electric mist

of hearts and hospitals

When you turn into the drive for Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, the red-bricked buildings built maze-like over the years remind you that they've been there for almost forever, and there's a feeling of calm. I don't know if it's because it's designed with courtyards where, when you're inside looking out, you're looking into the thick interlocking branches of white oaks or if it's something about the sheer size of the complex for such a relatively small city that comforts and reassures. Most hospital corridors assail my senses with smells of sterile concoctions or pine-scented freshly mopped floors or that perpetual antiseptic smell of near death, but today, the corridors -- particularly those just off the parking garage -- smelled more like the fresh rain still drizzling outside.

We wound our way to an information desk, asked where the heart patient's families waited while the patients were still in surgery, and then wound our way further along the corridor, zigging right then a quick left and down a long hall until we finally found the private waiting room. We recognized a couple of the people and I worried that we might be intruding -- we're friends of the patient, and didn't really know the family all that well. But the patient is the new partner for the business venture I'd mentioned in entries below and he's been so much a part of our extended family, it seemed the right thing to do, to go and wait and hear how he was.

He had learned a last week that he had to have open heart surgery. A part of his heart had died and somehow, some vein had taken over the responsibility for pumping the blood... which turned out to be so rare, that even the specialist they had flown in had only seen one photo of a heart which had done the same thing. The problem was, it wasn't doing the pumping very well, and his blood pressure kept dropping to near fatal levels, so there was no choice -- it had to be repaired. When Carl talked to him yesterday, he explained that his heart was now as big as a soccer ball. A soccer ball. It's supposed to be about the size of a softball, and it was swelling and working itself to death trying to keep up. The surgeon was going to cut out all of the dead stuff, graft some veins and skin from other areas and essentially rebuild the heart, along with a couple of other things I just didn't quite catch.

We were there in time to hear one report from surgery that everything was going well, and we waited another hour until it was complete and the surgeon came out and spoke to the family. During that hour, there was much laughter and cutting up as the various kids told tales on their dad and some of the crazy things he'd done in his lifetime. Now, I lived with a crazy dad (crazy = southern, ornery, pain-in-the-ass), but their stories made my dad look like he was a laid-back, zen-loving, Prozac-popping zombie, and I was laughing until I had tears. It's nice when you discover you're not the only one from crazy, you know?

At any rate, the surgeon came out an hour later and explained that everything had gone extremely well -- he'd done four by-passes, rebuilt the heart as mentioned, and the couple of other things that still went over my head, but the gist of it was that there was much improvement already in the rate of blood flow and pumping and barring any post-surgery complications, they probably gave him a completely new lease on life.

The walk back out to the car was one of relief and amazement; the things they can do now. Wow. And as we left, there was a short break in the rain.

Posted by toni at May 12, 2004 02:31 PM