Thoughts On Heart Surgery One Year Later

Providence Happens Before You Know It…

I was a teenager with big dreams. I didn’t know which dream to pursue, but there were many of them, they were big, and they always fell into the category of happily ever after, that is until 1980.

Firestone Tire and Rubber had a major engineering failure in their new radial tire, the Firestone 500. The company was not ready to make the new, coveted radial tires, but they did it anyway, and in their haste, they produced tires that were infamous for blowing out at high speeds, even when the top speed in the country in those days was only 55 mph. Firestone’s catastrophic failure rolled downhill. My dad, a Firestone employee for 23 years, and the father of the year for 58 years running, lost his job.

Dad could have bid his time and taken a year of unemployment, but McDaniels don’t do that. Within a month, we left our home in Memphis and relocated in Shreveport. It was June, 1980, just months away from high school graduation.

It was a lonely summer. I had a full time job at $3.10 an hour at Moore’s Firestone in Shreve City. I changed tires, oil, and transmission fluid and got cars ready for brakes and shocks. When it was quiet, we went upstairs to the warehouse and stacked tires on 100 degree+ days. Sometimes on my day off, I drove to Dallas to pick up air conditioners and car parts in a pick up truck with no radio or A/C.

One hot day, I went by Meadowlake Swim Club just down the road from our house. The pool was full of people, but there was one who stood out. Her name was Colleen. Later that week, it was already dark when the doorbell rang. Mom, Dad and I were in a new place and didn’t know anyone. Dad answered the door to the football coach at Calvary Baptist Academy along with three of his players. One of them was the quarterback, Bob Martin. 

This is where providence stepped in, or at least where I realized it. Today, Bob is Dr Robert Martin, heart specialist, and Colleen, the girl at the swim club, is my wife. 

Forty-one years later, in May, 2021, Colleen made me an appointment to see Dr Martin. I resented her assumption that there could be anything wrong with me, and I determined to increase my exercise and lose weight before the appointment, but my weight loss never happened. When the day of the appointment arrived, I hoped for a major event at work to get me off the hook, but it didn’t happen, so I made my appointment. 

It was good to see my old friend Bob Martin again, but I hated wasting his time. On my end, everything was fine, but due to my age and family history, the doctor scheduled me for a stress test and calcium test. Since I worked out on the elliptical machine 4-6 days every week, I wasn’t worried. My daily routine consisted of doing intervals: sprinting 30 seconds and jogging 20 seconds for twenty minutes. It was a hard work out, but how can you expect any progress if you aren’t breathing heavy? On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I did push ups.

When I got on the treadmill for the stress test, Dr Martin’s PA, Pam, told me she was looking for me to walk or jog for 7 minutes or for my heart rate to go over 140 bpm. It was rare for my heart rate to go above 140 bpm even after 20 minutes on the elliptical, so I reached the mandatory seven minutes, and Pam added a series of inclines to stretch me to the limit. At ten minutes, I was hurting, but I figured she would shut off the machine if death was eminent. She stopped me at 10:45, and I was glad. My heart rate was 136 bpm.

Pam pointed out her concerns on the graph chart regurgitated by the machine. There were some dips early on that got her attention, but it could have been an equipment malfunction or the normal activity of an abnormal person.

A week later, I took the calcium test. A perfect score is zero while a score of one hundred is cause for concern. Four days later, I was eating a cheeseburger at Papa’s Sandwich Shop when the doctor’s office called with my test results. My score was 1172. It was Thursday, August 5, and the day I realized life would not always go as I planned.

With a score like that there is only one thing to do: a heart cath. My insurance resisted funding because I did well on the stress test, but with prodding, they finally came through. On Tuesday morning, I had the procedure. I was conscious, but it was quiet enough for me to drift in and out of sleep. Occasionally, I woke up and looked at the big screen beside me. I saw, or imagined I saw, what looked like space invaders as Dr Martin cleaned out my veins. With the addition of a stint or two, I would be back in the saddle by lunch time and celebrate with a salad. When the doctor finished, they took me back to the waiting area with Colleen where we waited, and waited. The other patients who had the same procedure as me were long gone when Dr Martin finally arrived.

There’s no easy way to tell a friend he is knocking on death’s door, but he did well. My blockages were legion: 100%, 100%, 90%, 80%, 70% and 60%. What I thought was the doctor zapping away my blockages was dye injected to reveal the blockages. No amount of stints could help . . . the blockages would require five bypasses. The news hit like a sledge hammer, and though she tried, Colleen could not hide her grief.

