A Heart for Christmas | Or Not

The call came at 12:45am. “We have a heart for you,” the voice on the other line said. I was in shock. I had prepared for the call but because it came early Christmas morning and the fact that it was a real call left me speechless and emotional. We had until 2am to get to the hospital. The operation would take place at either 6 or 7am.

I called my parents to meet us at the hospital. They called my siblings to let them know what was going on. Early that night, we had all gathered with the husbands, wives, and kids for our annual Christmas Eve dinner at my parents. It was a great night. We had a special family prayer and the kids acted out the nativity. My wife and daughter left to go home at 11pm. Before putting my 3-year-old daughter to bed we each opened a present. We put her in bed and then Santa came. Then the phone rang.

We arrived at the hospital feeling a great sense of peace and comfort. The time had come and I was ready. Nurses began the preparations. Everyone was extremely positive and saying things like, “Merry Christmas!” and “What a great Christmas gift.”

I received a rather larger IV and a lot of blood was drawn from my already existing picc line for lab work. They had me wash my chest and groin area (where the major arteries are for the heart lung machine) with special medical soap. It was a little cold. Then surgeons came into my room a little before 5am and told my wife and my parents what was expected. He mentioned the “difficulty” of my particular case because of my heart’s anatomy. It would be challenging to get the old heart out. There would be a lot of bleeding. He said, "There is an 80% chance we'll have to go back in later to help stop bleeding." He said chances are I might not make it. Although he had to talk about the downside or the surgery he also mentioned they have an 80-90% success rate with these surgeries on post fontan patients. But, the harsh realities left me a little depressed but I still felt great peace. I had understood the depth of this procedure previously but when you are minutes away from it actually happening life becomes quite sobering.

They came to get me at 5:20am and before the anesthesiologist took me into the operating room I talked briefly with my wife and parents. I kissed Lynnette, told her how much I love her, and then headed down the hallway.

In the cold, brightly lit, O.R., nurses lifted me from my bed onto that firm, narrow, operating table I have become familiar with over the years. I received a dose of versed (Midazolam) for anxiety and preparation. Before I went completely under we were waiting to hear from one of the surgeons, who had gone to harvest the donor heart, if everything was absolutely perfect and good to go. About 30 minutes later the news came. “The new heart had a problem undetected until they looked at it face to face and would not work,” they said. It had an aneurysm which would require some additional surgery on top of everything else we're dealing with.

I didn’t know what to feel. Shock? Relief? Disappointment? I have felt all of those things. Nonetheless, we called it off.

Lynnette and I came home 5 hours later to Christmas morning. My daughter, who had been taken good care of by my sister n’ law, asked if I brought her a sucker from the hospital and things seemed back to normal. I was anxious to experience Santa with my child. One of the gifts from Santa for my daughter was a Fisher Price Medical Kit. She practiced giving shots to me and listened to my heart beat.

I am thankful for the love and support of my family and friends, particularly my sweet wife Lynnette.

This is a roller coaster of emotions. In a way, this experience seems like a brief 2nd opportunity of time before we find out the real outcome of my life’s journey. I am ready for another call but for now I’ll enjoy this weekend with my wife and daughter as we humbly celebrate the birth of the babe in Bethlehem some 2000 years ago.
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Time, precious time
How quickly the leaves fall from the tree.
Time, oh precious time
In a blink of an eye a child grows old.
And in the pursuit of joy and happiness
Lies time
But quickly it fades
And all we have are memories
Precious moments
Remembered in time.
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