Me 'n Grover

January 24, 1938, my sister Gina was born. My parents and I had been living in our new house in the Cove just two weeks, and at age two-years eight-months, more than my new baby sister, I was visually fascinated with our huge front door, which held my fascination all the rest of my years there. It must have been quite different from the front door of the old house we moved from in St. Andrews, because when, a morning in August 2014, the current owner invited us in and showed us through the house, the first thing I did was go home again by checking that the front door was the exact same, and so it was. Happy birthday, Gina, you have been and are a wonderful sister, and I wish you love and many thankful returns of the day.

January 24, 2011. I’m in Cleveland, Ohio. We - - Linda, I, Rayford and Eugenia Lloyd had landed at Burke Cleveland Lakefront Airport on the shore of Lake Erie, in the Cessna Citation jet plane of Bill and June Lloyd, on January 18, a bitter cold, snowy day.

 The flight from Panama City had taken an hour and 45 minutes, at 45,000 feet. In my then condition, I’d never have survived flying by commercial air, airport security screenings with me wearing a suspicious heart monitor vest, landing in different airports to change planes, rushing from one gate to another, popping tiny pills to stop the excruciating chest pains. It would have taken hours and hours, and I’d never have made it! But here we are.

We are in Cleveland for me to go through nearly a week of a jungle of pre-op tests of every imaginable sort. Monday, January 24 is D-Day and this is H-Hour of this pitch black dark, frigid Cleveland predawn winter day. I have completed my second prescribed long shower with antiseptic soap (caution on the bottles: this antiseptic is poison. do not get this soap in your eyes, ears or mouth), dressed warmly, and with a cover of loved ones, which includes dearest friends, all fully as protective of me as the cover that kept the JaxJaguar defense from getting to Tom Brady last Sunday afternoon, we boarded the campus trolley and headed for the Heart Institute of Cleveland Clinic. Clutching a tiny brown cylindrical bottle of minuscule tablets. 

Off the trolley and into the lobby, check in and go to the waiting area. Seriously not the least nervous because I am three months and a week into my prognosed “two to five months to live” but at my final appointment on Friday my heart surgeon’d said, “I’ve been doing this several times a day every day for many years, this is what I do.” I told him that my Panama City cardio team wouldn't touch me, saying I wouldn't live to get off the operating table. This fellow said his success rate is 97% and my case is just ordinary for him, nothing unusual. Sunday late, the clinic phoned us at the motel and assigned me the earliest appointment, Monday predawn, I think four o’clock a.m., not sure. When my name is called there are lots of hugs, and away I go to pre-op, where a grim woman says “Take off everything but your birthday suit, put on this gown, and lie down on this gurney.” Thinking a bit of humor, I ask her, “Shall I keep my birthday suit on?” to which she responds grimly, “Take off everything but your birthday suit.” I comply and hear her electric shaver click and start buzzing. As she starts at my feet and heads north, I notice that the shaver bites, needs adjusting. In a few minutes she finishes at my neck and leaves. 

An attendant comes in and asks, “Would you like to see a hospital chaplain before you go into surgery?” I say, “No, thank you, my priest is here.” Astonished, she says, “Aren’t you from Florida? You’re from Florida and your priest is here?” I say, ‘Yes,” and shortly Father Steve comes in. We priests are mindful not to be too sugary touchy religious with each other, but when Steve says he brought the pyx with oil for anointing I say, “Do it.” Family last, Linda, and then I watch as my gurney with doomed or blest passenger wrapped in warmed blankets is whisked down a hall, around a corner, through a double door and away to either the rest of my life or its beginning. I am in stoppage time.

We arrive in a chilly corridor high, wide, and long enough for an 18-wheeler to roar down at highway speed. Down each side of the hall, staggered, are enormous sliding doors, each maybe ten feet wide and twelve feet high. The attendant, a male, pushes my gurney to the side, parks me at the first sliding door, puts another warmed blanket over me and another on my feet, wishes me well, and leaves. Snug, I am wearing nothing but the hospital gown and my birthday suit, well worn these 75 years and needing replacing; and reduced to no earthly possession but tiny nitro-glycerin tablets in a little brown glass cylinder clutched in my right hand. For a wonder, there is no chest pain, I don’t need a tablet. Mentally I rehearse the dreams I have prepared for my OR time in oblivion, praying I won’t talk in my sleep.

During my forty-five minutes to an hour in the corridor, I watch other gurneys wheel by and park beside other sliding doors. Huge machines are pushed up and down the corridor and into various operating rooms. My sliding door opens, several machines are rolled in, medics in scrubs start arriving. One, a doctor, comes to the foot of my gurney, tells me he is my anesthesiologist, and gives me something to calm me. Calm, I don’t need it, but it seems to make me care even less. In another few minutes someone comes out of my OR, greets me warmly, and wheels me into the room. Glancing around, I see my surgeon among maybe half a dozen smiling folks in scrubs. A nurse asks if I can slide over onto the stainless steel operating table. I wince, knowing it will be freezing, but slide anyway, find the table warm. Clutching my little brown bottle that has not been out of my hand for several months, it's the last time I'll ever see it. My anesthesiologist attaches a drip, and away I go into a lightless oblivion that is total, dreamless nonexistence.

All those dreams I'd so carefully prepared, wasted.

Wherever I was, or nowhere, apparently I was there several hours, until I stir to some level of consciousness, gasp, struggle, feel that I am drowning as a tube is dragged up my throat. Open my eyes and see Nicholas’ beaming smile, then others, and exclaim, “I’m alive!”

The picture is me with Grover, Patty’s bear whom Joe brought me when he arrived from NC the day before. Unlike the city, Grover is named for President Grover Cleveland. The city was named in 1796 for General Moses Cleaveland, leader of the Connecticut Land Company survey team that laid out the city. When the Plain Dealer newspaper set up their masthead, Cleaveland Plain Dealer wouldn’t quite fit across the top of the page, so they changed it to Cleveland. Works better. 

The next day, my life moved into Plus Time, or +Time which, upon reaching 80 I felt time to update to +Time+. 

As well as friends, the Lloyds, Carolyn, Steve, my beloveds there were Joe, Linda, Tass; and Nicholas drove over from Michigan. Grover, of course, who's here in the room with me now, but pictured with me in our Cleveland hotel room. Kristen was in high school and couldn't come, and my mother was declining: I asked Malinda to stay home in PC for Kris and for Mama. Tass and Joe kept updating my CaringBridge link until I could take it back over myself and Jeremy set me up with my +Time blog.

My cup runneth over! My level of gratitude is off the scale.

DThos+