CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Surgical Procedure

LINDA LATER TOLD ME THAT WHILE I WAS IN SURGERY, AT A TIME WHEN my life engaged in a dangerous dance with mortality, a memory surfaced in her mind. Every spring large black crows perched in the tall oak and pine trees in our backyard. Their loud caws to one another were unnerving. Ever since we interfered with their natural cycle the previous spring, their caws had become louder whenever we walked from our house to the garage.

It happened on a walk with our yellow Lab, Taylor. We found a baby rabbit who had escaped the crows when they raided a bunny hutch. One of the birds probably dropped the bunny from his claws. The baby lay in the grass, eyes closed, but still alive.

With Taylor watching curiously, I scooped up the small rabbit in my hands and immediately became aware that the atmosphere bristled with fury. “You stole that crow’s lunch,” Linda said. She pointed to a crow about the size of a hawk. He screeched at me from a nearby tree branch. His buddies gathered with him and joined in a rage-filled chorus.

We brought the baby rabbit inside and made him a nest in a cardboard box. Then we placed the box with some water and chopped-up vegetables and fruit in a secure area under our deck. We hoped that the fencing around the bottom of the deck would keep him safe, until he was strong enough to return to his hutch or his mother found him. We replenished the nest and water for the baby frequently. After a couple of days, the box was empty. We never saw the bunny again.

A year later, after rescuing the baby rabbit from the crows, we now had a twenty-five-pound cocker spaniel hanging out in our backyard. He made sure nothing there would harm him on the ground level. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in the habit of searching for predators in the sky.

One morning Linda let Leaf out in the backyard to take care of his bodily needs. She went back into the house but suddenly had an inner nudge to check on him. From our back deck she watched Leaf sniff the dew-coated green grass. Then she noticed a huge crow hovering on a high branch of our old oak tree. He glared down from his perch, ready to nosedive on to the back of our unwary little dog. The crow focused silently on Leaf as if he were thinking, There’s breakfast!

Linda immediately called to Leaf to come back in the house. Our little guy remained oblivious to the fact that he might have been a tempting target. Could this have been the same bird whose bunny I had stolen a year ago? Was the look he gave Linda conveying, You took something I wanted. Now I’ll get something of yours?

Part of the responsibility of being a pet parent is to teach our young ones how to protect themselves. We sat down to have a talk with Leaf about the facts of life in a neighborhood filled with crows. “Leaf, every time you go outside, stand on the deck and look up into the sky,” Linda instructed him. “Make sure no crows are in the trees before you run out into the backyard.”

Odd as this may seem, Leaf became even more aware of his surroundings. Before venturing into the backyard, he always stood at the top of the steps on the deck and surveyed the sky and tree branches. After he was certain no crows were around, he enjoyed his outing. I had been pleased to see that our pup, even early on, was a quick study in the ways of a natural world.

As I was lying vulnerable on the operating table, Linda didn’t know what would happen next. She also didn’t know that Leaf had delivered my ticket.

Fortunately, Arlene joined her at the hospital chapel, where they sat together in quiet contemplation underneath shafts of gentle sunlight. Linda felt an overwhelming sense of peace. She sensed the surgery had begun.

When she returned to the waiting room, Linda heard Nurse Jody being paged, “Come to surgery. Stat.” Knowing that Jody was Dr. Nussbaum’s main nursing assistant, and I was his only surgery patient at that time, she felt a wave of panic pass through her body as she watched Nurse Jody rush down the hall, past the waiting room, to the surgery suite.

By now, surgery had stretched from the two hours Dr. Nussbaum had expected it would last to four hours. He had sent no information about what was happening or why it was taking longer. The delay created fertile ground for my family and friends to imagine trouble. People were already calling Linda’s cell phone, thinking the surgery would be over by now. In a tremulous voice she’d had to report, “No word yet.”

My wife and everyone who loved me endured the torturous wait. Naturally they wondered if there had been complications. Or worse, that maybe I’d had a stroke on the operating table.

Nearly five hours later Linda sat in another part of the waiting room, talking to her mother on the phone. She glanced over at my mother and sister. Worry clouded their faces. Our daughter Susan paced the room, trying to stay calm, and said positive things every time anyone speculated about why the hours were ticking away. Because Linda didn’t want to increase everyone’s anxiety, she only told Arlene that she’d seen Nurse Jody rush to the surgery suite.

Finally, with the surgery over, Dr. Nussbaum and Nurse Jody entered the visitors’ waiting room. Linda quickly ended the phone conversation with her mother and hurried over to them. Dr. Nussbaum told Linda and my family that the surgery had started late. It had lasted longer due to its difficulty. The aneurysm was extremely tricky to clip, because my vessels were very thin. The shape of the aneurysm was ill defined, which we knew from the X-ray.

Each time Dr. Nussbaum clipped the aneurysm, the clip would slip down onto the main artery. He couldn’t leave it in that position, or the clip would impair blood flow to the brain. “I had to try three different ways of clipping it before I found one that would last,” he said. He had called for Nurse Jody to help him finish up the operation.

When we had first seen Dr. Nussbaum, he’d explained that some people don’t choose to have an aneurysm clipped right away. They wait to see if it gets bigger. Now the doctor reassured my wife that I’d made the right decision to proceed with the surgery. The aneurysm’s shape and location indicated that at some point it would probably have burst. Then he said something Linda will always remember. “Allen will never have to think about this again.” She felt immensely grateful. Linda believed that no surgeon other than Dr. Nussbaum, with his experience and skills, could have accomplished what he did for me.

But the next twenty-four hours in the intensive care unit would be some of the most precarious hours of my life.