest cavity, out through my skin, across my left side and down to a machine where the excess fluids from around my heart were drained. The machine made a constant bubbling sound which often lulled me back to sleep whenever I woke without the company of visitors. In the aftermath of coming off the heart-lung machine I was fitted with a long ridged tube that sunk deep into my throat and conducted air into my wind pipe. It would remain there until the doctors were certain I could breathe on my own.

Some time after that I was greeted by my family and Vikki who all crowded the foot of my bed. It was only then that I sensed the bundle of tubes and wires emanating from different parts of my upper body. The only one I was totally aware of was the breathing tube which forced my mouth open. It didn't exactly hurt me but there was no way for me to speak with it inserted. One of the doctors caring for me had explained that due to my excellent health I might be able to have the breathing tube removed early, possibly that evening. Once again this was unlike the preparation I got from the video. In addition, I had no puffiness or discoloration in my face. But I wanted the tube out NOW, if for no other reason than to change the look of all those smiling, but apprehensive, expressions coming from the faces of my loved ones. I never wanted to speak so badly as I did then, to tell them that I was really alright. Breathing was strangely difficult. I could only stand very short breaths. The pressure in my chest cavity forced me to work really hard. I kept trying to communicate this - first through my own hand signals and then attempting to write it out, but no one understood me. The visit grew very short all of the sudden and one by one everyone gave me a hug and said goodbye. Later that evening I was awakened to see them one more time, this time with my breathing tube removed (they must have done while I was sleeping). My voice was very hoarse but at least I could talk to everyone this time. The need to express my love and gratitude to each one of them was overwhelming. During this second visit, there was more time and much more to say given that I was able to provide feedback. I heard comments about how young I looked which I immediately shrugged off as someone being excessively kind. After all I was almost totally incapacitated and only gradually shedding the effects of the morphine. With the constant flow of sedative through one of the IV's, I felt I could fall asleep at any given moment. The visit ended by about 7 PM and my family went back to the house finally. Vikki chose to stay around. Though each time I slept it was an extremely sound sleep, it was a great comfort to find her at my side when I woke from time to time.

After the period for visitation ended Vikki spent the evening in the hospital waiting room. The only other person I saw with regularity was the attending nurse. Other than dispensing pain medication and ice cubes to quench my terrific thirst, he would occasionally ask me to in hail from a little apparatus that was meant to exercise my lungs. I had no difficulty with it but I was thinking it could have waited until the next day. I was anticipating it's role in the following day's activities as the video had mentioned. I dreaded it, in fact!

Conclusion

Surgery - Part Two

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Last Updated April 7th 1997