Heart to Heart

Feb 18, 2024

I’ve been thinking about hearts a lot lately. Of course, Valentine’s Day puts hearts in full view—on the end cap of grocery store aisles and in the pop-up ads next to the Internet headlines.

February is also Heart Month, reminding us to become more aware of those remarkable pumps that keep us breathing so we can respect them a little more and take care of them a whole lot better.

But I’m also thinking about hearts because my husband had heart surgery last month—38 days ago, to be exact. It was planned—we knew he needed a mitral valve repair and, thanks to an angiogram a week before the surgery, two bypasses. As it turns out, a second valve also needed repair once the surgeon and his team saw the heart up close and personal, so Bob had a double-double. I tell him he takes after Caitlin Clark that way.

Thankfully—more than words can express—the surgery was a slam dunk.

We headed to the hospital at 5 that morning on clear roads, grateful that the surgery was sandwiched between the blizzard we’d had two days before and the mega blizzard that was on its way.

“You’ve got your eye drops?” I said, keeping my eyes on the road.

“Yes,” he said.

“And your dentures?”

“Yes.”

“Any concerns?” I said.

“No, not really. How about you?”

I shook my head.

After 22 years of marriage, we make a pretty good team. We’d met with the surgeon twice. And Bob had done everything required pre-surgically. In fact, he’d been surprisingly compliant for someone who has been skeptical—well, more like overtly critical—of medicine for most of his life. He took the baby aspirin. Showered with the special soap. Asked every question and reviewed the answers. We knew what the risks were, and the benefits.

The truth is, I only asked him about his eye drops and dentures for small talk, since no one is more thorough in packing a bag than Bob.

We arrived at the hospital right on time, at 5:30 a.m. At 7:30, the team wheeled him into surgery. Over several hours, they dismantled him and put him back together. And at 9:30 p.m., the cardiac ICU nurse and nursing students sorted out the web of tubes and wires monitoring his every move and helped him sit up on the edge of the bed.

Sixteen hours. A whole new life.

By that time, it had begun snowing—the start of a storm that would dump two feet of snow, snarl traffic, and make it impossible for me to get home until Sunday afternoon. I stayed in Bob’s room with him for three days and three nights, sleeping on a pull-out couch contraption by a floor-to-ceiling window that leaked cold air until Bob suggested I stuff extra pillows between the couch and the glass.

Even on meds and monitors, he still wanted me to be comfortable, and he had a solution to make it happen. That’s Bob.

You know what? I kind of miss those three days.

I always wondered what it would be like when we got older and needed to give each other special care. And there we were, looking that stage of life square in the eye. I insisted he eat, spoonfeeding him if I needed to (which I did). I nagged him to do his breathing exercises, cleaned his dentures, cornered a nurse who didn’t seem to get that Bob was IN PAIN and needed attention, and adjusted the pillows, the blankets, the incline of his bed.

And Bob, wrapped in blankets and tethered to IVs, took care of me. He reminded me to go get some food before the cafeteria closed. Made sure I put on an extra sweatshirt and wore his heavy gloves when I ventured out in the minus-40-degree wind chill to get a pillow from the back seat of our car. Worried about the nurses’ visits in the middle of the night that interrupted my sleep.

“It’s okay,” I told him. “I get to be here with you.”

This is why I’ve been thinking a lot about hearts lately.

It’s all related, those Valentine’s hearts and flowers, romantic love, the miraculous pump that beats blood through our body, the intimacy with another human being that transcends Frankenstein wires and urinals and crushed-up Tylenol in applesauce.

So, when Bob and I exchanged Valentine’s cards the other day, we sat at our kitchen counter before breakfast. He has put on 10 of the 15 pounds he lost in the hospital. He’s driving himself to his cardiac rehab sessions. And he trimmed a tree the other day.

I could tell he wasn’t sure if he should tell me about that one.

We’d addressed the Valentine’s envelopes the way we always do. My card for him said “Husband,” and his for me said “Wife.”

We opened our cards and read them, and I started to cry, as usual. Then I said to him, “You know what? I spent a lot of my life praying for the relationship we have. I didn’t know if I’d ever find it. And I don’t want to ever take it for granted.”

He grinned, gave me a kiss, and hugged me close, heart to heart.

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