If I have been abnormally quiet lately, it is because of affairs of the heart. No!! Not that kind of affairs of the heart. I'm still living at the same address, still consorting with the same woman.
The heart affairs I'm talking about are the kind that wake you up in the middle of the night with pains in the chest. There's a quick ride to a nearby hospital where they do an EKG, compare it with one taken last year during a regular check up and announce there have been changes in the graph. Then, on to Intensive Care for 72 hours.
After this, I'm transferred to another hospital where a four-way heart bypass operation* is performed. Oh, the wonders of modern science!
Twenty years ago, I probably could have looked forward to spending the rest of my days in dull servitude to pain and shortness of breath. Instead, my surgeon tells me that in three months or less, I can go back to work.The surgeon is a remarkable person. He breaks open the chest in much the same way that a coal miner breaks open the earth to extract ore. The surgeon and miner know exactly what they are looking for: the miner has his eyes out for a seam of coal, the surgeon is looking for the heart valves that are plugged, the ones he must pass. When he fines them, he strips a vein from the leg or other part of the body, cuts it into short pieces and sews them into the heart to bypass the blocked section.
The patient, of course, knows nothing about what is going on inside his body during the operation, which is a good thing. This patient would have died of fright if he had been aware of what was happening during surgery.
The first 48 hours after surgery, the patient is treated in much the same way as a wood cutter treats a log. There are so many pipes, valves, and wires emanating from the body, the patient looks and feels like a cut of wood before the small limbs are trimmed off.
Vital signs and bodily functions are checked constantly. Doctors gaze and grin, proud of the work they have performed. Nurses poke, prick and pluck, taking blood, smoothing bed clothes, and speaking encouraging words to prevent the patient from lapsing into a blue funk.
Therapists come three times a day to beat the patient's back. This is to keep congestion from building up in the lungs; pneumonia is always a post surgery danger with this kind of operation.
On the third day after surgery, I'm transferred to a ward with three other patients like myself. Now the monitoring becomes much less severe. I'm permitted to walk to the bathroom. This is progress. The pipes, valves, and wires have been reduced to two lines and a tube which is built on wheels and rolls with me as I walk.
After five days in the ward, I'm sent home. I slept better, felt better and thought straighter.
My doctor says he's pleased with the progress I've made so far. But it is slow at best. Patience has never been one of my virtues. There is only one word that can be used in a family newspaper to describe this confinement. That word is ORDEAL. All other descriptive words border on profane. I'm glad it's over. I'm glad I had it done. But I sincerely hope you never have to go through it.
*Editor's note:
The terminology sounds a little archaic now, but in the 80s, when the surgery was new, this was the common term for a quadruple bypass in the area of Michigan where Jim lived.
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