IMG 14022805

I Just Needed A Valvc Job

They make hcart surgery so routiue now. bul it’s still tough on a inan's pridc By GARRISON KEILLOR Aug. 13, 2001 This suminer I was going to learn how to take it casy. And then it turned out tiiat I needed heart surgery'- So now Pm taking it casy as a siow-moving, acliy guy who ran chcst-first into a wali with a sharp stick protruding from it. 1 shufllc down the sidcwalk, wary of bicyclists and uneven ground, aware that a guy doesn't get the sort of pity for this that w^rould have bccn his duc even 20 ycars ago. That is the fate of heart surgery. U bccame one of thosc ordinary miracles.

Fift\^r ycars ago, in my boyhood, a guy who blcw out a mitral valve was sent home to sit in a sunny coracr and play cribbage until congestivc heart failure swept him away. Open-hcart surgery was big news. One of the pionccrs was C. Walton Lillchci at tlić University of Minnesota, a local celcbrity on the order of Dr. Albert Schweitzer. The operations were cnonnously expensive, the survival ratę around 50%, and Minnesota has always had plenty of finger waggers to rcmind you that all tliat moncy spent to repair that fet man’s aorta could havc bought nourishing breakfasts for X number of orphans. But Doc Lillchci was surroundcd with innoccnt kids with congenital heart dcfccts, and nobody said boo.

I am one of thosc innocent kids, cxcept l'm 58. l'vc always had a slight heart murmur, inherited from my flinty anccstors, and when the valve eaine loose at the raoorings, there wasn't much doubt about it. So my wifc drove me to the Mayo Clinic, and they wheeled me into a bright blue industrial room and put a mask ovcr my foce, and I took a breath, and it was eight hours latcr.

Heart surgery is an artistie perfonnancc to benefit an audicnce tliat is sound asleep at Uie time. A man you've met only oncc slices open your chcst so your heart can be stopped and chillcd so a loose flap in your mitral valve can be sewn up. No big deal when it goes right, which, with an ace surgeon, it should.

A couple of days later, I'm in bed trying to inhalc air tlirough a blue plastic tubę so as to raisc a wbite plastic disc up past the 3,000-ml level. It's a version of tlie high-striker bootli at the State fair meant to elear the lungs. The prize is a fit of cougliing, which is good for your lungs and which feels likc you're taking machinc-gun rounds in tlić chest. But I keep making progress, not wanting to let down my buddies in the ward.

The inhalator gizmo was cxplained to me by a lovcly young nurse in a blue uniform with a pager clipped to her collar. She bent down to show me how it works, and the wcight of the pager opened a fabulous landscape of tanned young brcasts and glcaming wbite brassicre. I gazed in and realized tliat my libidinous urge had shrunk to something akin to my urge to play croquet.

It is rougli on a man's pridc to be a patient. Even after you get into your Extrcmcly Late 40s, a hfc phasc tliat lasts until 70 or so, you maintain a ccrtain manly sense of yourself (He juraps! He shoots!

He scores!), but now, taking a slow postoperativc stroił down the hall, hcading for the loungc with the jigsaw puzzlcs, you catcli a glimpsc of yourself in the glass door aliead, a shambling galoot in droopy, pcc-staincd pajanias. (When tlicy puli out the cathetcr, it takes you a day or two to get your sphinctcr reset.) This is not a guy wliom any woman longs to havc sex with; she would be afraid of killing .the old bugger. Ifs bard for a man with a strong sense of himself (He’s going dcep—dcep—dcep! And he\s almost to the wali! And he's got it!) to accept this clcmcntal defeat.

But it doesn’t matter. Fm still herc on the planet. And what 1 remember most clcarly about my wcek is a murky stretch dockcd in Intensive Care.

Tliere was dim light and dcep mist and a hissing and grumbling of niachinery and my little boat of lifc bobbing on the waves. And tliere were voices in the fog. First a young woman, then a man, then a woman. Erinn Erickson, Clint Williams, Erin Pawlaski. Angels saying my name, sayingl was doing well, tliat the brealliing tubc would soon be out, putting a cool cloth on my forehead. A day's work for them, a revclation of human kindness to me.

And now ifs almost two wecks later. Most cverybody who’s going to say, "Ifs good to sec you up and around and looking well," has said it. My chcst aches less. Early this morning I walked out the front door and bent and pickcd up the morning paper. Cool air, distant traflic, a whiff of lihcs from along the driveway, and in the park across the strcct, a woman loping along with a ycllow Lab. Alter a heart operation, it is all indcscribably beautiful.

Garrison Kcillor's new novcl. Lakę Wobcgon Suminer 1956, will be published later this roonth by Yiking