 Chapter 13 October 10, 2006 All of our biographies are shaped by just a few transitory moments in time. Single decisions or events—some controlled, many not—plot our charts for years and decades to follow. When we look backward, the significance is easy to see, even if at the time the path taken was shrouded or concealed. It’s the reluctantly accepted date that turns into a life-long relationship—a missed job opportunity that ends up creating a new and more exciting career path; a case of insomnia, a late-night infomercial, the discovery of the amazing ShamWow and One Sweep, and a newfound love of housework that ends up saving the marriage. (The same phenomena have also been observed in the kitchen with EZ Peel Gloves and Ronco Rotisserie Ovens.) There are, of course, the times when the weight of what’s happening, both good and bad, becomes crystal clear. The ultimate destination may remain unknown, but the magnitude of the course change is as obvious as the day is memorable. Or as funny as watching Mr. T hawk his Flavorwave Oven Turbo. Set it to cook and you’re off the hook. (It also deserves note that, according to the website, the oven “actually cleans up after itself. Simply place it in the dishwasher.” Seriously.) The day of October 10, 2006, was a palpable pivot point for me. It didn’t take down-the-road reflection or wisdom gained from hindsight for its magnitude to register. That fall Tuesday was a game changer of the highest order; most of life as I knew it came to an end, and an undiscovered, foreign, and quite frightening path was forged. Just as I’m sure that my cat will never forget the first time I experimented with the as-seen-on-TV FURminator, I will never forget October 10. At 3:30 that afternoon my wife, Carrie, got home from work, like she did on most days. She was an early bird to the office—not for worms, sunrises, or any other such nonsense that springs from the mouths of the annoying morning person (I recognize the redundancy), but for the necessity of missing the traffic that she would otherwise encounter on the two worst freeways in Southern California, the 405 and the 101. Therefore she was an early returnee home. And so, as I did most days, I put aside my afternoon’s work so we could engage in the “how was your day” chitchat that dominates the early evenings in millions of married households across the country. We’d been married 18 months at this point and were still less than four years removed from our first date. I very much cared how her day was, even if I didn’t understand 90 percent of what it was she did. What I did understand was the stress. There was always a project to manage. Always a client with lots of money tied up in a development that couldn’t move forward until the appropriate permits were attained and filed with the corresponding city. As always, much of that responsibility rested on her shoulders. The wheels of the City of Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety never ran as smoothly or as quickly as the client wanted or sometimes demanded. She was tasked with trying to make them do that. I, on the other hand, was writing a book about the worst referees in sports history. I spent my day doing baseball research and coming up with sarcastic comments to make about umpires. As you might guess, my portion of this daily conversation was usually short and almost always lacking any dramatics. I wrote from home and typically spent most days uneventfully sitting with my laptop and adding to the noticeable butt dent in the couch. The day became mildly interesting when I would shift from one cushion to the other. It became downright exciting when I was actually forced to put pants on and venture outside our apartment. Since I was in the process of finishing up the edits on the manuscript for my first sports book, The Worst Call Ever, the 2.4-mile trips to the nearest post office were happening with more frequency, but they had hardly become more thrilling to describe to my wife. At 3:49, however, that all changed. My cell phone rang. I first ignored it, since the person who placed 75 percent of the incoming calls was sitting 10 feet away and sipping a Diet Coke. But after the phone cycled through its four rings and took the unknown caller to my voice mail, it started to ring again. Clearly this wasn’t someone willing to leave a message after the beep, so I got up and went into the other room to retrieve the phone and answer the call. “Hello?” “Is this Kyle?” “It is, yes.” “This is Dorothy at UCLA. We need you to come to the hospital as soon as possible.” Then she said the five most important words in my English language: “We have your donor heart.” You know how in really bad ’80s movies (again, I recognize the redundancy) or in TV shows with low budgets (and an even lower level of creativity) when something completely unexpected is said, there is this trifecta of cheesy double take, hard