I miss toiling away contentedly at
my quiet, and lonely writing desk pursuing topics in American literature. I would be hard at work at the old stand even
now at age 80 had I not been thwarted by cataract surgery in 2018 that went terribly
wrong. Yes, I know that sounds
preposterous—isn’t cataract surgery a slam dunk? Isn’t it the most sure-fire,
least-likely-to-go-wrong elective surgery there is? Yes, of course that is indisputably true, but a couple of months after the surgery, my
ophthalmologist-surgeon finally got around to telling me the obviously bad news
in suitably somber and apologetic tones: “The surgery,” he said, “was a
failure.”
Of
course I knew that already. It was very clear
(ironically) because my vision was worse than it was before the surgery—and
there was no fixing the problem. That’s
the killer. It seems, he explained, that
he hadn’t noticed a wrinkle on the retina behind the cataract—no explanation,
no excuses. He just missed it. But now that he could see the wrinkle on my
right retina, he thought he’d take a look at the left side and sure enough,
there was another wrinkle there too. And
both were too small for a surgical repair, that according to the retina
specialist I consulted, who explained that the wrinkles were too big to allow for
normal sight but too small for corrective surgery. I was left with blurry vision I never had
before the operation and two eyes that would never again work in synch. So yes, I saw worse after the cataract surgery
than I did before. My cataract surgery
had failed.
But
just to be sure and to leave no stone unturned, I got a second opinion from Dr.
Pit Gills of St. Luke’s Cataract Surgery Center in Tarpon Springs, recommended
by my retina specialist. Pit, and that
is not a misprint, is a local TV celebrity-doctor appearing these days and
nights on television ads. And he was
suitably impressive, putting me through five hours of testing before giving me
five minutes of recommendations: I
should have the other cataract removed, he said. He wouldn’t guarantee that I would see any
better, but it made sense to him to proceed anyway. It made less sense to me. The wrinkles would both be there and surgery
was still not an option to remove them.
Things had gone badly in 2018 and I was afraid they would go badly
again. I’m just not in the mood to risk
another bad outcome. Gun shy, that’s
what I am.
Immediately
after the original surgery in 2018 I was furious and frustrated beyond
words. It was unthinkable that my eyes
were actually worse after the
surgery. I wanted something horrible to happen to the idiot doctor; I had
visions of pure vengeance to punish him for what he’d done to me. But violence is contrary to my nature, and I
eventually soldiered on. I mean, it
wasn’t all that horrible—I was able to do almost everything almost normally, except
for scholarly writing—which had been my life for half a century.
Scholarly
writing, I should explain, demands that I consult notes and books next to a
computer, then return to the text onscreen to continue the writing. The botched cataract surgery meant that as a
writer I could not see the monitor and the papers I was working with next to
the computer with the same pair of glasses.
Which made writing pretty damn near impossible.
I
was angry, but to be fair to the idiot doctor, I was also getting too old to
start any new, multi-year scholarly project anyway—so maybe I should be happy
it wasn’t any worse. Right? That was the right attitude, the most
charitable one.
And eventually I adjusted and
adopted the new attitude. I had
published a lot of newspaper work and blog entries over the years, so maybe
that was my future. I didn’t need two
pairs of glasses for that. But then my
future became even more seriously clouded by further health problems that began
unfolding in March 2020 when a bladder issue put me in the hospital for four
days—and then after a relapse for four more days in April. Just as the urologist and I were doing an
ancient celebration dance to thank the gods for my recovery (an hour before my scheduled
discharge), my standard-issue heart monitor that all patients wear routinely
while they are in the hospital, began sending out distress signals that caused
panic at the nurse’s station. My heart
was showing signs of sudden and serious damage.
An
on-call cardiologist was called in at once, but after examining me and the
data, he decided there was little chance of a problem. I should go home and in a couple of weeks make
an appointment for something called an echocardiogram, which gives a complete
ultrasound picture of the heart and its performance level. And it turned out there was indeed a problem,
two of them in fact. One was electrical
that was fixable with a pacemaker. The
other was a “severely stenotic aortic heart valve,” clearly the more serious of
the two problems and frightening to even say.
It would require the installation of an artificial aortic heart valve, either
through open-heart surgery or by running the valve up through an artery in my
groin. Both procedures were tricky, but
the catheter procedure did not demand a thoracic surgeon and a team of life and
death assistants who thrilled at the chance to cut open my chest cavity and put
me on life support for six hours. Nor
did it require six months of painful recovery.
Luckily, after two or three dozen hospital tests, they decided I
qualified for the artery procedure, and so in July I got my pacemaker and in
September I got my heart valve. By the end of the year, even though I had been
out of commission for half of 2020, I felt I was “getting better.” The cataract surgery hardly seemed important
anymore.
But here I am, four years after my
last book was released in the summer of 2018, finally starting something new—but
without the least bit of confidence. That
last book, a study of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s love life, and which I called Longfellow in Love,
of course, took about fifteen years to find its way into print—with time off
for me to write one other longish book, a 500-page memoir, plus a lot of short
pieces. It’s a good book and I’m proud
of it, but for a string of good reasons, ones that make one kind of miserable sense
that left me bloodied and cursing God for my bad luck, the book fell into The
Abyss of Neglect. (I’m pretty sure
that’s one of Dante’s circles of Hell. . . .)
