In August 2021 I woke from sleep and vomited several liters of blood. The next day NYU ER doctors diagnosed my situation as life-threatening. An operation to staunch the bleeding was my only option other than death. The staff wheeled me immediatly to the Operating Room. I was knocked out with Profopol. Michael Jackson had ODeed from a strong doses. I only drifted for hours in the white limbo. Upon coming to consciousness the nurse said, “The doctor will be right with you.”
He was young and read my condition from a chart.
“You have liver cancer, cirrohsis, Hep-C, and Diabetes. Your tumor is too large for an operation of chemo. It doesn’t look promising.”
“That’s alright, I’ve had a good life.” I had instantly constructed a short future in which I left New York to see out eternity with my family in Thailand accompanied by a large jar of morphine. THe next day their transplant team offered another path. The previous night’s surgery had stop the bleeding. Later radioglogy shrunk the tumor to a size allowing a potential transplant and I regularly attended alcohol and drug treatment as prescribed by the antional liver transplant control. Six months went by without my being putof the list. While the surgeon and radiologist were brilliant, the rest of the staff were neglient and after eight months and after a serious bout with ammonia poisoning I realized that NYU had no intention of replacing my liver. They were too Christian to forgive an old reprobate like me and mine.
In July I transferred to Cornell Weill. I had to undergo another six-month wait to clear the drug and alcohol ban, although the surgeon said that, “You’re not on the list, but you’re on the list.”
August became September into October into November and December. I lose weight and suffered hallucinations thankfully without too much pain. As much as I wanted to see my kids and wives, I was in no tcondition to survive a demi-circumnavigation of the globe. The Cornell-Weill liver transplant team had forbidden any travel farther than two hours from the hospital. My blood work worsened and my health deteriorated drastically. Cornell said I would be put on the transplant in January. My body was capable of waiting that long and even a little longer without any complications. As December 2022 came to an end, Iggy left for California. We hugged and said good-bye.
“I’ll be here when you get back.”
“You better be,” the leader of the Waif Movement and I had grown quite close during the last three years. We were as close to family as family can be. Blood isn’t everything.
I awoke alone the next day.
Charlotta and Shannon were up the Hudson. It was the holidays. Everyone had someplace to be except for me. My universe had shrunked to a bed in a fourth floor apartment wit a view of Lower Clinton Hill. The occasional roar of a motorcycle broken up the monotomy of traffic on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. I sorted through old photos of my many trips to Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America, gratified to have seen the world.
The phone rang.
Cornell. A nurse.
“Mr. Smith, can you come in?”
“Sure.” I thought it was for blood work. “Is noon good enough?”
“The earlier the better. We have a liver for you.”
A transplant.”
“Yes.”
The good news sank in fast.
“Take your time. The liver and heart are last on the list.” Her words made sense. A body couldn’t live long without a liver. It died instantly without a heart. “We’ll see you soon.”
I called Francis X, my life guard. He offered to drive me to the hospital. I packed a bag. I had been hospitalized several times in the last year and a half and packed accordingly my glasses, a journal from 1978, earphones, iPad, chargers, my blankie, and a few tee-shirts. Cornell kept the rooms cool. Thirty minutes later I was passenger in Francis’ old Saab. A sunny morning I rolled down the window. We crossed the Manhattan Bridge. The city all around us in its glory. Frances and I spoke not of life and death or the operation and thankfully nothing of the Christians’ God of Faith ever so clos to Christmas. I said, “I’m really surprised that they called me. I’m not even on the list, although they always said I was on the list.”
My blood type was amenible to all donors.
“You are an atheist and maybe everyone in front of you had gone away for Christmas. Gone farther than two hours.”
“You might right.” I thankeed the Godders for believing in Jesus and his birth as the child god.
Only an hour has passed since the phone call and wwe were only twenty odd minutes from the East Side hospital. Francis pulled into the emergency entrance as I had been instructed and I got of the car. I told Francis he didn’t need to come in, which would have meant paying a dear price for parking.
“I’ll call you when I know what’s what. Thanks. Really thanks.”
I shut the door and went to the ER’s admission desk. Everyone was maskeed against COVID. I was as wlll. They were waiting for me and swiftly process me and a masked orderly wheeled my stretcher into the elevator and we rode up to the transplant floor. Nursses dressed me in bare-ass johnny pajamas. The surgeon explained the ten-hour operation. I had no questions. The procedure was 95% successful, but there was a 5% chance of my ending up dead. The head nurse had me sign a waiver.
No worries, I’ve had a good life. Just three things. No God no DNR, adn no Oxys.” I hated the Sackler family for addicting millions of Americans to a crappy synthetic opiod and I wanted to live no matter what. AS for God I was comfortable with his non-existence.
“You’ll be not out by Propofol. The anaesteolgist is very good. HAve you eaten anything?”
“Nothing.”
“We’ll be coming for you in a couple hours. Just relax.”
That was no probelm and three hours later a nurse and orderly entered to transport me to the operating room. There were many people; doctors, nurses, technicians and orderlies. The equipment appeared new. Everyone was correectly attenive and appeared very professional. The anaesteolgist asked if I had any reactions to drugs. Everything was on my chart, but he ran down the list. I asked him the drug on choice.
“Propofol.”
“Good, I’ll be back shortly. You ready to go?”
“Yes.” I listened to ANARCHY IN THE UK and STREET FIGHTING MAN, sipped some water, and texted everyone in my world. My wives in Thailand, my family in Boston, and 2.6% of my friends and everyone around the world.
“It’s time,” announced the nurse.
I handed her my phone and nodded okay. THe doctors stood aside and the anaesteolgist hooked me up the the needle.
“Tell me when you do it. ” I was to see if I can count back to zero.”
“You got it.”He waved his finger down and I made it to a personal new best.
Seven.
White limbo>
No God.
No Gods.
Nothing just like always.
This eternity lasted forever until a dream emerged from the whiteness. I was on a large butcher’s block at London’s Smithfield Market. Butchers were slaughtering animals and my guts were scattered across the wood. I had no pain. No shock, but expected to get up and go to the 24/7 pub and have a bacon sandwich and a lager as was my friend David and my wont after working at the Cafe de Paris in the 1980s. The Londoner was nowhere in sight and the dream segued to consciousness.
The operation room.
I was in the stretcher. No blood in sight. I asked the nurse.
“When are we staring the operation?”
“It’s over and was a success. You have a new liver. It came from a woman forty years old and who weighed 300 pounds without any Hep C or cirrohsis.
A Yulemas miracle and I was wheeled to my recovery room. A single overlooking the East River. It was night. I was hooked up to more than a few machines and an IV drip connected to a bag of morphine. They had obeyed my request for no Oxys. I hadn’t done any drugs in over a year and a half. The nurse handed me the dosage control.
“The Propofol will be wearing off soo.”
“Will I feel pain?”
“Yes, just try and be slow with that.”
“I will.”
As soon as she was out of the room, I pressed the button twice and turned on the iPad. The Celtics were playing. I made it to the second quarter. All in all it had been a great day as Yulemas turned into Morphinemas nor forever, but at least to the dawn of tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow. I felt the scar. It was angry. A woman’s organ lay inside me. I called them Paula. They were in no condition to argue adn after another bump neither was I.
Yulemas was not the darkest day of the year, but the first day of the new light.