zoom of the camera, and poorly done sound effect of a record scratching? It turns out that doesn’t happen in real life. My jaw didn’t gape open either. I didn’t have a spontaneous muscle reaction that caused me to drop the phone. There was no rush of blood within my body that left me faint. And I was able to stay composed enough to keep from offending Dorothy, whom I didn’t know at this point, with any excited utterances of profanity. I simply asked her, “What do I need to do?” The instructions were simple enough. As I wrapped up my brief yet never-to-be-forgotten conversation with Dorothy, I walked back into the living room where Carrie sat patiently waiting for me to be done on the phone so she could fire up our TiVo. “That was the call,” I said, surprising myself with the banality of the statement. “What call?” she responded quite sincerely, since she hadn’t yet been thrust into the world that I now occupied. “The call. The call we’ve been waiting for. It was UCLA. It’s happening today.” With her reaction trailing recognition by just a split second, her face took on an odd mix of understanding and disbelief, followed very quickly by a distinct “Oh, shit!” quality. She might have even said it; I can’t be sure because a few moments in there remained blurred. But I do remember the hug: very intense, reciprocated completely, and absolutely necessary to make the upcoming hours bearable. We knew this day was coming. We’d anticipated the phone call. The emotions and reactions that it would create had been discussed ad nauseam months and years ago. Nothing came as a shock; yet surprisingly, it did. I actually even took a moment during the hug to contemplate the contradiction of the growing haze of astonishment that enveloped this scene when it had literally played itself out hundreds of times in our heads. Then the freneticism hit. Time was wasting! Quick, pack a bag. I have to call my parents, my friends. Say good-bye to the cat (he’ll welcome the break). Dump the full Captain Morgan and Coke—nothing more to eat or drink. (You who haven’t ever had a drink at 3:49 P.M. feel free to cast the first stone.) Wallet and insurance cards? Check. Car keys? Oh yeah, can’t drive without keys. Check. People magazine? (For the wife, honest.) Check. One last kiss and hug before we hit the road? Check, check. I am not a father, and I’ve never been a part of a frantic rush to the hospital because of an impending birth. My only knowledge of what that must be like comes from the very real portrayals I see on TV. Hollywood depicts the stereotypical dad-to-be as a man who trades in 40 IQ points for the stimulus of 40 cups of coffee at the utterance of the phrase “My water just broke.” With those four words the male of the species goes from controlled and steady to spastic and panicked. When that switch is flipped, the job of ushering his pregnant wife to the car and getting her to the hospital safely takes on a 1950s sitcom quality, with the role of husband played by Lucille Ball. Our rush-hour drive to UCLA didn’t quite go that chaotically. There were no tragedies with conveyor belts of candy or fights in grape vats. And no one had any “’splainin’ to do” at the end of the trip. But it did strike me as we drove to UCLA—me in the driver’s seat and on the phone making calls to family and friends while Carrie did the exact same thing on the passenger’s side—that at that very moment, while I was on a life-saving mission to the hospital, I was actually a pretty good candidate to take one. This was in the days before California made it illegal to drive and talk on a cell phone without a hands-free device. I wasn’t breaking any laws or subject to any fines. But if ever there was an example as to why the law is necessary and good and why dialing and driving is as dangerous as drinking and driving (or drinking and dialing for that matter), our weaving Ford Escape Hybrid heading north on the West Los Angeles artery of Sepulveda Boulevard was it. Ten minutes away from the hospital and the uncertainties that would be met beyond its sliding glass doors, I glanced over at Carrie. For me, as her husband, the word “wife” is a very special designation. A ring and a piece of paper are meaningless when compared to the intensity and the intimacy of our relationship. For our 18 months of marriage Carrie sat willingly alongside me in the rickety lifeboat of time, unceasingly rowing toward today, the day when our boat would be found and we would finally be rescued. We had survived the scary and stayed strong through the fear. The storm clouds of a declining heart that had engulfed me for eleven and a half years and hovered over our relationship for four years were showing signs of lifting. The rain that had been falling, that had been darkening the days, was showing signs of slowing. Eventually that rain—the storm of cancer that rolled in all those years ago—would stop. Maybe