Chicago Heights
Fix You Department
March, 2020
Carotid endarterectomy.
Doesn’t exactly roll off your tongue.
It’s surgery to treat carotid artery disease.
Carotid arteries are the main blood vessels that carry oxygen and blood to the brain.
When diseased, these arteries become narrow, reducing blood flow to the brain, leading to potential stroke.
“Potential” stroke?
That ship’s sailed.
I already had the “Ask Me About My Stroke!” button.
“It’s ultimately your call”, said my cardiologist.
Nice guy.
Brilliant guy, actually.
His intimidating list of degrees, Board chairmanships, affiliations, and various other Herculean accomplishments at the forefront of his chosen profession -
cardiothoracic vascular surgery - is, well, insanely impressive.
He’s a certified X-Man when it comes to all things artery.
We’re the same age, but I feel downright Neanderthal in his presence.
Like that cartoon that shows three dogs, the first one saying, “I help policemen, I sniff out drugs!”
The second dog says,”I help people, I’m a comfort dog!”
The last dog - a Golden Retriever - says, “I eat shoes!”
Sitting here with my drug sniffing, comfort giving doctor, I have the distinct taste of slippers in my mouth.
“But if you don’t have this surgery, I can guarantee you, 100%, that you will have another stroke...”
I definitely don’t want another stroke.
My right arm at that point already felt like an Italian sausage hanging from my shoulder, I sounded like a two year old when I tried to play my guitar, and I couldn’t remember how to fold bath towels.
That was my thing before all this physical hell broke loose.
Folding bath towels from the clean laundry.
Folding damn towels.
Now I can’t remember how.
So, no.
No more strokes.
Just.
No.
“When is your next carotid whatever fixing thing date open?”, I asked Professor X.
“I’m all in”.
He explained my condition very calmly, very relaxed, very Zen.
Perfect for me.
I like Zen.
He covered every step of the procedure (“procedure” is the nice, non-frightening phrase for surgery), no stone left unturned, including the doctor catch-all part about the very small, unlikely, eentsie chance that I could die if I went through with the surgery.
Again with the death stuff.
He included a side note about possibly losing my voice because the slicing and dicing is all perilously close to the vocal chords.
That’s the trade off?
With that, I froze, but more about that in the next post...
“How did this happen?” I asked.
“Was it a result of the pneumonia and all that shit I just went through?”
He paused.
“Hard to say”, he said.
“Could be lots of factors - genetics, age, cheeseburgers, and of course, trauma from what you’ve been through, but no matter what, we need to fix you...”
Fix.
You.
I needed to be fixed.
My heart was defective.
My heart was broke and hurting.
Fix.
Me.
Please...
We set the date and my drug-sniffing, comfort-giving, insanely brilliant Doctor would work his magic on this shoe-eating, fix-needing heart.
Fix me.
One more step on this mysterious, quasi-Covid, but maybe not, and then what do I make of all this, hopefully once in a lifetime ride.
Coldplay has a beautiful song called Fix You.
The lyrics make an entrance with these words:
“When you try your best, but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need
When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep
Stuck in reverse
And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone, but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?”
Could it be worse?
Of course it could, but right now I’m just worried about a carotid endarterectomy trashing my voice...
No comments:
Post a Comment