20

Heart Troubles

AS USUAL, I was short of breath. It was my asthma, I thought. I’d been dealing with asthma for the past fifteen years, but now the medicines didn’t seem to work anymore. I insisted on taking a stress test, even though I had taken stress tests a few times before, and they had been inconclusive.

“You look like you’re having difficulty breathing,” the nurse watching me said. “I’m going to ask you to get off the treadmill right now.” The doctor ordered a CAT scan, which was inconclusive.

My cardiologist, Dr. Morris, suggested an angiogram test with the plans to put in a stent or two the next day.

“But we have plans,” I said. “I’m the graduation speaker at a school for the deaf in Arizona this weekend. We fly out in a few days.”

Dr. Morris shook his head. “I’m afraid delaying the angiogram would be a risk, Dr. Hurwitz.”

The angiogram procedure the next day, a Friday, revealed that I had four blocked arteries, two eighty-percent blockages, and two ninety-percent blockages. I needed to have bypass surgery right away. Dr. Wagman met with Vicki in the waiting room and explained the results to her, noting that I would be in the intensive care unit afterward. Vicki held back her tears because there were other people in the room. After a few minutes, she was told she could see me. Dr. Wagman said the surgery would take place the following Monday morning.

“Good,” I told him, “I’ll spend the weekend at home and come back Monday.”

He said, “No, no—you are staying here for the weekend so that you can be prepared for the surgery Monday morning.” Although I was taken aback, Vicki was relieved. “What were you thinking?” she admonished me when we were alone.

We contacted our children. Bernard flew down to be with us on the day of my surgery, and though Stephanie wanted to join us, we insisted she stay at work so that she wouldn’t lose her pay.

I had to cancel five major trips, including one to Brazil and Argentina that summer, since the cardiologist commanded that I not travel until the fall. And the annual “Bike with the President” tour, which we’d enjoyed doing with students and alumni, faculty, and staff, biking from campus to Alexandria and then Georgetown and Capitol Hill, had to be canceled too.

As they brought the gurney to my room to wheel me to surgery, I said, “I’ll walk,” an idea that was completely ignored by everyone in the room.

After the surgery, I was moved to the recovery room. Vicki and Bernard were brought in while I was asleep. My first words upon waking were, “Please give me my pager.” Vicki initially refused, but after my insistence, she gave up. A few minutes later, my surgeon came into the recovery room and said, “How are you feeling?” Although I don’t remember saying this, Vicki and Bernard were amused by my answer: “I’m ready for work!”

An NTID colleague sent me a message expressing his thoughts about my recovery, and I responded right away. He was shocked and told everyone in his hallway about getting my instant response just a few hours after my open-heart surgery.

Checking my emails after heart surgery.

When a nurse entered to check my vitals and the IV drip, I am reported to have said to her: “Please replace the sign ‘hearing impaired’ with ‘D-E-A-F.’ ‘Hearing impaired’ makes it sound like my ears are broken. My ears aren’t broken. I just don’t hear.”

Vicki leaned in, her beautiful face etched with worry. “Are you in pain?” she asked me. “What do you expect!” I retorted.

When Dr. Boyce came in to check on me after the surgery, he said rather nonchalantly, “You know, you never had asthma all those years. It was all your heart.”

“Are you joking?” Vicki and I both asked at once, taken aback.

He said, “No, not at all. Your heart is fine now, and you don’t need to take albuterol any longer!”

At home in House One, Vicki took excellent care of me. That required patience! I was always complaining about one thing after another. Once I was able to walk up the stairs (eighty steps from the first floor to the third floor), the nurse who visited daily stopped coming.

When I went to see Dr. Boyce for a checkup after six weeks, he told me I could do anything I wanted to, including drive. I complained of chest discomfort, which he explained was the result of my ribs that had to be sawed down the middle and pulled outward so that he could work on my heart. That did explain the soreness.

I was able to maintain my work responsibilities while recuperating at home. Some of my direct reports came to House One to meet with me about critical issues and to keep me updated on campus issues and challenges. I also kept up with emails daily. Over time, my cardiologist encouraged me to gradually increase my time in the office. Within a few weeks, I was back to my normal self, although I continued to go to rehabilitation. But would I ever be able to fulfill my bucket list ambition to bike the five boroughs of New York City in one day? In May 2015, I achieved that dream when I cycled forty-two miles through the boroughs, over the Brooklyn Bridge, with the Statue of Liberty who had welcomed some of my grandparents over my shoulder, through leafy Queens, and around the southern tip of Manhattan.

Posing with eighty-eight other Deaf cyclists before the start of the Five Boro Bike Tour.