Thursday, May 13, 2010
SOME WORDS ON INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY
Ever since I discovered, in January 2010, that I need a replacement aortic heart valve asap, I've been wondering if and how to write about it here. John Diamond, the journalist and first Mr Nigella Lawson, wrote bravely, eloquently, often amusingly and without self-pity about his ultimately unsuccessful battle with cancer of the throat and tongue, so I thought he should be my role model, notwithstanding the fact that a heart valve replacement is not supposed to be life-threatening.
Once you are in the medical machine, there is so much information available to you on every subject, that you can both find out everything you could possibly want to know - and view it in graphic detail - but also scare yourself silly whilst actually seeking reassurance.
I started writing this entry before the General Election. Now it's over and we're in the brave new world of an extraordinary Conservative/Lib-Dem coalition, I feel more optimistic about the future of our country, if not myself.
The problem with which I have been wrestling during the seemingly interminable months of waiting for the operation, is what happens if I don't survive it; if I just don't come around from the anaesthetic, or die shortly afterwards from a complication? I've been told there's a 1% chance of mortality and a 4% chance of needing to have a pacemaker fitted following damage to my heart's sino-atrial node during the procedure. These are indeed very small odds, but if my surgeon carries out around 100 of these operations each year, that means one person doesn't make it. Ok, so at 52 I'm young to be having a valve replacement and therefore it's unlikely to be me, but no matter how many people I talk to and no matter how much I remind myself that my father had the same operation, with the added complication of several bypass grafts, at the greater age of 65 and survived, that tiny, insignificant chance just won't go away.
Here's the thing: the anaesthetist comes along and injects you with a drug that puts you out like a light and that's it - to all intents and purposes you have, as Monty Python put it, ceased to be. I've had a general anaesthetic a couple of times, for comparatively minor procedures and the shutdown is complete - you don't dream and there is no sense of self until you are coming around. The time you spend unconscious is totally lost, with no place in your memory. This time some maniac with a buzzsaw is going to cut my breastbone open, heave my ribs aside with what looks like a car jack and then a highly-qualified person with a very sharp knife and a sewing kit, but no mental health problems, is going to do unspeakable things to my heart, which is possibly the repository of my very soul! And I'm confidently expected not only to shrug it off within days, but be home within a week, skylarking about. It's madness; it's completely inconceivable!
Anyway, if you haven't made your farewells to your loved ones and the world in general and something does go wrong, you can't just sit up and say to the surgeon 'Hold on, doc - if my number really is up I'd like a few minutes to say my goodbyes, after that you can shunt me down to the mortuary.' It's too late; no-one will ever speak to you or hear from you again.
So I will leave parting letters for my wife, sons, brothers and stepdaughters - because you just never know, do you?
If you know/knew me and I didn't send you a goodbye letter, please accept this entry in lieu, would you?
'So goodbye, pleased to know you,
We had some laughs along the way,
But I have to be leaving,
And there's nothing you can do to make me stay'
No flowers, just donations to the Norfolk Zipper Club for Papworth Hospital.
Thanks.
Ever since I discovered, in January 2010, that I need a replacement aortic heart valve asap, I've been wondering if and how to write about it here. John Diamond, the journalist and first Mr Nigella Lawson, wrote bravely, eloquently, often amusingly and without self-pity about his ultimately unsuccessful battle with cancer of the throat and tongue, so I thought he should be my role model, notwithstanding the fact that a heart valve replacement is not supposed to be life-threatening.
Once you are in the medical machine, there is so much information available to you on every subject, that you can both find out everything you could possibly want to know - and view it in graphic detail - but also scare yourself silly whilst actually seeking reassurance.
I started writing this entry before the General Election. Now it's over and we're in the brave new world of an extraordinary Conservative/Lib-Dem coalition, I feel more optimistic about the future of our country, if not myself.
The problem with which I have been wrestling during the seemingly interminable months of waiting for the operation, is what happens if I don't survive it; if I just don't come around from the anaesthetic, or die shortly afterwards from a complication? I've been told there's a 1% chance of mortality and a 4% chance of needing to have a pacemaker fitted following damage to my heart's sino-atrial node during the procedure. These are indeed very small odds, but if my surgeon carries out around 100 of these operations each year, that means one person doesn't make it. Ok, so at 52 I'm young to be having a valve replacement and therefore it's unlikely to be me, but no matter how many people I talk to and no matter how much I remind myself that my father had the same operation, with the added complication of several bypass grafts, at the greater age of 65 and survived, that tiny, insignificant chance just won't go away.
Here's the thing: the anaesthetist comes along and injects you with a drug that puts you out like a light and that's it - to all intents and purposes you have, as Monty Python put it, ceased to be. I've had a general anaesthetic a couple of times, for comparatively minor procedures and the shutdown is complete - you don't dream and there is no sense of self until you are coming around. The time you spend unconscious is totally lost, with no place in your memory. This time some maniac with a buzzsaw is going to cut my breastbone open, heave my ribs aside with what looks like a car jack and then a highly-qualified person with a very sharp knife and a sewing kit, but no mental health problems, is going to do unspeakable things to my heart, which is possibly the repository of my very soul! And I'm confidently expected not only to shrug it off within days, but be home within a week, skylarking about. It's madness; it's completely inconceivable!
Anyway, if you haven't made your farewells to your loved ones and the world in general and something does go wrong, you can't just sit up and say to the surgeon 'Hold on, doc - if my number really is up I'd like a few minutes to say my goodbyes, after that you can shunt me down to the mortuary.' It's too late; no-one will ever speak to you or hear from you again.
So I will leave parting letters for my wife, sons, brothers and stepdaughters - because you just never know, do you?
If you know/knew me and I didn't send you a goodbye letter, please accept this entry in lieu, would you?
'So goodbye, pleased to know you,
We had some laughs along the way,
But I have to be leaving,
And there's nothing you can do to make me stay'
- Barclay James Harvest, Poor Boy Blues, Everyone is Everybody Else (1974)
No flowers, just donations to the Norfolk Zipper Club for Papworth Hospital.
Thanks.
Labels: aortic valve replacement, Barclay James Harvest, dead parrot sketch, John Diamond, Monty Python, Nigella Lawson, Norfolk Zipper Club, Papworth Hospital, Tory Lib-Dem coalition
