For some reason this never got published to my site. Just adding it now for the record.
It was in the middle of the second night after my heart surgery when I awoke with a start; my eyes shot open and hovering above me was my guardian angel (why the heck is he wearing a Hawaiian shirt?). He looked down at me and said softly, you have now used up five lives, be careful how you use the rest.
Then poof, the image was gone. I blinked but nothing was there.
Now what the hell was that all about? I wondered as I tossed and turned for hours, trying unsuccessfully to find a comfortable way of sleeping on my back. Finally, I gave up, called the nurse and she helped into a chair where I spent the rest of the night.
It’s true, this open-heart surgery to replace a malfunctioning aortic valve was probably my fifth brush with possible death.
The first time came in Nelson back in the 1960s, again at night, when I went over about a 20-foot cliff with the company car and ended up floating in the Kootenay River. Fortunately, the Volkswagen, true to its advertising back then, floated until I came to and climbed out the window and swam back to shore.
No. 2 came in the early 1980s in Little Devil Lake in Northern Saskatchewan on our annual canoe fishing trip. A sudden, fierce storm blew in, catching us in the middle of the lake and capsizing all four canoes. First week of June, the ice had come off the lake less than a week earlier. It was ice water. Hanging on to the canoes, feeling our hands and feet slowly freezing, we were saved by a group of U.S. fisherman and their power boats.
No. 3 would be June 1996, when I suffered a ruptured aneurysm at work. It took the skillful work of Dr. David Steinke and staff in an eight-hour operation to save my life.
Less dramatic was prostrate cancer in 2007. I was lucky my then family physician, now-retired Dr. Don off insisted I have the finger exam because I had avoided it for four years. He found an enlarged prostrate but fortunately he found it before the cancer had broken through the walls. More surgery.
So that would make the heart value replacement No. 5.
That still didn’t explain the image, nor all of those that followed the next day.
It was the weirdest thing. All day long, when I was alone I could close my eyes and nothing. But whenever someone was visiting me strange images would appear whenever I closed my eyes.
I would be sitting in a chair talking to my wife, Lynne and, being exhausted all day from lack of sleep, I would close my eyes for a moment … and strange images would appear. Open my eyes, there’s Lynne. Close my eyes and I’m in some fog-shrouded outdoor place where I could vaguely make out trees in the background. And always standing off to the right were four, for lack of a better word, creatures. Short, hooded and wearing what looked like old gunny sacks.
It was the same every time I closed my eyes when Lynne was there.
When one of the nurses would come in to check up on me, the image changed.
Eyes open there’s Theresa, the nurse, talking to me. Close my eyes and I’m in the middle of a meadow, looking at a long, empty table. But always there, just off to the right, were the same four shadowy figures. Open my eyes there’s Theresa, close them, there’s the image.
It wasn’t scary or unsettling, just weird, although it did sometimes leave me with a headache. When I mentioned it to the medical staff I was assured it was just a combination of the various drugs I was being given and the lack of sleep that had my mind playing games.
It lasted just that one day and never again. Just one step in the recovery, I guess.
Tomorrow: Family
