Have I told you how close I came to death recently? It all began back in May, when I started having pains in my chest. Of course, being one with a stiff upper lip and a tiny little brain, I kept insisting that there was nothing wrong with my heart. “It’s probably just indigestion…really, really horrible indigestion,” I said.
Finally, my wife forced me to go to the emergency room. “It’s nothing,” I assured the lady at the front desk. “I’m only here because my wife made me come. It’s just indigestion.” When you’re really neurotic, you have to go out of your way to prove you’re really not neurotic.
Although my EKG looked good, my cardiologist wanted to do a catheterization, as I had a history of blocked arteries. Who knew that hamburgers and fries could hurt you?
Lying on the table as a little camera was rammed into my groin and shoved to my heart, I tried to pay attention to the doctors and nurses. Were they looking at me in a way that said, “So long, Steve”?
Finally, my doctor came over to me with a big smile on his face. This was going to be good news I thought.
“Your left main artery is almost completely blocked,” he told me in a very exuberant manner. “We call that one the ‘widow-maker.” I wonder how many cutesy names doctors give to things that can kill you. “You need bypass surgery.”
The next few days, as I lay in a hospital bed trying to maintain my dignity while being prodded and probed and pricked and de-privatized, are somewhat a blur. All I could think about was that my chest was going to be ripped open, that my rib cage would be torn apart and that some guy’s hands would be right there touching my heart.
I tried to act nonchalant. “It’s nothing,” I boasted to my family and friends. I think my almost constant open weeping belied my bravado.
The night before the operation, a nurse came in to shave me. “Don’t worry about it,” I told her. I kind of want to grow a beard. Interestingly, it was not my face she was there to shave.
The next morning I told my family I loved them and that it had been nice to have known them. Then I was gone, just like that, to face the knife. I’d love to give you the gory details, but my doctors thought it would be better if I were asleep for the operation.
But, just in case you’re wondering, I can tell you this…I lived. It was nothing.