The Best Christmas Gift Ever: Life

“A heart health check could be the most important twenty minutes of your life.”

My Big-Hearted Bro Nearly Didn’t Make it to Christmas This Year

I got a heart-stopping text from my 64-year-old brother, Doug, a few weeks ago. In late November, he had gone for a heart test (that had been scheduled months earlier)…and the cardiologist immediately sent him to hospital, where he was admitted to the cardiac unit to undergo further tests. He was a ticking time bomb.

Unfortunately, he also had influenza…so was put in isolation and the tests were temporarily put on hold.

“At least I’m in the best place,” he said to me over the phone as he waited out the flu, “in case, you know…”

Yeah, I know…in case he had a heart attack, just like our grandfather did – when he was the same age as Doug is now. Our grandfather died.

Thankfully, Doug didn’t. When the flu cleared and the heart tests came back, he was told he would need an aortic valve replacement. A week later, he had open heart surgery. The week after that, he was back home with his family.

But here’s how close we got to having a very different ending to this story: 

When Doug went for that heart test in late November, he and his wife, Tracey, were supposed to get on a plane to Australia the following week to visit their grandkids.

“I nearly canceled that appointment,” Doug told me later. “But because it had been booked for awhile, I figured I better go.”

If he had not gone to that appointment, he and Tracey would have got on that plane. But only Tracey would have come home again.

Why?

Because Doug’s aortic valve was almost totally blocked. The normal adult human aortic valve is roughly the size of a dime. Doug’s was the size of the tip of a pen.

Yes, you read correctly. How he was still able to function reasonably well and wasn’t completely exhausted baffled every cardiologist he met over the past few weeks…and there were several, by the sounds of it.

Yes, he had been a bit more tired than usual…but nobody, himself included, had really picked up on it because it had been so subtle and gradual.

“So if you’d gone to Australia,” I asked him, “what would have happened?”

“At some point, I would have just fainted then died. A defibrillator wouldn’t have helped. If the aortic valve doesn’t work that’s not an electrical thing, it’s mechanical…the blood can’t get from the ventricle to the aorta. If that happens, it’s game over.”

In other words, the aortic valve controls blood flow from the heart’s main pumping chamber (left ventricle) into the aorta, which is the body’s largest artery. When the aortic valve stops working properly, the heart can’t efficiently pump blood to the body, and blood can leak backward into the heart…end of game.

Although this blog is a reminder to all men over 50 about the importance of having their heart health checked on a regular basis, it’s also about the importance of checking in with our emotional heart health.

Because that, too, matters very much.

For it was my brother Doug – and my other brothers, too – who helped show me, many years ago, how a person with a healthy emotional heart responds in the wake of tragedy…and just how impactful that response can be for those of us whose heart has been so shattered beyond belief, we don’t know which piece to pick up first.

Back in 2000, when I was widowed suddenly at the age of thirty-two, it was Doug who found himself as my primary caregiver. My husband, John, died on a Friday. Doug and Tracey moved into my house that night. Over the hellish next few days, Doug fed me, watered me, drove me where I needed to go, kept me on schedule, made the meals, fielded the dozens of phone calls coming in, and handled all the people dropping by with meals, baking, flowers, gifts and cards.

Overnight, not only had my life turned upside down…so too, had my home.

After a few days, Tracey had to return to work in the town where they lived, but Doug stayed with me. And if it weren’t for him handling all the logistics of keeping my chaotic new life running as smoothly as possible, I don’t know what I would have done. But because he handled all the practical matters, that meant I could focus my precious energy on the emotional, mental and spiritual fall-out associated with the sudden death of one’s soul-mate.

And on that note, while juggling the not-whatsoever-fun circus of my new life, Doug also listened to me as I tried to wrap my mind around what the heck had happened to John – and why – and where his soul was now…if there is such a thing.

I think there is.

I remember Doug listening to me, wide-eyed but non-judgmental, when I told him how I’d seen a big reddish-orange light in my bedroom window – at the exact same time John’s heart had been surgically removed for organ donation.

When I look back now, a quarter of a century later, at that heartbreakingly difficult time in my life, I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have made it through those first few months without Doug – at least, not in the same way.

Yes, I would have still survived the grieving process without him by my side. But I don’t think I would have thrived to the extent that I have. Because if I’d had to deal with all the practicalities and logistics that go hand in hand with suddenly losing a spouse, I wouldn’t have been able to focus on the emotional, psychological and spiritual aspects…which in hindsight, I very much needed to – for the journey ahead as a writer.

Likewise, if I didn’t have the right person sitting on my couch (not that he sat down much!) every morning to bounce my seemingly crazy observations and ideas off, my journey through grief would have been very different. So, too, would my writing.

In other words, Doug was the perfect person to be my primary caregiver in those first few months. But of course he was…the Universe knows exactly what it’s doing. It’s up to us to learn the lessons.

There are times in our life when we give love and there are times when we are on the receiving end. And one of the most important things I’ve learned in life so far is that receiving love and kindness is just as important as giving it. Why? Because when we are on the receiving end of vast amounts of loving kindness, that’s how we learn how to give that kind of love to others down the road.

I am extremely grateful that my big-hearted bro’s aortic blocked valve was noticed in time. We all are. We need him here. He still has so much love to give 🙂

Maryanne Pope is the author of “A Widow’s Awakening.” She also writes screenplays, playscripts & blogs. Maryanne is the CEO of Pink Gazelle Productions and Co-Founder of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund. To receive her blog, “Weekly Words of Wisdom,” please subscribe here. And be sure to visit our PinkGazelleCards Etsy shop.