The day you almost died was pretty routine. You got the kids up, walked the dogs, took one of your daughters to school, received a phone call from your brother-in-law during his commute. You were driving home from the school, talking to him through the AirPods in your ears, when you felt light-headed. You pulled the car over and then almost immediately passed out.
You awake a few minutes later to hear Sean asking through the phone “I can still hear you – are you passing out dude?”
You’re so sleepy. Why are you so sleepy? Is it because you didn’t eat breakfast? Your brain is sluggish. You must need to nap. Just get off the phone and nap.
You mumble something about low blood sugar and how you’re gonna nap in the car and hang up. You go back to sleep.
The phone rings. It’s Erin. Sean has called her and she’s concerned. You’re immediately cranky. Can’t a guy suddenly need to take an urgent nap at 7:45AM in the middle of his carpool drive? What’s the big deal?
She wants to know that you’re not currently driving – that you’re safe on the side of the road. Yes, yes. You tell her you’re going back to sleep. She says she’s coming to find you. You hang up.
She calls back. God damnit! You’re trying to sleep. She wants you to keep talking to her. That is the last thing you want to do, but she’s insistent. She wants to know what you’re feeling. “Uh, I’m really tired,” is all you manage. You maybe fall asleep during this conversation, and she maybe yells at your unconscious self through the Bluetooth speakers of your car for five minutes until she manages to wake you again.
She doesn’t want you to sleep. Fine. Jesus! Why is she being such a pain in the ass?
If she’s coming to get you to take you to the ER (which seems like overkill but you don’t have the energy to argue), you’ll end up having two cars parked here. Which, now that you think about it, where is here? Where the Hell are you, and why?!
You don’t recognize this section of the neighborhood even though you drive through it every single day. You’re not sure how you got here. But you think you can probably get back home if you go straight and then turn right on that street up there. And that would solve the two cars problem. You will drive home and have her meet you there instead of . . . wherever this is. Plus, you could maybe get to a couch and get the sleep you clearly need. Yeah! That’s exactly what you should do. (One of the many doctors you will see later will describe this moment as confusion, a concept you will resist for several hours because (a) you didn’t remember it as confusion – you remember it as a logical plan you enacted to correct an overabundance of vehicles, and (b) you have an almost pathological need to be right, even and perhaps especially when you’re not getting enough oxygen to your brain).
You put the car into drive, and cautiously make it about a block and a half. She’s on the phone and you manage to explain your plan, or at least the part where you drive home. She doesn’t like your plan? Gawd!
You feel light-headed and now you might vomit. That’s not good. Don’t want to vomit in the car. You pull over again. You notice that you are drenched in cold sweat. Your shirt is absolutely soaked in it, and your breathing is rapid. You open the door in case you vomit.
And that’s how she finds you, partially slumped on the wheel with the door open and an alabaster face. She used the Find My iPhone app to pinpoint your location. Now she’s asking if you’re okay to get to the passenger seat. You’re alarmed to realize that you’re not sure. You think you might fall. WTF?
She walks with you around the car and to the passenger side. Once you’re seated, you turn to the pressing issue of what she is gonna do with her car. Just park it over there and leave it? That sounds like an ass monkey plan – a plan collectively devised by a chittering tribe of ass monkeys. But whatever. Your breathing is labored and your pissing water out of your face, so maybe you should just drop the car thing and get to the ER.
She drives. You sleep. Now you’re at the ER and she’s asking if you can walk in. What am I, Randy Macho Man Savage? Get me a wheelchair woman.
She pushes you in a glorified shopping cart. They rush you to an EKG: normal. You’re not having a heart attack. They take an x-ray of your chest: normal. CT scan of your head: normal. Blood test: normal. MRI: normal. EEG: normal. Ultrasound of your carotid: normal. They’re a bit stumped. They thought it was your heart at first, then decided it was probably neurological. But after the MRI and EEG, the neurologist describes your brain activity as “beautiful.” (You feel a surge of pride at this word, as you’ve always suspected your brain was beautiful).
Now they’ve come back around to your heart. You have a family history of heart disease, and a couple of years ago they did find some plaque in one of your arteries during a cardiac calcium scan. So they’d like you to consider doing a cardiac catheterization, where they go up through your vein and look in your heart. They want to absolutely rule out a blockage in your arteries before they explore other issues, like maybe a weird, arhythmic heart beat. They’ll keep you overnight for observation and then do the procedure tomorrow morning. You will be conscious for the procedure, but pain free.
The informed consent reads like a Tarantino screenplay. Holy yikes. The list of potential hazards is terrifying. You want to know what happened to you in the car, but do you really want to risk death and paralysis and zombie apocalypse to find out?
You spend a pleasant evening in the hospital reading about the Kavanaugh stuff (God, the Kavanaugh stuff) and watching Netflix. The next morning you are taken for an echocardiogram and the catheterization. Your spirits are light. The technicians are peasant. You’re confident they will find nothing and the issue likely has more to do with your historically low resting heart rate.
