Already Dead

With this exchange in an episode of HBO's Band of Brothers, the indomitable Lt. Spears convinces a feckless, nearly catatonic Pvt. Blithe to finally take up arms and fight:

- You know why you hid in that ditch, Blithe?
- I was scared
- We're all scared... You hid in that ditch because you thought there was still hope. But, Blithe, the only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier; without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it.

I don't recall this conversation in the book—it's been years since I read it, it may be in there—but I'd always assumed it was a Spielbergian addition to the scenario in the vein of "war is hell and turns good men into monsters". Regardless, it was a memorable moment in the series for me, and one that came to the forefront of my mind on two occasions:

July 2001. 

It was the heart of winter in New Zealand where I was working on an animated TV series. I'd rented a house overlooking the Pacific and rode daily into town on my Triumph Trophy 1200 which, against all common sense, I'd shipped over from Europe.

My Trophy 1200  in the driveway, Omaha Beach, N.Z. 2001

Now, the country roads in NZ tend to be paved in the old school way of laying down tar, covering it with loose gravel and letting the local traffic tamp it all down into a semi-solid roadway. Typically at bends in the road you'll find random patches of naked tar where passing cars have thrown off all the gravel. These bald spots are ultra slick when wet and although in a car you'd never even notice, on a bike they can be deadly.

So, leaving work early evening, it's already dark and pouring down rain, I slip into my rain gear and saddle up. Traffic is light so I'm ripping along nicely on the open road heading into Matakana towards the causeway, anxious to be home and warm and dry as I lean into the last turn before entering the town at, oh, I'd say it was about 110 km/hr when my rear tire slides out on a tar patch.

Anyone who's done some dirt riding knows this feeling and what to do (keep the throttle open, steer into the drift and enjoy the thrill), but it's one thing to have a 125cc dirt bike under you and another altogether to be perched atop a half ton of steel and rubber on a dark country road in the pouring rain.

As the rear end slid up alongside me, I somehow overcame the natural, very strong desire to roll off the throttle—which would have been catastrophic to my health—instead I held steady as the tire regained purchase, got up on the pegs and went into a violent tank-slapper for what felt like 100 meters, which scrubbed off most of my speed and so I ended up rolling through town at a nice safe, legal speed as the shakes ran through me as unimpeded as the Wehrmacht through Europe in 1940.

By all rights, I should have been thrown into the ditch, neck broken and drowning in a foot of water with a mangled machine pinning me down, unseen, unnoticed, unloved and unsung.
I'm just not that good a rider.

All this to say that, for me, the past decade has been gravy. Bonus minutes.
In my mind, I'm already dead  (although thankfully not entirely without mercy, compassion nor remorse) and those times I've been tempted to whine and whinge and moan over life's little scrapes— like divorce and starting life anew at 46 with financial and professional concerns—somewhere in the back of my mind I return to that bend in the road, the driving rain and that split second conviction that this will be either instant death or lifelong paralysis... and so I guess I can make it through another day. Maybe with a little spring in my step, even.

Which brings us to:

August 2011.
Suppose you haven't been feeling particularly well for some time now. Perhaps even for years, if you think about it, but, well, you soldier on, don't you? Suck it up and keep moving forward. This is a man's world.
Until the day when you can't walk up a slight incline without stopping three times to catch a breath. You sit a moment to rest and you see that your ankles have swollen to the size of grapefruit. No, this is when you call the cardiologist. And when I say "you" I mean "me".
Which is what I did.
So, after auscultation, EKG and a very thorough echocardiogram, the diagnosis came down with the weight of a thousand broken hearts (as it were) : Chronic constrictive pericarditis with cardiac cirrhosis.
Prognosis: Eventual cardiac arrest
Treatment: Pericardiectomy. Which is performed via open-thorax surgery. 


This is a rare disease and consequently rare procedure. Although it's easy to find a surgeon with vast bypass experience, those who've performed many pericardiectomies are few and far between. Thankfully, my cardiologist, who would have been content to treat only the symptoms for the time being, went out of his way to find a surgeon who was not only an old-hand, but also head of the department. Who with deadpan cool, dissolved any apprehension I may have felt about committing to the surgery, at our first meeting.*


And so, Already Dead Doctrine met cold steel of surgeon's scalpel two months later. After cracking open my thorax like a lobster tail and removing the calcified, thickened pericardium my cardiac function was fully restored, and the procedure was, on the whole, stress-free. For me at least; my family was not so serene.




*Kudos to Dr. Deleuze and the entire cardiology department at St.Joseph's, the Pros from Dover.