Two days later, Thursday, August 12, I had an appointment with the surgeon, Dr Mull and his PA, Brian Fontenot. Dr Mull was cool and confident. He put Colleen and me at ease, or as relaxed as we could be. He scheduled me for five bypasses on Tuesday, August 17 which was sooner than I expected, and I was glad. The quicker I got it over with, the quicker I could recover.

Covid was at an all time high, and I was not vaccinated. I wasn’t against the vaccine, I just had not reached the point where I felt I was in less danger with the vaccine than I was without it, but now I was facing major surgery, and the thought of catching Covid while recovering from heart surgery was daunting, especially since the cardiac floor at Willis Knighton North was only two floors below the Covid floor.

For the next four days, I stayed home and got ready to be incapacitated. I mowed the yard, painted the bathroom, filled the cars with gas, and cleaned my closet. I read the Bible, and I kept coming back to a familiar passage in Philippians 4:4-7: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Without putting forth much effort, I memorized those verses. They are rich and concentrated, and contained everything I needed spiritually and emotionally. God was faithful through his word to give me peace and helped me realize the worst thing that could happen to me was death, and if everything the Bible says is true, heaven is not a consolation prize, it is the grand prize to those in Christ.

Colleen, my daughter Olivia, and I arrived at the hospital on Tuesday morning at 5 am. An hour later, our preacher Chris Wilcutt arrived and stayed the next 12 hours. For that I will always be grateful. 

An orderly spent an hour shaving me. If they would have told me, I could have done it myself in fifteen minutes at home. Instead, I lay shirtless on a bed with an audience while the orderly plucked me like a big chicken. My humbling was just beginning. 

A nurse started an IV. I said goodbye to Olivia and Colleen, and they wheeled me to a cold room. I fell asleep in peace reciting Philippians 4:4-7.

Fourteen hours later, “Be anxious for nothing…” was on my mind when I woke up. Life was different. I was in a large white room with a clock on the wall in front of me. There were TVs and large machines next to me, beeping and clicking. I seemed to be completely restrained as if my arms, legs, and head were strapped to the bed. Eventually I realized the restraints were anesthetic rather than physical, yet they proved to be more effective than rope or chain.

“Be anxious for nothing…” made good sense until I realized there was a tube in my mouth and throat being held in place by an object that felt like a small pool floaty. 

“…but in all things through prayer and supplication make your requests known to God.” My prayer was, “Let this cup pass from me,” but I had only begun to drink from the cup, and it was full. 

Though I could not see anyone, I knew I was being supervised. The object in my throat was gagging me and preventing me from getting all the air I needed, so I did the natural thing. In panic mixed with terror, I determined to rip it out of my mouth, but my determination was thwarted when I tried to lift my arms which were, by some invisible force, impossible to move. I had faced the challenge of defiant limbs and muscles many times in the past and knew my will could conquer them, but on my first try I could not defeat the restraints. Still unable to breathe, or at least inhale the amount of air I thought I needed, I forced my arms up. It felt as if each one was attached to a 50 pound dumbbell, but the physical restraints were no more than plastic tubes and cushions. My arms were weighted down with narcotics rather than iron. My left arm was unusable, wrapped in a rectangular pillow, but I got my right hand to my mouth and realized there was more equipment attached to me than a mere tube in my throat. A voice cautioned me. I responded to the voice in desperation, but without a voice of my own, I could only point desperately to my throat to indicate I was being suffocated. The voice ignored me. At the height of anxiety, I fell unconscious.

The next time I woke, the miniature floaty in my mouth was deflated, but the tube was still there. It was difficult to breath. My right hand came up easier this time…maybe 30 pound dumbbells instead of 50, but the objects attached to my mouth were unmovable. The voice returned, unsympathetic. Seeing no one, and unable to speak, I pointed to my mouth again with emphasis. No one responded, so I bit down on the plastic tube. It crunched under the pressure of my jaws. I motioned again with my hand, trying to let some one know there were pieces of broken plastic in my mouth that threatened to drop into the tube going down my throat. My panic gave way to unconsciousness. 

