By Michelle Yauger
Dan being a good sport about having his picture taken with his bandages still visible and holding a heart pillow he received in ICU.
On April 18, my friend Dan Wilson was admitted to the emergency room with chest pain caused by a near total occlusion of one of his coronary arteries. He underwent bypass surgery the following day, and a second surgery a month later because the incision wasn’t healing properly. I’ve gotten to witness Dan’s responses through the many phases of this process, and we’ve talked openly about what they’ve meant to him. He’s generously allowing me to share one of our conversations here.
MY: It’s been almost 2 months since you had — are we calling it a little heart attack?
DW: The heart attack really wasn’t that big, but it was a warning that I needed the surgery.
MY: What kind of physical adjustments are you still dealing with and how are you handling them?
DW: One is that I still have an open incision on my chest and I’m eager for that to close up. And the other is that by 5:00 p.m., I’m a couch potato, so I need to get my stamina restored to a normal level.
MY: You used to practice yoga five days a week pretty consistently, and you haven’t been able to get back to your yoga practice yet. Are there some activities that you’re thinking you may let go of entirely?
DW: (Laughs) I have a hard time imagining getting into some of the poses that I used to do routinely, especially since I’ve become so protective of my whole chest region. Doing a camel pose seems like a bridge too far. I do want to get back to jogging. I enjoy that and think that’s a good cardio activity.
MY: I’ve spent a lot of time with you during this experience, and from the beginning, you were unfailingly cheerful. Do you think of yourself as a naturally positive person, or do you have to work at that?
DW: Can I say both? I have a natural disposition to be cheerful. What motivated me in the hospital was an empathy for the people providing service to me. It was a difficult, challenging environment and a lot of patients are not necessarily nice to their service providers. So besides the fact that I wanted to feel good about myself, I wanted these good folks to feel that I was a patient they wouldn’t mind approaching, that Dan is not the patient you dread going to. (Laughs) He’s going to be the one who does his best to smile and see the positive side of things.
MY: At one point, a day or two post-surgery, I remarked on your upbeat attitude and you said, “I like people to have a good time around me.” You certainly weren’t having a good time, and a lot of people in your situation would want to spread the misery around, but that was not your approach.
DW: The hospital is an environment that begs for good cheer.(Laughs) So I wanted to provide whatever amount of it I could, given the circumstances.
MY: Some people who go through bypass surgery experience depression afterward, but you have not. Why do you think that’s the case?
DW: I never even thought about being depressed. (Laughs) That’s an interesting idea. First of all, I received massive amounts of kindness and generosity, which certainly would distract me from going into my own head and withdrawing. I was just so generously blessed by people, and that’s what I noticed and paid attention to.
MY: This was your second near-miss. You had your first one when you were twelve years old with a ruptured appendix. You’ve blogged a lot about this recent experience, and I notice that your writing has generally become deeper and more focused. What else is different for you now?
DW: I took a really close look at what is scary. Since I’ve nearly died twice and am still here, it gave me reason to reflect about some kind of master plan being in place, some kind of controls operating in my life that aren’t necessarily obvious to me. Maybe I now have a more fundamental confidence in having a destiny, a purpose, and being part of something that is watching out for me. It causes me to re-evaluated the signals I’m receiving and ask myself if I’m having a superficial reaction that may be unwarranted. I think I’m more grounded, not just in self-confidence, but confidence in a larger system that knows about me and includes me.
MY: Tell me more about the change in your attitude toward fear. Where does fear fit into your life differently now than it did before?
DW: Fear is one of my favorite subjects. I’ve been systematically studying it for several years and one of my textbooks is called Smile at Fear by Chogyam Trungpa.
As Krishnamurti said, there isn’t fear of this and fear of that — it’s all just fear. All the teachers I’ve consulted say we should bring up a fear, get to know it, pay attention to how it behaves, and realize that — unless you’re afraid of something like a snake in front of you on the hiking trail or some other legitimate fear — if it’s a psychological fear about “will you still need me, will you still feed me,” that’s all illusory. A close examination of fear reveals that it’s made up, it’s invented, it serves no purpose and distracts you from things you can do that are useful.
This brush with not only the possibility of death, but the challenges of going through surgery and intravenous feeds and having needles in your arms just causes a person to push aside some of the frivolous things that might ordinarily have caused fear. It serves to recalibrate what being afraid means.
MY: Do you think you have to have a near-miss to gain these insights? I’m guessing you wouldn’t recommend it.
DW: (Laughs) I don’t think you have to, but I think the learning gets accelerated by this kind of experience. There are a lot of ways to get that acceleration without surgery. I suspect that people who skydive get much the same effect, so it can be achieved without harm and in a more deliberate way.
MY: Sometimes people who have these brushes with death — people who’ve been diagnosed with cancer, for instance — will say it was the best thing that ever happened to them because it caused them to focus in this way you’re describing. Are you in any respect glad this happened to you?
DW: This is one of those opportunities to make lemonade out of lemons because if a person pays attention, there’s certainly going to be a shift in awareness, a deeper sense of calm, and an expanded sense of place that I referred to earlier, that I’m functioning within an intelligent system. We hear so much every day about whether we’ve adequately provided for our old age or if we have enough insurance. From all sides, people are planting fears about whether or not our buffer zone is up to the challenge. But we can build all kinds of buffer zones in our lives and they’re really just a charade because if your card is going to get pulled, it’s going to get pulled. There is no defense, and one of the things that has become clearer to me is that trying to build defenses is foolish and useless.
What you ought to concentrate on is how you can be productive and helpful and make Intensive Care Unit nurses glad you’re there. (Laughs) You’ve got to concentrate where you can make a difference, and don’t get taken in by the constant reminders to build a thicker wall of protection around yourself, because that wall isn’t real. It’s only imagined.
MY: There are a number of people whom you’ve never met who knew about your situation — people who read this blog, or friends of your friends on Facebook — and many of them are curious about how you’re doing. What do you want them to know?
I’m doing well. I don’t have a firm go-back-to-work date, but I feel good. I want to repeat how grateful I am, starting with you, Michelle, and my dear wife Yvette, and the legions of people who told me over and over to call them when I needed them. I had meals dropped off and shuttle service while I wasn’t able to drive. I think the most important thing I want to say is thank you to all these lovely people. If I’m ever called upon to return the favor, it’ll be a great privilege.
