I'm Not Dead... Yet! (24 page)

I called our lawyer to make sure my will was up to date, checked in with my life insurance agent (guess I wasn’t eligible for that reduced rate after all), and called my dear friend and accountant Ed Lieberman. If I ended up in that 4 percent, I wanted Karla and our baby Lyric’s future to be taken care of to the best of my posthumous ability. Later, I learned most of that 4 percent came from people who were very old and/or very sick and some were ‘cathed’ moments into a massive heart attack. So the extremely ill patients increase the dire odds. (If you were a gambler in Vegas, this would be good info. Bet on me living.)

The heart cath is an invasive procedure where a very long, narrow tube-like camera (on the tip of a catheter) is guided through an artery in either your arm or your leg (this first time, it was inserted through the femoral artery in my groin) and is gently pushed and channeled all the way into the heart. In my case radioactive iodine was flushed

through the catheter so they could also see my arterial blood flow using a fluoroscope. I became hot, itchy, and nauseous as possible without vomiting.

I was
not
having an allergic reaction to the iodine, these feelings were considered
normal
.

(Before my third open-heart surgery I realized if I asked them to administer the iodine slowly, it didn’t make me sick. In 2010, when I had my last surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, I asked about it and they said they used an automated slow release system.)

The anesthesiologist had me happily sedated, yet alert and able to watch the video monitor and see the pictures, too. One of the reasons the Heart Cath Doctor wants you to be awake is he may need you to help by moving one way or another; coughing, etc. As a person in the film business, the pictures and images were absolutely stunning. My only problem: I’m a purist, despise video, and wished it had the magic of film. This, of course, is absurd, but I was in a state of chemically induced euphoria.

One sensation
was
very unusual—when the probe touched my heart, my heart
fluttered
. It felt like a tickle, and for a moment it took my breath away. Other than that, the heart catheterization was a breeze.

My advice: keep thinking positive thoughts, like how brilliant it is that they can do all this in order to save your life, rather than being consumed by fear. That attitude has always been my ‘go-to’ approach.

The discomfort for me came
after the heart catheterization. To stop the bleeding from the incision in the artery at my groin, an orderly (where was Jerry Lewis when I needed him?) stood over me using his body weight to keep steady pressure on a 20 pound sand bag placed on my bandaged wound/groin. I wasn’t allowed to move for six hours; not even raise my head, for fear of exerting my core muscles, popping the artery open, and ‘bleeding out.‘ No big deal, just one problem: all of the iodine contrast dye injected during the procedure was now sitting impatiently in my bladder waiting to be relieved. In other words, I had to pee like a madman.

It would require me to pee while lying flat, in front of a...
stranger
.

This was a dilemma.

It just so happens, I’m a very private person—a bit of a hermit, a recluse. (Exaggerate everything that comes to mind and you’ll come close to who I really am.)

And no matter how hard I tried, I could not pee. ‘Sanctuary!’ What to do? My bladder was getting more bloated and the sensation of immense pressure was becoming overwhelmingly uncomfortable. Not pain, just basic human discomfort we all can identify with. You may want to

practice urinating from this position before you come face-to-face with the bladder troll. (I try and visualize… sometimes that helps.)

Unfortunately, I
could not urinate
. Thus began my love-hate relationship with the
other
catheterization. For those who have not received the pamphlet, a Foley Catheter is a tube with a deflated balloon at the end. In a male patient it is inserted through the penis opening and ‘snakes’ its way into the bladder where the balloon

is inflated, keeping it in place. Does it hurt? Not really. But it’s no fun. Like when you were young, and the grown-ups think ‘all kids like clowns’ on their birthdays.

Clowns scared the living shit out of me. So in this situation, the clown arrives, scares the shit out of you, is inserted into your penis and there is momentary discomfort, and then the good part of the birthday: the present! You are immediately relieved of the urine through the tube into a bag, and lo and behold, the clown is your friend.