I hadn't planned on returning to blogging -- never could understand why other people would care what I had to say or think -- but this anniversary made me think it might be worthwhile, especially since I have two books about to be published.
So, here it is......
Twenty-five years ago today, on June 16, 1996, I almost died. It was not the first time I had been in situations that could have resulted in my dying, but it was certainly the most dangerous and the closest I have come.
I suffered a ruptured cerebral aneurysm while at work that afternoon and didn’t wake up until the next day which, as it turned out, meant the 16 hours I was unconscious was a lot easier for me than it was for my wife and two sons.
With that anniversary approaching, this month I began rewriting, revising and updating my book that I had self-published several years ago, Frozen Butts and Onion Sandwiches.
This is now the opening chapter.
June 17, 1996
“Welcome back, you are now officially one of the lucky ones.”
Eleven words I shall not forget as long as I live.
Those were the first words I hear, spoken by a resident at the University of Alberta Hospital, when I wake up after eight hours of intense and highly delicate brain surgery to save my life. It is the first thing I remember after having collapsed about 16 hours earlier.
I was at work, at the Edmonton Journal where I was at the time the assistant features editor – an odd position for a person who had spent the first 30 years of my journalism career writing sports and was now in charge of the food, fashion, religion, homes and travel sections.
I am also the person in charge of the newspaper chain’s Olympic reporting team getting ready to head to Atlanta, Ga., for the 1996 Summer Games. It is that role that has me in the midst of a conversation with Sports Editor Wayne Moriarty when I feel this strange sensation in my head. It’s confusing. I see Moriarty’s lips moving and know he’s speaking but the words aren’t really registering. It is like both ears are suddenly plugged, kind of like what happens when a person descents rapidly from high heights.
My head feels like someone had put a belt around my forehead and is slowly tightening it. The pain is steadily increasing.
This, I begin to think, must be what a headache feels like. I’m not sure because to be honest, to this point in time I have never experienced a headache. Honestly. For 49 years, it doesn’t matter what I do or how much I drink I simply have not experienced what I considered a headache.
There is absolutely no reason I could think of that I should be having one now.
“I think I may be having a headache,” I say to Moriarty. “I need some fresh air.”
The Journal newsroom is on the fifth floor and has a balcony so I step outside, only to discover the fresh air does nothing to relieve the increasingly intense pain at the front of my head. I lean against the railing, hold my head in my hands and look across the street at the majestic McDougal United Church, a downtown religious fixture since 1873, although the current structure is the third one on the site, finished in 1910.
As the traffic and pedestrians buzz around noisily below the balcony, I suddenly realize I’m feeling weak, nauseous and dizzy … and know I have to get back inside where there were people.
I take three steps inside the door and fall. Luckily, my hands dash out in front of me to break my fall, preventing me from smashing face-first into the cement floor. I vaguely remember saying to a colleague sitting nearby, “Lou, I need help.”
Fortunately for me Lou Kohlmann doesn’t hesitate. He dials 911. I am later told that while I lay on the floor unconscious and staffers were waiting for the ambulance, some colleagues expressed the opinion I had merely fainted and would be fine.
If only I were that fortunate. It is more than 16 hours later that I awaken, suddenly panic-stricken, not knowing where I am, struggling to breathe with some tubing stuck down my throat. My wife, Lynne, a registered nurse, is there beside me, holding my hands from pulling out the tube
“It’s okay, just relax,” she says. “As soon as the staff see you can breathe on your own they’ll take out the tube.”
I’m quite sure I can see she’s been crying and I have no idea what she and my two sons, Brent and Matthew, have gone through since the previous afternoon when they would have gotten a phone call saying I had been taken to the hospital.
I do relax and the tube is removed. I’m told that I had suffered a ruptured cerebral aneurysm and am, according to the statistics and as the resident says, lucky to have survived. Studies show that 10 to 15 percent of patients with ruptured cerebral aneurysms die before they reach hospital and more than half die with the first 30 days of rupture. So, indeed, I am one of the lucky ones.
For that I have to give profound thanks to Dr. David Steinke, the neuro-sturgeon who operated on me – repairing one rupture and wrapping a second with a piece of latex glove -- his operating room crew and the medical staff at the U of A hospital.
This is not my first brush with possible death and as life would have it, would turn out not be my last.
Since that June day in 1996 I have survived prostrate cancer in 2007 -- thanks to then family doctor, Dr. Donoff for his insistence that I have the finger test done – and open-heart surgery in 2018 to replace a malfunctioning aortic valve discovered quite by accident one day when I was taking my own pulse.
Which leaves my wondering, as my 75th birthday approaches and I have to prove for the second time in my life than I am capable of driving, should I consider myself lucky or unlucky?
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