even by tonight. And then, as always happens after a rain, the grass would be green again, the flowers would fully bloom, the sky would be crisp and clear, and all that relied on the rain for life would be whole again. My wife and I would be whole by the time this night was through. Almost everyone has experienced the masterful efficiency of our nation’s hospital admission system. You check in, only to be told to wait until someone calls you to . . . that’s right, check in. Then finally it happens, followed by more waiting, until last you are called into a tiny little room the size of the third-class lavatory on a 19th-century passenger ship. This room is so small that even an undersized Superman would have a hard time making the outfit transition from Clark Kent to a miniature Man of Steel, so small that the fire marshal of the Smurfs’ village would cap its capacity at three (provided Hefty Smurf wasn’t one of them)—but it somehow manages to fit a small table, two chairs, a computer terminal, and the admissions “specialist” (I can think of a few better descriptors for these soulless human beings who act as the Charon-inspired gatekeepers of Hospital Hades). Then, no matter how many times you’ve gone through this process for the same medical condition, at the same hospital, and quite often with the same admission “expert,” you have to answer the same list of 85 questions and hand over the same half-dozen cards that provide proof of insurance, proof of payment, and proof of illness—which really already should be in the computer that seems to be directing this person’s every word and thought. Eventually you are handed the deforested remains of what used to be a proud wildlife refuge and made to sign more autographs than Pete Rose at a $2-a-signature baseball-card show. Predictably you get carpal tunnel syndrome and now need to be seen by a different doctor, which means more questions, more legal forms that cover everything from your familial relations to prominent malpractice attorneys to the middle name of your second-grade teacher, and then a final silent prayer of remembrance for the acre of felled trees that gave their lives to triplicate. Well, the dirty little secret that health care legal eagles across the country have been trying to hide is out. None of it—not the strictly enforced waiting, not the insipid interrogation for the sake dotting every “i” threefold, not the reams of wasted paper—is necessary. When I arrived at UCLA that day, I flew through admissions, no less the VIP than Angelina Jolie at an overseas orphanage. Wait time: four minutes. Questions: “When did you last eat or drink?” Consumed paper: OK, still a lot. Even Angie and Brad have to sign a few forms before adding to their brood. But two out of three improvements ain’t bad. Within 20 minutes of my arrival I was squirreled away in a private waiting room, fitted with my first of the night’s 15 IV lines, and visited by everyone with a series of fancy letters at the end of his or her name who got a paycheck from California’s UC system and was not engaged with another patient. That moment for me may not have been an exact representation of the 15 minutes that Andy Warhol had in mind, but there was little doubt that within those specific walls, on that particular night, I was famous. And like when my fellow celebrities Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton hit the clubs along the Sunset Strip, that night at UCLA I was wearing a skimpy little gown and meeting and greeting the masses sans underpants. Luckily there were no paparazzi to capture the moment and sell the photos to TMZ. There are a few entries that everyone has on his list of things never to do with his spouse in front of his parents. Fighting, for one. The exact opposite of fighting, for another. And the lesser thought-about—but almost equally awkward—act of signing your last will and testament. In fact, parents or no parents, it’s best to keep that particular legal document far away from hospital rooms. But sometimes you procrastinate, you hesitate, and then you suddenly get a phone call from a heart transplant coordinator that destroys your timeline and creates another. And since you also need witnesses to make a will legal, it goes into the overnight bag right along with clean underwear and a toothbrush. My parents—as well as a few of the other voices that had been on the receiving end of those perilous drive-time phone calls—had already joined the room when I remembered the will. I pulled it out of the bag with my one yet-to-be-IV-tethered hand and watched everyone’s faces. They revealed little—or as little as possible—but I knew what everyone was thinking. Along with “Really, you brought that with you to the hospital!” there was the obvious but unspoken elephant in the room that I just forced everyone to face. There had been smiles and laughter, even if nervous, and there was a