I’m not generally one to dispense advice, but I’m going to break character and offer four pieces here:

1. If you’re taking your trash cans down a steep icy driveway, don’t let your feet fly out from underneath you, causing you to elevate horizontally and to whack the back of your noggin on the pavement when gravity takes over.
2. If you fail to heed #1, experience dizziness the next day, attribute the dizziness to whacking your noggin on the pavement, and go to a local emergency room (ER) to get checked out, make sure you don’t have atrial fibrillation (AFib) before you go.
3. If you fail to heed #1 and #2, be prepared to see a lot of really concerned faces in the ER, to have gallons of blood drawn, to undergo more tests than Victor Frankenstein conducted on his monster, to be admitted to the Critical Care Unit (CCU), to have a different doctor and a different crew of nurses for every shift, to be taken through the dark corridors for a CT scan of your head, your chest, and your abdomen at 11:30 at night, to have people coming to take your vital signs and to draw (more) blood at all hours of the night, to have an echocardiogram at 7:30 the next morning, and to be told horrifying things by a no-nonsense cardiologist about the possibility of Stroke-inducing blood clots around your heart, procedures involving tubes down your throat to find the damn things, and electric paddles put on your chest to shock your heart back to a normal rhythm.
4. Be prepared to fall in Love with every caring person you meet during your stay because every person you meet will be deeply caring, compassionate, and professional.

Run River, Run

What qualifies me to dispense such advice? On Monday, January 19th, I did #1. On January 20th through the 23rd, I did #2, #3, and #4. The good news is my heart looked so good on the echocardiogram, only one of the other two procedures will need to be done. No tubes. No clots.

Some people might say all that — any such experience — was a nightmare, a disaster, a grim reminder of our frailty and our mortality, something that happened to me. Nothing happened to me. It was an awakening, a blessing, a beautiful chance to see humanity at its most compassionate and its most noble. It was an opportunity. It didn’t happen to me. It was given to me.

All things being equal, I wouldn’t have chosen to be there on the night of the 20th. I wouldn’t have chosen to be in a hospital bed. I wouldn’t have chosen to have three IVs running at the same time. I wouldn’t have chosen to have an automated sphygmomanometer taking my blood pressure every 15 minutes. I wouldn’t have chosen to have my blood drawn in the middle of every night. I wouldn’t have chosen to hear the monitors chiming, the dispensers dispensing, and the conversations of patients and their caregivers in the hallway. But when Natalie, my night-shift nurse, asked me how I felt that first night, I said, “Completely at peace.” And I did.

Then there was Shannon, my nurse on the day shift Wednesday and Thursday — brilliant, funny, conversant, forthright, caring. There was Elle, Diane, Maddie, Norma, Lexis, Jonathan, Nadine, Laura, Chloe, Claire, Madeline, Lynne, Emily the Nurse and Joe, the Physician’s Assistant in the ER, Dr. David, Dr. Sam, Dr. Shani, others whose names I’m sorry I can’t remember, and still others — including the uniformly cheerful people from Housekeeping who kept my room immaculate — whose names I never knew. Each of them made it impossible for me to be anxious. All of them made me positive I was in genuinely caring hands.

The Ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus said, “You cannot step twice in the same river.” When I was discharged from the hospital on January 23rd, I did not step in the same river I’d been in when I entered the hospital.

The river was different. The world was different. I was different. Those things are the same.

I thank every one of the people I met at Middlesex Health in Middletown, Connecticut, as humbly, sincerely, and enduringly as I can for making that true, for teaching me that lesson without ever even trying.

With a very full and very grateful heart,

Mark

P.S. On the afternoon of the 23^rd, after returning home, I received a call from a man named Tim Barron. His 88-year-old father, Bob, lives across the street from Anne and me. We’ve gotten to know Tim, Bob, Tim’s younger brother, Jeff, and Jeff’s son, Lee, very well. Given the tone of Tim’s voice and the halting way in which he was talking, I thought he was calling to tell me his dad had been injured or had passed away. Instead, he wanted me to know this.

I’m 18 years older than Jeff was. I just spent three days in the hospital with a heart condition. I’m still walking around, and Jeff is not. I don’t know why my life is charmed. But it irrefutably is.

Originally Published on https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/category/lifecolumns/notes-to-self/

Mark O'Brien Writer, Blogger

I'm the founder and principal of O'Brien Communications Group (obriencg.com) and the co-founder and President of EinSource (einsource.com). I'm a lifelong writer. My wife, Anne, and I have two married sons and four grandchildren. I'm having the time of my life.