Because of that disappointment plus the string of health problems that
have been hounding me for the last three years, I haven’t done much new work in
a long time. I had for many years
planned to continue with the Longfellow story, which my first book stopped in
1861, but my long disappointment with the book’s 2018 reception and my wearing
ill-health that robbed me of energy combined to make me give up the Longfellow
story—and nothing has taken its place. At
least not yet.
But in the meantime, however, on
April 28, 2022, I turned 80. And that
seems to have changed the rules governing reasonable expectations for productive
work and the expectation of completing it—not just for the short- and long-term
future, but for the present as well.
Here’s what happened.
First of all, going back, turning 79
was traumatic. It was such an advanced
age for men in my family—my father, and his father, for example, had both died
of colon cancer at age 55—that being 79 suddenly felt wrong to me, something
like survivor guilt. I couldn’t shake
it, couldn’t get past it. I was 79.
What’s more, I’d been sick for most
of my 78th year, first with my bleeding bladder, then with my heart
problems, and later with some reduced kidney function that changed most of my
heart meds that caused my blood pressure to spike so high (210/110) in early
May 2022 that I was hospitalized for the better part of a week after my 80th
birthday. That combo of meds, symptoms,
and high anxiety seemed like enough for anyone to work his way through, but I
added Irritable Bowel Syndrome to my list of troubles.
Add
in the urgent all-day peeing caused by my Lasix; the shortness of breath that
had something to do with my heart meds; the light-headedness that seemed now
and then like a full-bore vertigo attack; and my all-around lethargy, shake it
all together, and you have more symptoms than I could manage. Little wonder I couldn’t face my writing desk
during my 78th and 79th years. But here I am in June of my 80th
year, struggling with all the symptoms, and making headway on every front: I’ve lost 20 pounds over the first six months of 2022, my meds
have been readjusted, and I’m even getting a tiny bit of exercise—chair yoga, walking
in the pool, and lapping my way around Publix with the help of a carriage. It isn’t easy, and my back hurts too much to
do much walking, but I am making progress. And wonder of wonders, the itch to write has even
returned. And it seems right to spend at
least a little time writing about the faltering health that I may yet steer my
way clear of. That’s the hope. I may yet be able to resume something like my
pre-78 health and productivity.
It’s
weird but working on a long-term return to health is actually a certain kind of
fun—or if not exactly that, at least a pleasant self-satisfaction. Getting back to health and productivity,
giving up on my desperate death watch of the last couple of years, has given me
a new lease on life.I suppose. I’ve
always liked long-term projects—and this one has a sweet life or death edge to
it. Nice. I mean, nothing much has gotten my full-time attention
over the last couple of years, so right about now my “let’s live a little bit
longer” goal is sharply defined, and while life and death hasn’t interested me
much for a long time now, all of a sudden I’m sort of interested in seeing if I
can reverse the body damage and carry on a bit longer. It’s a good goal. My fortune cookie tonight reads, “A man’s
dreams are an index to his greatness.”
That sounds like Chinese wisdom that must be relevant somehow, even
though I’m not sure what in hell it means.
Just
getting to 80 was a huge kick. I never
expected to reach such a longevity milestone, but when I turned 79, just beginning
my 80th year, I found myself wanting more than anything to finish
the year out so I could officially be 80 years old. But that made the year between April 28, 2021
and April 28, 2022 go by with excruciating slowness. I had a notion that I was getting
better. That’s true enough and I do feel
that way every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but the rest of the week I have
various symptoms that leave me with long-term discouragement.
On
a good day these days, I can enjoy the business of everyday living—getting up,
checking on my vitals (for the last three weeks very normal), and then mostly a
half-hour nap, followed by various play-time activities, like the swimming pool
or maybe some chair yoga. Nothing
strenuous. I got a haircut today. A trip to the supermarket is a big outing—and
it’s usually a failure because as soon as I start walking, with or without a
carriage, my back begins to ache. The
only thing that relieves the pain is rest, preferably on my glider/armchair in
the living room. I see and feel improvement almost every day—but
every day something drags me down too.
It’s draining. And confusing. I
think maybe I have what journalists and scientists have settled on as the
“right” term: long Covid. Symptoms include loss of smell and taste,
heart damage, kidney damage, diabetes, chronic nerve pain, difficulty
breathing, and overwhelming fatigue.
Throw in irritable bowel syndrome and you’ve got me to a tee.
Me
having it is the weird part because I’ve never tested positive for Covid-19, and
I must have had twenty tests over two years.
There’s no record of my ever having it, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t
had it. I’m actually sure I have. I’ve got every symptom!
I can’t tell at this point where this saga will
end, but at 81, I know I don’t have much time left—not too many people survive
their 80s, after all, the Death Decade as I’ve come to think about it. At Christmas last year I ate a catered dinner
and thought I got food poisoning, but it turned out to be a bowel obstruction
and I was rushed into surgery that same night.
Over the next six months a bladder problem that presented itself on the
April 2020 catscan of my abdomen got worse:
the bladder had migrated from its proper position into my scrotum and
had wrapped itself around my left testicle.
A five-hour surgery on August 31, 2023 repaired it, and four months later I am back
on my feet and nearly pain free. The
testicle is still a tad tender when I sit down or stand up, but the swelling is
down, which is clear improvement. And the
pain from the surgery is nearly all gone. I think I may even try some golf in the new year.
But
I’ve learned not to look too far into the future. Slow things down and take each day as it comes—one day at a time.