The tube was gone when I woke up. The light from the sun through the window was fading. With the tube removed from my throat, other sources of misery took its place. The first was my raw, throbbing throat which was surrounded by a mouth so dry it had the texture of the desert floor of the Mohave. Like the rich man in Hades, my torment was great, and I begged Lazarus to dip his finger in cool water and give me a drop. Lazarus was my nurse whom I saw for the first time through the haze of intoxication. She explained that my recovery would go far better if I remained dry for the night. The clock on the wall said 8 pm.

My second source of misery was the sensation of having a 12 inch by 12 inch steel plate riveted to my chest, and continues to a lesser degree to this day. Breathing took a conscious effort, and if I didn’t keep up, I gasped for air. Several times I woke up gasping without hope of comfort until daylight as I remembered, “His mercies are new every morning.” I thanked God for life but asked for heaven.

At 9 pm, I woke to voices outside my room: two women and a man. They were nurses, and one of the women was the supervisor. She asked the man if he called a doctor about a patient. He said he did and explained why it was necessary. She told him there was a chain of command on her floor, and she needed to know everything that went on in her ward. He explained that he was familiar with the doctor and only called him because the doctor gave him his number and told him to call under certain circumstances. The supervisor was not appeased, and the two were arguing when Dr Martin appeared beside me. 

I wondered why he was not home with his family. Though I was his patient, I was under the surgeon’s care, but Dr Martin cared as well. That was why he was there. He said my surgery went well. Dr Mull did six bypasses instead of five, making the surgery longer than normal. Though my recovery would be difficult, the doctor said I could handle it. The lights behind him were bright, so I kept my eyes closed and listened, but the nurses’ conversation droned on behind us, outside the room. Aggravated at the interruption, I told the doctor the staff needed to take their grievances elsewhere. The doctor disappeared for a moment, and when he reappeared, we talked uninterrupted.

I slept hard, and thought I made it through the night, but when I looked at the clock, only 15-20 minutes had passed. This happened over and over for eight hours. Every moment I was awake was misery. At 3 am, the nurse finally conceded and gave me a few drops of water in the form of ice chips. It was half a teaspoon at most, but I was grateful. 

Six am was shift change, and my new nurse was eager to move me out. She put me in a chair and started removing wires and tubes. I saw the sunrise, or remnants of it, from a west facing window. It was a new day, and I was alive to see it. My first goal of recovery was to see my woman.

I spoke to Colleen on the phone for the first time in 24 hours and gave her my room number on the second floor. I called my dad and told him I was still in the land of the living. My new nurse was a whirlwind and sent me to my room before breakfast. When I got there, I opted to sit in the chair rather than lay in bed. Apparently, sitting up is a good thing when recovering from heart surgery. The most difficult adjustment was not being able to use my arms to push up when standing or to brace myself when sitting because my sternum was wired together. 

Like a breath of fresh air, Colleen arrived at 9 am. Seeing her changed everything. I had hope…

I walked a loop around the hall twice that day and slept far less than I thought I would, mostly because I wanted to sleep at night. At 10 pm, the nurse helped me into bed. The staff made sure they woke me up every two hours. Otherwise, I slept. The rest of the week, I got in and out of bed myself.

Every morning, I got in the chair by 8. By the fourth day, I was up to four laps, but my knee was hurting badly, and I had to cut back on walking for the rest of the week. During surgery, they took a vein from my left calf to use in my heart, and since I had surgery on my knee when I was 15, the pain in my knee was intense and continued to be for three more weeks.

My dad, at 84, lost my mom five months earlier. He was far more upset about my condition than I was, but I would have been the same way if it was my son in the hospital. I talked to him everyday, and he came to see me a couple of times. If I would have let him, he never would have left my bedside.

I dreaded the thought of being in the hospital, and I was there a full week; however, the Lord calmed my nerves, and I easily made it through a whole week. I had little appetite and ate almost nothing, but I didn’t lose an ounce of weight. The drain tubes in my stomach were incredibly uncomfortable. Dr Mull finally removed them after six days. Colleen pointed out that the two incisions for the tubes above my belly button resembled a smiley face.

On the eighth day, I went home, sat in my chair, and instantly fell asleep. I slept in my bed that night until 3 am and finished up in the recliner. After that, I slept in my bed at night for 5-6 hours and took a nap every day. Every day I walked the dog but was still limited by the pain in my knee. 

It’s been a year since surgery, and the peace of God has guarded my heart and mind in Christ these twelve months. I will  die one day, but by the grace of God, not yet, and when the day comes, the peace of God will continue…