My Mulligan

Definition of Mulligan: a free shot sometimes given a golfer in informal play when the previous shot was poorly played

Today was a banner day.  It started off a tad grumpy, with sister-in-law Robin and me hopping in the car at the ungodly hour of 6:15am to make our way to Seattle.  But our drive-thru coffees were delightful, traffic was smooth and we were at the University of Washington Medical Center by 7am to have a quick X-ray and then meet Scot at Dr. Mulligan’s office for my official post-op meeting.  Dr. Mulligan is my surgeon, whom I have only met once before (well, when I was conscious) and the reverence with which he’s treated by colleagues and staff is unparalleled.

It was a pretty quick meeting, maybe 15-20 minutes but it was huge.  Among other things: We FINALLY clarified how he opened me up!  He used a clamshell incision to cut the skin under the breast, from armpit to armpit (this is where he took care to avoid any cosmetic implications – i.e. my boobs still look boobish).  Then, under that but about 2 inches higher, he laterally cut the muscle above the fifth rib.  Then there was a transverse cut of the sternum (whether or not my sternum was broken has been a bone of contention.  Ha!) and I was opened up.  Dr. Mulligan will often do transplants without breaking the sternum but because of the severity of my Pulmonary Hypertension, he knew I’d need the heart and lung bypass machine during the surgery and that warrants this kind of cut.  It’ll take a year, he said, for the tightness in my chest to go away – the muscle has to scar up then stretch back out – and because of the sternum break, I have to be pretty careful with what I do with my arms for these first three months.  But on the good side, the restriction on driving is mostly to do with me being able to react suddenly and not being on too much pain management (Oxycodone) which means I don’t have to wait until mid-March to tool around in my new car.

But what made this meeting so extraordinary was how pleased and almost surprised he was at how I’m doing.  Scot did a phenomenal job of writing about the trials I went through those first few weeks, about the complications that kept cropping up and the difficulty my team of doctors had at diagnosing the problems – but he definitely sugarcoated some of the truly terrifying moments and that the doctors were often at a loss as to what was going on with my lungs and that things just didn’t look good.  Based on how those first few weeks went, Dr. Mulligan said today that he expected that my lungs would’ve settled into “sub-optimal performance” – I assume that to be a state where I was functional but the lungs would never be working at their capacity and that they’d be a higher risk for both acute and chronic rejection and infection.  However, I am doing tip top – he can’t see anything wrong with them and even today’s x-ray looks better than the one from 5 days ago and shows no sign of that fluid buildup in my left lung.  My heart has already remodeled itself and is looking great. 

Throughout my 41-day hospital stay, there were seemingly dozens of medical professionals that became invested in my progress (or lack of) and when I was finally conscious and aware, I had doctors and nurses and specialists that I didn’t recognize come into my room with such happy and tender looks and explain that they were there in the beginning.  “You’ve turned a corner!” was the phrase that everyone used and I heard “This is why I do this” from many of them as well.  It was strange, at first, to be pretty intimately involved in a one-sided relationship: they had connected with me but I didn’t even recognize many of them.  But as these incredible and dedicated people came to see me during the last couple weeks of my hospital stay, I started to see what a big deal my recovery was and though I wish I could take credit for it, I think my comeback has way more to do with a raw and basic instinct to survive rather than a thoughtful and deliberate choice to persevere.  

It felt hollow, in a way, to shake Dr. Mulligan’s hand and merely say “thank you.”  There should be a word for this kind of thanks, for a life-saving thanks, for a gratitude at being alive because this man chose to be a lung surgeon many years ago, for his self-assuredness and confidence in his choices before, during and after the surgery, for the incredible team he’s assembled.  Luckily for me and my need to express my happiness (and maybe a little uncomfortable for him), my attending surgeon, Jamil, was also in the room for this meeting so I got to give him a big hug and I’m certain he was impressed with how well I popped up from the hospital bed and walked over…that’s a long way from where I was just 10 days ago!

6 ½ years ago, I was diagnosed with a rare, progressive and incurable disease.  And now, after a far more rare surgery, I have been given a mulligan in this life and for that do-over, I am unspeakably grateful.