The Home and The Heart, Postscript

I trust I have not wasted breath:
I think we are not wholly brain,
Magnetic mockeries; not in vain,
Like Paul with beasts, I fought with Death;

Not only cunning casts in clay:
Let Science prove we are, and then
What matters Science unto men,
At least to me? I would not stay.

Let him, the wiser man who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape,
But I was born to other things.

I had not intended to write this series.  But over time, I realized that the pain of that period still lingered in me.  I felt responsible for all that had happened.  To see a loved one go through so much pain and suffering is not easy, especially if that pain and suffering is a result of decisions that were made.  She trusted me to make those decisions, and I made them with the utmost care.  I read every medical journal that talked about valve thrombosis, the various approaches to treating it, the risks of thrombolysis versus re-do valve surgery, the mechanics of heart bypass, the mechanism and aftermath of embolic strokes, and so on.  I asked innumerable questions to her doctors.  I got second opinions.  I read of thrombolytic agents and which ones to use and what dosage was to be applied.

But in the end, our hand was forced by her deteriorating condition and by the many doctors who told us there was no other way but to operate on her.

Before giving our consent to heart surgery, I had asked her a question.  I had asked her if I was in a similar situation, if my heart had failed, and all the doctors were telling us that surgery was my only option, would she have tried to persuade an unwilling me to go through with it?  To my continued distress to this day, she had said that she, gentle and loving as she is, would have not.

Perhaps she did not realize the gravity of her situation.  But the fact remains that I, advised by the doctors, made her agree to the re-do surgery.

We, or rather I, made the decision to go in.  I was the one who signed the consent form, acknowledging that I understood the risks.  I live with that decision, and its aftermath.

Though it is not part of the standard protocol, I wish I had asked the hospital to do a brain scan on her during the 40 hours that she was unconscious after her heart surgery.  I wish I knew that there was major risk of a vascular accident during or after her surgery and I wish we had caught the stroke in time.  In the aftermath, I asked the attending surgeons and doctors to revise their protocol to include this check, but I do not know if anything will come of my recommendation.

But I was not, and am not, a medical professional.  I trusted the hospital and the doctors and the medical journals.  But my wife - she only trusted me.  I cherish this trust, but I also have to live with the responsibility of this trust.

If I was an illiterate man who had little idea of pressure gradients in the heart, I would have taken the relatively easier path of just accepting the doctors' decisions.  I would not have made them "my" decisions.  I would have obeyed the experts and accepted every procedure, every complication, fatalistically.  But I was born to know, and to question, and so I also have to live with the limits of my knowledge and with the limited knowledge of the experts.  They, and I, tried to do their best, but it was not good enough.

The difference is: the doctors went home and attended to other patients the next day.  My wife's post-surgical complications would be a statistic in their long career.  But for my wife, and for me, our life was transformed in those few days.  We, as all patients, have to live the rest of our lives with the consequences, while for the doctors it is, hopefully, a learning.

It was not their fault.  I believe they tried their very best.  I hold no bitterness toward them.

This pain in me is mine own.  It is irrational, but I do not deny it.

It is not unlike the pain of a mother who kissed and goaded her unwilling child into the school bus, and the child later bled to his death in a bus accident.  She was hardly "responsible".  She did everything out of immense love and with the very best of intentions.  But if you are at all human, you will understand her guilt.

To heal the pain of that decision of mine, and the immense suffering for her that followed, this series is an attempt at what I can only term as Penance.  It is my cross to bear, and through my writing, I hope to, perhaps, forgive myself.

The second reason is to give anybody who reads this series a message of hope and love.  To give the reader a sense of home and of being away from it, and what it means to one's heart.  To communicate the power of love.  To tell the reader that it is possible to transcend tragedy and darkness.  It may not always be possible, and every story is different, but our story ends as a beginning.  We were fortunate, and blessed, to have come through, and I wanted to share this tale of overcoming.

Lastly, this series is a tribute to my wife, and to the love in her heart.  She is a marvelous woman: simple, loving and truthful.  She has not seen much of the world, and perhaps because of that, she is innocent in a way that is rare and remarkable.

She will perhaps never want to, or be able to, write her story in the way I have done.  She may never read it.  It will be too traumatic for her to recall those times in this detail.  But her story needed to be told, I feel.  She is of this earth, an unknown woman, but this story of her struggle needed to be better known.  It is my homage to her resilience, her patience, and to her fortitude.

I thought I knew much.  But she has taught me much more.

...

Through this, I remain grateful to our two friends, and our siblings, especially my younger brother, who all shall remain unnamed, and who gave us their time, their energy and their affection.  To her parents, and to mine, who worried for us and sent her their prayers.  And to our well-wishers, who remained concerned for our well-being.