The cardiologist goes up your vein. It’s easy, it’s quick. Not bad at all. Now he’s at your side telling you that your left anterior descending artery has a 99.9% blockage.
“Did you say 9.9%?”
“I said 99.9%. We have to drill that out with a special tool and then insert a stent. My partner will do that while I inform your wife.”
“Oh. Uh . . . okay then.”
There’s a nickname for the left anterior descending artery, or LAD. You learned it a couple of years ago. They call it “the widowmaker”. You reflect on this while your cardiologist tells your wife that it could literally have killed you at any minute.
The procedure goes “wonderfully”. The cardiologists and technicians are practically high-fiving each other at the end, so pleased are they with their handiwork. And you’re pleased – of course you are – but that’s your heart blown up on the video monitor. A heart that beats for an Indiana girl and four Texan kids. And somehow you don’t feel like cheering.
You are reunited with your phone (it was in the procedure room with you, because we’re all cyborgs now) and wheeled to your room. You have several text messages, some from disbelieving buddies that Erin has contacted. Some from family. And one from your wife that explains that when she sees you, she will kiss you, and then kick your ass.
The rest of your hospital stay is less pleasant. In addition to the wires, tubes and stickers all over you, you now have two very serious wounds (one on your wrist, another on your groin/leg area) where they went in to fix your heart. If either of these wounds doesn’t clot, or is jostled and breaks open, you can bleed out very quickly. So you’re not allowed to move, but must instead lay flat on your back in bed for twelve hours.
You’re a side sleeper. You don’t do flat on your back ever. Unless you’re doing an “airplane” ride for kids. Or in savasana. Or it’s NYE 2013, and the alcohol you drank is reacting with the niaspan you took, and you’re giving yourself a concussion on the tile floor of your bathroom while trying to pee.
Speaking of peeing, have you ever tried to pee while flat on your back in a bed while a nurse “helps” you? She’s holding a portable urinal and pointing Mr Pokey into it while you try not to be self-conscious and not to soil yourself. Forty-six years of societally mandated bladder control is not easily abandoned. And there’s no way you’re gonna pee upward with this stranger’s hands on your junk.
When that doesn’t work, in goes the catheter. And holy fuck is that unpleasant! But so, so worth it as they drain 750 ml of urine from your screaming bladder. And now your pee hole will hurt for days, to say nothing of your pride.
Then your wife and three of your kids arrive. Your youngest wastes no time. “Dad, you look so . . . disabled. Why is your hand so white? Do you pee in this thing? Gross! Hey, are these rubber gloves free? Did you know I can stretch them to fit onto my head?”
It’s harder for the other kids, who are probably a bit triggered by the sight of you in a hospital gown – just like their grandparents wore after the car crash that changed your lives. Nori plays pretend at the nurse’s computer station. Henry quietly touches your arm and holds it.
You do your best to project confidence and wellbeing. This is no small feat while on your back in a hospital bed with tubes all over you, blinking lights and a video monitor displaying your vitals.
Beckett climbs on the bed. He loudly opens and closes drawers. He touches things he shouldn’t touch. He steps into your bathroom and does his ridiculous little routine where he moans in pleasure as he urinates. “Oh yeah! That’s the stuff! So great! Yeaaahhhh.” It’s obnoxious at the best of times, but while you are unable to pee yourself, and while they’re filling you with IV fluids – putting ever increasing pressure on your bladder – it’s a fresh kind of torture.
This is wearing you out. Erin sees this and takes the kids home. Later she will return. So will Henry, along with your oldest daughter Riley, with whom you have texted several updates. When your recovery was certain, she went ahead and participated in the homecoming parade – a duty she owed by virtue of being the junior class president. Now she is at your bedside and holding back tears, because this shit was scary.
Eventually the kids leave. And shortly after that, you are allowed to stand and pee like a man, with your wife at your side. And it is gorgeousness and gorgeousity. You repeatedly thank a God in which you do not believe as streams of glorious gold shoot from your tender unit while your wife holds your gown and some of the wires. She laughs at the stream of consciousness profanity and praise that spills from your mouth. And the fact that you sound a lot like your son Beckett.
And then you can lay on your side. Your side! How you’ve missed laying on your side! And with two pillows under your head and one between your legs, you reflect on how much in life you take for granted. Like a good piss, or laying on your side. Your wife departs, and you sleep.
You wake at 4AM, pick up your phone, and begin pecking out this narrative. You title it Widowmaker, for obvious reasons. It’s not as funny as you normally try to be. But it’s real as Hell.
Occasionally, you will pause and switch to another thing you’ve started to write. This one is just for you. It’s kind of half bucket list, half mission statement. You title it Lazarus. You’ve been given a second life. What are you going to do with it?
You are healing well. Later today you will be discharged and have your own homecoming. You will return to your wonderful life. And you will drink it in, this life you have co-authored with your college sweetheart. And you will be ever mindful of all that you have, and all that you almost lost.
And it’s a glorious day to be alive.