I'm Alive!

“I’m alive!”

Two years ago this moment I finished showering with germicidal soap, dressed warmly against the bitter Cleveland winter, got on the shuttle with loved ones and friends, reported in at the main desk, was called, said goodbyes, and went through the door to my prep room.

"Take off everything but your birthday suit," ordered the aide. "Shall I keep my birthday suit on?" I asked her with a futile jab at predawn humor. "Take off everything but your birthday suit," she repeated. A nurse came in. "We have chaplains here, would you like to see a minister before going for surgery?" she asked. I said, "No thank you, my priest is here with me." "Aren't you from Florida?" she asked. Yes. "You're from Florida and your priest is here with you?" Yes!

Prepped, blessed with oil, and whisked away on a gurney, I was lying there in an immense corridor watching as huge machines were wheeled into my operating room and through the numerous other operating room doors lining the hall. 

In my hand was clutched my bottle of nitroglycerin pills just in case. It was a long wait, maybe an hour or more, and the hall was chilly, but I was snug and warm under piles of heated blankets. Other patients were rolled in and parked outside their operating room doors. A physician came, introduced himself as my anesthesiologist, and gave me something intravenously, he said to relax against anxiety. However, I was not anxious in the least, but peacerully excited, because having been given two to five months to live over three months earlier, and now run out of time, this was my one chance. 

The enormous doors to my OR slid open and someone rolled me inside, parked my gurney up against the operating table, and helped me slide over onto the table. I had anticipated that it would be freezing cold stainless steel, but it was warm. My operating team of doctors, nurses and others were huddled on the other side of the room in conference, and my surgeon, the chief of cardiothoracic surgery at the Clinic and possibly the best heart surgeon in the world at this the highest rated heart institute in the world, came over and welcomed me. I told him I was holding my nitroglycerin pill bottle. The anesthesiologist started something flowing in my IV. 

My dreams, I had my dreams ready. 

It would be spring 1953 just before I graduated from Bay High, and I was going to walk the beach from the jetties all the way out to the Wayside Park where Linda and I cooked a picnic breakfast and swam before I reported for work at Edgewater Gulf Beach Apartments that summer morning in 1954. After breakfast, we waded far out and a large shark got between us and the shore. 

It would be a Saturday morning, fall 1957 in New England, liberty call at OCS and, wearing my uniform, I was going to ride the Jamestown Ferry from Newport, Rhode island over to Jamestown where Linda would be waiting for me. From the ferry bow I would see her standing in the parking area beside our green 1948 Dodge, and we would have the weekend together. 

I was going to be in Robert Frost’s woods alone and take the road less traveled by, the road he wrote about and read to us during his stopover in Gainesville long ago. I was going to take the road he took. 

Life Is Good and you can plan your dreams, and I had them ready. 

None of that happened. There were no dreams, no dream. Only absence, oblivion. Struggling, fighting, feeling I was drowning as a tube was pulled up my throat, I opened my eyes and looked at Nicholas‘ beaming face. “I’m alive!” came out of my mouth.

There was no pain, not the least pain and I did not need or take any pain medication for the incision either that day or in the days to come. In the ICU a night or two, I had horrible dreams, not the dreams I had planned for my surgery, but horrible repetitive things like a tape going round and round, nightmare, Deutschland über Alles playing loud, interminably, loud, louder, loudest over and over, wake, realize it was nightmare, back to sleep, same nightmare, loud, louder, wake, realize, back to sleep, exchanging emails with Alfred at sea on the Annie & Jennie, music, schooner, over and over and couldn't stop them.  Someone called it “ICU psychosis.” OK, been there now. BTDT.

They took me from the ICU to a nice private room on a high floor with a picture window looking out toward Lake Erie, which was frozen over from Cleveland to Canada. My first morning in my room Linda glanced at the heart monitor, saw the racing heartbeat: fibrillation, and ran to the nurses' station. The room instantly filled with nurses and doctors including my surgeon, who said, “Better take him back to the Unit,” and away I was wheeled, leaving the room just as Tass walked in, and I saw the horrified, frightened look on her face. I wasn’t frightened, but thought, WTH, after all this I’m going to die anyway. The doctor said not to worry, thirty to forty percent of patients go into fibrillation after open heart surgery, we just have to get it under control, which included a tracheatomy-like slash for a medicine tube. Another night in the ICU, back to my room. But first take out the tube and sew my neck back together. Unfortunately the anesthetic did not work, so my neck was sewed up with needle and thread and the only pain of the entire adventure. Don’t try that at home.

Rayford and Eugenia left. Carolyn left. Steve left. Nick left. Tass left soon after my fibrillation and ICU revisit episode. Joe left. For Tass, we had a special recommended taxi driver pick her up and take her to the airport. A few days later when Linda and I left we’d requested the same taxi driver. He remembered Tass and said that she had seemed extremely upset. He said, “She must be her daddy’s baby.” I said, “She’s been her daddy’s baby for almost thirty-nine years.” He said, “Thirty-nine years? My God. I thought she was nineteen.” 

I’m alive writing my nonsense this morning because of people who know who you are. Competent medics in Panama City and Cleveland. Loved ones and friends, some of whom came to Cleveland, some of whom stayed home and supported here in Panama City including with love and prayer, Malinda and Kristen here looking after my mother. Pat had a prayer vigil in Trinity Church, Apalachicola while I was in surgery. June told me to quit thanking people, that everyone had been thanked enough, and they were all glad they were able to help; so I won’t name names. But nobody in the world can stop me from thanking Bill again for the plane ride and the friendship that I will cherish as long as I have a heartbeat. 

January 24th.

Azaleas are blooming. Red. Pink.

Even the fragrant pink has a few blossoms.

It's a beautiful day.

Tom