NOVEMER 12, 2024 – Life for me has been a huge connect-the-dots project. I’m not sure what the final figure will be once all the dots are connected, but if I were to guess—which I’m about to do—I’d say the final figure will be full of flashbacks, intersections, coincidences, circular side-trips and the inevitable open-ended tangents. One reward of aging is seeing how the ostensibly random dots earlier in life now line up with subsequent dots to produce recognizable constellations.
One subset of dots from eons ago have recently connected to a whole new and wholly unanticipated set of dots.
The year was 1979 (C.E.)—mid-February. Technically, I was in law school, but my heart (so to speak, as will soon appear as a pun) wasn’t in it. Most of my focus and daily efforts were trained on competitive running and x-c skiing. I was at the height of my imaginary career as a “contender,” which meant that each day, no matter how cold, snowy and blustery, I’d don my workout clothes, grab my skis and poles, then run at breakneck speed from my Grand Ave. (St. Paul) apartment to the Town & Country Golf Course some three miles away. Part of my “balance training” was to fly down sidewalks covered with ice and rutted snow without ever crashing. At Town & Country I’d climb over the fence, then switch from my running shoes to my ski boots (already attached to my skis) and ski—hard—for an hour. I’d then switch back to running mode, scale the fence again, and high-tail it back to my apartment.
Although competitive x-c skiing had been a recognizable sport back in New England, where I’d attended high school and college, “skinny-skiing” in the Upper Midwest was just beginning to catch on. Its infancy placed me at a temporary advantage competitively. I could enter local races and finish in the top 10 or so out of a typical field of 100 competitors.
This was the case in the King Boreas X-C Ski Race sponsored by the St. Paul Winter Carnival. It was a mass start on Lake Phalen, and with the rigor and vigor of a 24-year-old intent on venting his displeasure with law school, I flew with the tailwind. I finished fifth.
I paid a heavy price, as it turned out. The day before I’d woken up with a bad sore throat, which soon followed with other typical cold and flu symptoms. But I’d been training hard, and I was hellbent on skiing a good race on that snowy Saturday afternoon.
The next day I was in bad shape. And the next, and the day after that. On the third day, I experienced a case of the hives. On the fourth day, I went to the doctor. Strep throat was the diagnosis and an antibiotic, the prescriptive treatment.
Before sending me on my way, however, the doctor recommended that I have my heart checked out. He was concerned that my ailment might have affected the most important organ of my running/skiing career—something about the “possibility of rheumatic fever,” as I recall.
At the time I happened to be working part-time in the supply section of St. Joseph’s Hospital at the north end of downtown St. Paul. My job was to fill orders that departments throughout the establishment sent to our group. We flunkies (fellow law students) would then scurry around among the rows of metal shelving, pull stuff off the shelves, organize it by order, then load the fulfilled orders onto a large cart and distribute them throughout the hospital.
Naturally, I became familiar with each department; its location and personnel. I knew where “Cardiology” was and figured I’d just drop in and schedule an appointment. Trust me, this is not how one goes about scheduling such an appointment in the modern era. A day or two later, I appeared for my first ever encounter with a cardiologist.
He was a white-haired gentleman with unruly eyebrows, large and contorted mouth lines and an otherwise unappealing countenance. He wore shabby shoes, a typical white lab coat and the standard stethoscope around his neck. His standout features, however, were his outsized girth and the cigarette that waggled between his lips when he talked. And no, I am not making this up.
He gave the command for an assistant to run a resting EKG on me, which the doctor then reviewed while I sat across from him in the exam room. I remember visually monitoring the lengthy ash on his cigarette, as he held it between fingers of the same hand he used to hold one end of the EKG readout.
“You’ve got an irregular heartbeat,” he said. Informed by our brief conversation before the test that I was a competitive runner/skier, he then delivered the knockout blow: “No more competitions for you.” It was at about this point in the proceedings when ironically, a rushed voice could be heard over the hospital intercom, “Code blue! Code blue!” I knew what that meant, and it wasn’t a good thing from the standpoint of someone’s heart.
