3 Year Anniversary

I will apologize in advance for my digressions. But before I do, let me tell you about this.

Three years ago this evening I was sitting in a hotel in Cleveland, Ohio. I’m not a huge Rock and Roll fan. Not so much that I would drive out to Cleveland. According to Google Maps Cleveland is 507 miles away and would take exactly 8 hours and 16 minutes by car. Clearly Google is underestimating two very important variables. 1) Allison’s lead foot. 2) The pervasive traffic that ensnares anyone driving within 100 miles of New York City. I suppose the two cancel each other out so why don’t we just move on? Especially since we flew to Cleveland.

So, back to the hotel; the one that sits on the campus of the Cleveland Clinic. This is where we were. The “We” in this case included Allison, my parents and my 6 week-old first child, Max. We had gotten back from dinner at this nice little Italian place that we found, or rather I should say that my Father found from chatting up the owner of an art gallery who had a penchant for Disney animation cells. He recommended this place down the street. And so, being from out of town and not visiting as tourists we didn’t bring a copy of Lonely Planet: Cleveland so we had to trust someone. And the food was good if not great. No offense to Cleveland, and perhaps I am completely ignorant, but I cannot imagine a tremendous amount of Italians came through Ellis Island and asked, “Which way to the ‘Mistake by the Lake?”

The dinner was interesting in that everyone was trying to pretend like it was just another evening out. Of course having Max there was the perfect thing for everyone to focus their attention on. His coos, burps and sighs. Allison and I were first-time parents and my folks were first-time grandparents. What better way to ignore the elephant in the room than by focusing on such a tiny, innocent little thing that had no idea whether he was in Cleveland, Connecticut or Campagna. And for a being whose sentience had not quite developed yet, he sure seemed to know what everyone in that restaurant needed. A diversion or at very least a topic to discuss other than his Dad’s open-heart surgery that was scheduled for 6AM the following morning. THAT is why you go to Cleveland. Because they have the best Cardiac Surgery and care center in the world.

In retrospect no one should be surprised about Max’s subliminal genius. It was Max’s impending arrival that prompted the life insurance test that brought to light the severity of my heart condition. And so it was that an unborn child told me that until I have surgery to repair a defective heart valve I could, without exaggeration, die without any further warning. Sudden Death. Yep, that is one of the potential results of the condition if left untreated. In fact, on October 7, 2007, two years to the day after my surgery, a 35 year-old Michigan father of 3 collapsed at mile marker 19 of the Chicago marathon. He died an hour later. Now he is just one man. But so am I. But this is starting to sound like a Lifetime movie so lets get things back on track.

For those who followed along back then you’ll remember that it wasn’t as smooth a ride as we had hoped for. Of course “smooth ride” and “open-heart surgery” rarely peacefully co-exist. What should have been 4-5 days in the hospital turned into 3 excruciating weeks. 3 weeks of pain, mismanaged expectations, incompetence, fears and at least one brief moment of thinking that I wouldn’t make it out at all. Luckily all of that was tempered, if tenuously, by joy, perseverance, support, laughter, a healthy dose of skepticism and a refusal to become merely a statistic of incompetence. And if I could change anything about those three weeks it would not be to take away my pain. I start and end each day by staring at the scar left behind by the surgery. The scar that was made larger when they had to go back in after 3 days of healing; the scar that was made larger after they cracked my sternum for the second time in 3 days. Occasionally I look at the scars from the 3 drainage tubes. When I’m getting dressed in the morning and the light is on, I can see where they unceremoniously made an incision on my foot for the lymph angiogram they had to perform to figure out what went wrong. What I WOULD change if I could were what went through the heads of those who joined me in Cleveland in October 2005. My wonderful wife, Allison. My doting mother, Maria. My steadfast father, Ralph and half way through the ordeal, my supportive father in-law, Norm. While each had pretty good game faces when they needed it, I know, back at the hotel, when the lights dimmed and the TV was turned off was when each one likely felt very alone. You feel alone because you can’t fix it. How do you look at your son, husband, friend suffer and when you ask the best in the world what is happening the only answer is, “We don’t know. We haven’t seen this before.” And that is when they likely did battle with their minds. It is those battles that I wish I could erase.

I suppose it is at this point that people say how they’ve changed. That their ordeal made them a different person. That they stop to smell the roses. They live for the moment rather than stressing about the future or regretting the past. Maybe they changed careers and started living their passion. They live a bumper sticker life. Nope. Not me. I didn’t have any epiphanies. I didn’t have that moment of clarity. I didn’t transcend anything. But I have had three more years to watch Max grow into a precocious little trouble-maker with good intentions (just like his dad). To watch the birth of Max’s little brother, Miles 5 months ago. To have three more years with my best friend and sweetheart, Allison. And to have three more years of all the little things that make up the menagerie of life. But I digress. I would tell you more, but I’ve gotta’ balance the checkbook.

Joe