general upbeat mood in the room about the hours soon to begin. But with the introduction of the will, the unspoken dread of the day claimed its spot near the sunlit window, darkening it just a little. This was not a routine tonsillectomy that would have me out of the hospital later that evening. The required reading of all possible problems that could occur was not done merely to cover legal butts. In this case even the worst-case scenarios, usually dismissed as ridiculous, were very real. So while my introducing the will to the room was probably bad form, it was responsible and necessary. With two of my friends standing in as witnesses (ironically one of the witnesses had also signed as a witness on our marriage license), it became legally binding. My wife would now forever be stuck with my baseball cards and decades-old collection of minihelmets that had at one time held hot fudge sundaes, like it or not. It’s the law. In the many months of anticipation leading up to this day, I often thought about how Carrie would handle the unsettled hours of waiting while I was locked away in the operating room. It worried me, not so much because I was afraid for how she’d manage—I knew her level of strength and I was confident that it wouldn’t dip now—but because I was concerned for the overriding mood of the moment. Of course there would be worry. Nothing is certain in even the most ordinary of surgeries, and this was far from that. But to me, my parents, and Carrie, this night represented an exciting new beginning. The cracking of my sternum wasn’t quite the carbon copy of a broken bottle of champagne to christen the maiden voyage of the SS New Life, but the adventure waiting on the path extended before me was very much the same. I wanted to make sure that happiness, not hesitancy, dominated the UCLA waiting-room atmosphere. The presence of the will, with ink still wet, threatened the tenor of the room. But if my parents and Carrie found it difficult to rebound and refocus on the coming good, I knew the two friends that would wait with her would liven and reenergize everyone’s spirits. First was Inga, a fellow Team In Training marathoner who’d joined Carrie for multiple 26.2-mile adventures. She was a bridesmaid at our wedding and a frequent partner in laughing at life’s absurdities. With her, Carrie would be in good and light-hearted hands. But if things did get tough, it wouldn’t hurt that Inga was also an officer with the LAPD. The second friend that joined us that evening was Meghan. A former collegiate swimmer making her professional way as a success in sports marketing, Meghan first met Carrie in the laundry room of our apartment complex. It was a fortuitous meeting for a number of reasons. Meghan became a fast and faithful friend who would provide both support and welcome distractions during the hours of waiting to come. A year and a half later, in 2008, the fortunes changed faces when Meghan was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. If I had been doing laundry that day instead of Carrie, we never would have met Meghan. I simply don’t contain the same strike-up-a-conversation-with-anyone gene that Carrie does. If it had been me in the laundry room, then Meghan wouldn’t be there as a support for us during my transplant. And I wouldn’t be there, ready to reciprocate when Meghan was diagnosed with the one thing I’m most qualified to understand and assist with. (It should be noted that Meghan survived her battle with Hodgkin’s and is thriving again both professionally and physically.) Still, despite my best efforts to illustrate this providential chain of events, I have still not been relieved of all my laundry duties. Four hours after my phone rang, breaking the comforting monotony of another evening of dinner and TiVo with my wife and our cat, the pregame transplant preparations were complete. All the MDs who needed to be in the know had been alerted. My friends and family on the “call immediately” list were now firmly in the loop. And I, the main event of the evening, had been transported to the bowels of the hospital, where I was quickly surrounded by any machine within a three-building radius that beeped, blipped, or wheezed. It was time. First there were hugs for my friends, who had been allowed into the normally off-limits waiting room—a fact that underscored the uniqueness of the night. Hospital rules and protocol that would normally be enforced with the zealousness of a 1980s East German athletic academy did not apply. Then came my parents. Thankfully I do not belong to one of those families that find it necessary to assign the children cute nicknames like Bubby, Chip, or Junebug. I was never made to be a smaller version of them, and they never once tried to live vicariously through me. I had become my own man, and while my current position as a freelance writer and motivational speaker didn’t provide me with the