My heart—exactly!—sank, as “Code Blue!” seemed to amplify Dr. Killjoy’s admonition. Competition and training were my whole life. I’d even parted ways with my girlfriend at the time so that I could devote my selfish self entirely to running and skiing. My friends in law school could (and did) say I’d even parted ways with serious academic effort so that I could channel my whole life into pounding the pavement and melting the ski track. If the doctor was going to deprive me of what gave my life meaning, what, then was the meaning of my life?
I left the appointment feeling crushed and crestfallen. On the way back to my apartment, I pondered the fact that the doctor telling me to drop out of competitive running and skiing was overweight and a smoker, to boot. Who did he think he was telling me that I had a heart defect?!
By the time I crossed the threshold of my split-basement studio apartment, I resolved to defy the cardiologist and possibly fate. I’d don my running Nikes and running outfit and go for a 10-mile run. Moreover, I’d run the distance on the balls of my feet—all the way down Summit Avenue to River Road along the east side of the Mississippi, across the Lake Street Bridge, down the River Road on the west side of the river, across the Ford Bridge, then back north to Summit and up Summit back to my apartment. I’d do it in under an hour—sub-six-minute miles . . . to hell with ice, snow and temps in the low teens Fahrenheit.
Out of this mad dash only two outcomes were possible: 1. I’d die of heart-failure (I figured), which would be just fine, since what was the point of living if I couldn’t run and ski all-out? or 2. I’d prove that the overweight smoking cardiologist was dead wrong—or at more appropriately, just plain wrong—in his assessment of my so-called “heart defect.” This, obviously, would be the preferred outcome, and being in bonus territory, I’d be able to add 10 (very intense) miles to my workout log.
I followed through on my ridiculously irresponsible extreme response. I survived—and averaged just under 5:50.00 per mile. On the front steps of my ancient apartment building, I emulated “Rocky Balboa” on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Fast forward to last week. Our oldest son was exhibiting classic signs of heart failure. Testing confirmed what his outward symptoms had already signaled. I joined him for his first appointment with a cardiologist. After the assistant summoned Cory (and allowed me to tag along) to check his vitals and cover preliminary questions, we waited for the cardiologist to appear. During this lull I recalled silently my run-in with the cardiologist 46 years before, who had to have been 60 then and quite dead by now. I knew a lot had changed since 1978—most notably, smoking among cardiologists, at least while on duty. I was grateful that it was no longer yesteryear.
Soon we heard a gentle knock on the door. “Yes,” I said. In walked the doctor. She cut an image in sharp contrast to “Dr. 1978.” She certainly wasn’t a smoker or overweight. Moreover, she was bright, pleasant, knowledgeable, and projected an attitude of genuine care for her patient. Her communication style was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Dr. McGruff. After a thorough exam, the good doctor set in motion the complex medical process by which Cory will receive the best care that can be granted by 21st century medicine.
If this current cardiology encounter connected some now faint dots in my past to well-defined dots in the present, another set of connections were to be made. When the cardiologist asked Cory if he knew his genetic history, he answered, “No, I’m adopted.”
“Where from?” she asked.
“Korea,” he said.
“So was I.” And as it turned out, she explained, through the same adoption agency and in the same year. Moreover, she had two Korean-born adoptive brothers, one of whom is our younger son’s age and a “regular” back in summer “Korean Culture Camp,” as were Cory and Byron.
“Beat all that, Dr. 1978 McGruff!” I wanted to say.
As far as I was concerned, this was certainly no MAGA moment. Some things—many things—in life today have vastly improved since 1978.
Stay tuned for the next installment of the current medical saga, which also takes me back to another subset of dots in my life’s journey—from eight years ago—that connect very closely with today’s dots, with an intermediate intersection three years ago. (Cont.)
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
