What do you want to know? asked the cardiac surgery recovery nurse? We want to know everything, we told him. For the next hour and a half he walked us through every single step of the upcoming surgery, from arriving at the hospital at 0-dark thirty on surgery day, to the obligatory discharge wheel chair ride to the car. When it comes to our health, (and life for that matter) knowledge is power, and we left that appointment armed with the truth of what was to come, and the hoped for promise of what awaits us on the other side. The only way to that other side is through open heart surgery.
Open.
It’s kind of staggering when you think about it. And I’ve thought about it a lot. Someone is going to literally open up my husband’s heart, bring it to a halt and allow the heart-lung bypass machine to take over. No longer under his control, machines will be breathing and circulating his blood for him. The surgeon (who we already love because he is a Carolina Panther’s fan - oh, yeah, and one of the best in the field) will meticulously create new pathways around his blocked arteries , replace a failing valve, restart his heart, knit his sternum and tissue back together, and slowly bring him back to consciousness. It’s a miracle that is part gruesome, part gorgeous, and part glorious, and it seems that on the operating table, and in life, we don’t get to bypass the gruesome (painful, challenging, scary, grief, trauma, fill-in-your-own-blank) if we want to experience the gorgeous and the glorious.
Heart.
The thing that keeps us going, that beats without asking, that is the first and last sign of life. Regardless of the success rate of this surgery and the skill of the surgeon and his team, this is a big deal. It’s his heart after all, and while we are confident in the outcome, there are no guarantees. Never have been, never will be. One morning, my geologist suggested that people were making too big a deal of this. That he wasn’t worried, and maybe they shouldn’t be either. He was looking at it all from his scientific, pragmatic self, not wanting to be the center of attention (too late), and perhaps not wanting to let in all those big emotions that can feel scary for a guy like him (tough shit). Sitting there in the morning sun, I suggested that he was minimizing something important. The truth that everyone who is not him is having to consider what our world would be like without him. What he means to each of us who know and love him, and how his presence matters in so many ways. When it comes to matters of the heart, we are always taking a risk when we allow ourselves to love and be loved.
Surgery.
Surgery repairs what is broken, replaces what is worn out, and restores our capacity to live the fullest of full-hearted lives that we can muster. What is true on the operating table is true in life. Repair and healing are not possible on our own. We are meant to seek help for whatever it is that ails us, and to be of help by bringing who we are and what we have to offer to the world within within our reach.
We are all in need of repair.
It begins with an open heart.
