Today, 15 March 2024, is my Birthday. I've reached 62 years old.
Where the time went, I just don't know.
It seems like only yesterday, my wife took a photo of me in our living room, a day before I turned 30, holding a piece of paper upon which I had written "Still 29."
This whole life-thing seems like it lasts only 5 minutes! It really seems that the older I get, the faster I get older.
Strange.
You know, back in April of 2019, when I had my first heart attack, a nurse in Christ Hospital, Jersey City, saw that I had broken out in a sweat just laying in the hospital bed, and he asked me, are you having chest pains again? I nodded.
He yelled at me, saying "I told you, if you start having pain again, to tell me!"
He called for a "Fast Response Team" all of whom starting plowing into the hospital room. He gave me two nitroglycerin pills under my tongue, waited a few minutes and asked me if the pain subsided. I answered "no." He gave me two more.
As more and more Doctors came in, they gave me two MORE nitroglycerin pills, (total 6 by this point) and still the pain persisted.
One Doc told them to establish an IV with nitroglycerin.
A few minutes after that, things returned to normal for me.
The nurse said "There's something wrong with your heart and we're trying to prevent it from KILLING YOU before we can get in there to see what's wrong."
Up to that moment, the thought of dying hadn't even entered my mind! Yet, there I was.
That was the very first hint or even mention of "death" for me.
A day or so later, when they took me into the Cardiac Catheterization lab, they found three, possibly four badly clogged heart arteries. They told me "Usually, we would use stents for clogged arteries, but your clogs are not small and round; your clogs run the entire length of your coronary arteries. You need open heart surgery and we don't do that here."
I replied, "My Doctor, Harvey Gross, is at Englewood Hospital, do THEY do it there?" Doc said he'd call and check.
The Doc came back a few minutes later saying "Yes, they do open heart surgery. Yes, they have a bed available, and yes, they take your Health Insurance. We've called for a private ambulance to come here and take you there."
The ambulance came and off to Englewood I went.
A few days later, I had open heart surgery and got FOUR by-passes.
That was tough surgery. I came out feeling like I had been run over by a bulldozer. I wasn't strong and confident anymore, I felt like a limp rag.
Recovered from that pretty well.
17 months later, WHAM, down I went - again.
Two of the four By-passes had clogged with Blood Clots. I was in Myocardial Infarction AGAIN!
That second Heart attack was very much worse than the first.
On the Cardiac Catheterization table while they were inserting a stent to re-open my left circumflex artery, I went into Heart Failure. Fluid started building up in my lungs because my heartbeat wasn't strong enough to remove the normal fluid that exists in the lungs. I could only take maybe half a breath, and that was getting worse by the minute.
They called the Fast Response team.
A few minutes later, apparently I came OUT of Heart Failure and could breathe fully again.
But it was during that heart failure that I actually felt "death" come upon my body. It started at my feet and rapidly rose up my legs. It also began at my fngertrips and moved up my arms. I never felt "death" before, but I knew instinctively exactly what it was, as it was happening.
Death isn't painful. It's not scary. It just . . . . happens. You KNOW it when it's happening and there's nothing you can do about it. It's not like "Maybe I can roll over on my side and I'll feel better."
It was after that second heart attack, and feeling "death" for the first time, that really changed my life perspective.
No more sweating the small stuff. No more intense holding of a viewpoint. Everything became a lot more fluid in my life.
Two years after that second heart attack and stent insertion, I needed yet another stent; in my left anterior descending artery.
So I've known for awhile now that I am not long for this world.
Reaching 62 -- at least for me -- is a big deal.
Gift from God.
Thanks, Father!
Amen.