employment stability that their lives always enjoyed, I’d been allowed to just be me. With that still being true, on this night it was more important that I was their son. This night had been 17 years in the making. During that stretch, my parents had been broken and rebuilt countless times by my many health hurdles. There had been enough tears of fear, sadness, and anger to fill a swimming pool or two. But not this night. This night they were still, stoic, and solid for their son. It wasn’t a hardening that had taken place. I sensed in them relief. The uncertain journey for which they had traveled alongside me for 17 years was coming to a close. Finally it was time to say good-bye to Carrie. Married for such a short time, we’d known for the duration of our relationship that this day would come. This scene, playing out in a hallway just outside an operating room at UCLA Medical Center, was always a part of our future. It was one of the commitments that she’d said “I do” to. There weren’t really words to exchange. Or, I should say, new words. They’d all been said in the gathering months and weeks. We shared a long hug, an “I love you,” a deep and intense eye lock, and a very hopeful “I’ll see you soon.” I could tell she was in a peacefully accepting place. She was more than willing to make a trade: accept the relative uncertainty of this night and give up the certain severing of our relationship without it. Tonight, though big and scary, was welcome and necessary. Just like that, I was off on the rolling gurney, out of the hallway filled with loving faces and into a sterile operating room packed with more overhead lighting than Dodger Stadium. Perhaps the only tally that would rival my hospital bill for the duration of the stay would be the accompanying electric bill. Regardless of how the upcoming procedure played out, at least I’d be tan. And considering that one of the three masked figures who had greeted me upon entry was now shaving me in multiple places—some of them unmentionable—the tan would be even. Lying there on the table, with both arms stretched out, strapped down, and now connected to new machines, I could only stare up at the ceiling and into the bright lights and think. I listened to the sounds of preparation that came from the already-present surgical team trio—a clanging here, a clatter there, and what I swear to this day was the sound of a four-stroke engine. I’m not a doctor, so I concede it might have been something else. An hour later (it was almost 9 P.M. according to the clock on the far wall) the anesthesiologist’s half-hidden face appeared above mine. “We’re going to get started now.” The strange combination of fear, anxiety, excitement, Valium, and Demerol that had been mushrooming within me over the previous 60 minutes had rendered me mute. I managed a blink and maybe a nod, and I was happy to be on with it. Inside your head can be a dangerous place to be unfettered for an hour. He affixed an oxygen mask over my face and, with the push of a plunger, added the knockout blow to my already relaxant-clouded veins. “Kyle. Count backwards from 100.” “100 . . . 99 . . . 98 . . .” My voice trailed off before I could drop the count to 97. I was leaving that room, leaving that life, and hoping to wake anew on the other side. I remember thinking very briefly, right before everything finally went dark, about how it came to be that at age 35, I was here, on this table, about to have a heart transplant. There were no regrets about the course I’d traveled in the past 17 years. There was nothing I wanted to undo, even though if it hadn’t been for that very first diagnosis 17 years ago, there wouldn’t have been a bone marrow transplant and thus a need on this night for a heart transplant. Without question, my life would have been easier and more predictable if I could undo that one event that changed so much in September 1989. I wouldn’t have lost most of my 20s to disease and illness. I would have been on target to achieve my sportscasting goals with a broadcast journalism degree from the University of Missouri. Most immediately, I would not have a doctor looking down at me who would momentarily saw through my sternum and pull out my heart. But undoing my original diagnosis would mean that most of my friends would have never entered my life. I wouldn’t have moved to California where I’d managed to forge a future under the warm sun of the Pacific coast. And I would have never met Carrie, and we never would have been married. On the ledger of pros and cons, there is no doubt that undoing any part of my past would have resulted in a different and darker present and future. I liked who I was, where I was, and the wonderful people around me that would be accompanying me into my future. As I went to sleep on the operating table on the evening of October 10, 2006, I was at peace. | 
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