BYPASS SURGERY
GENERATIONS OF STRONG and successful African American men and women can testify that faith in God and a solid understanding and knowledge of the matter at hand can conquer any fear and move any mountain. In matters of heart surgery, the more you understand in advance, the better. At the same time, on the surgical table, faith-whether faith in the Lord or faith, through knowledge, in the surgical procedure itself-can move mountains. Naturally, when it comes to having somebody cut you open to repair parts of your body that have never seLi the sun, you may not be up to hearing a lot about it in advance. In fact, the moment you learn your heart is in trouble is likely to be one of the toughest experiences you ever have to go through. It’s a moment when everything starts moving very fast, as your ordinary life comes to a screeching halt.
Trouble can come in a rush. Bertha Turner had been busy cooking her traditional Sunday dinner, looking forward to the gathering of children and grandchildren. It was the high point of her week. As always, she was doing it all herself, though her daughter and daughter-in-law asked every week if they could come over to help her. “Honey,” Bertha would always say, “when I can’t cook Sunday dinner without help from my children, well, that’s the time for me to check into the rest home.’ When she put it like that, the younger women just had to le: her have her way.
But that Sunday the same old pressure and tightness in he chest that she never talked about to anyone was back-so bac that she had to lie down. When her husband found her, he saic “Girl, something’s the matter for sure if you’re not in the kitche’: at 3:30 on a Sunday.” “Nothing’s the matter,” Bertha said, more worried about hir; than she was about herself. “Just that I feel a little tired and rr breathing’s not what it ought to be. Maybe, just to be safe, yc can drive me to the hospital for them to take a quick loo. Anyway, everything’s in the oven. No need to call the childre: We’ll be back before they get here.” Once they arrived in the emergency room, you know t. drill. The ER (emergency room) physician examined her, cali: in a cardiologist, and ordered blood work and an EKG (elect: cardiogram). All this was happening quickly, and by now BeL knew that she wouldn’t be home for her Sunday dinner. It die take long for the tests to clinch that. It was the cardiac catheterization that told the cardioloc Dr. Brenner, what he had to do. That test, a dye study of the he. showed that all the major blood vessels were blocked. Dr. Bren: showed the films to Mr. and Mrs. Turner. “What these pictures say to me:’ he told them, “is what you must suspect already. You need surgery, Mrs. Turner, and, though I wish this weren’t so, I can’t give you a lot of time to think about it. If we don’t do the surgery, you’re going to have a heart attack. That’s clear. That’s what you’ve been feeling-angina is the heart’s way of warning that it needs attention quickly. If you need to think about it, I can give you until tomorrow morning. All I can say is that there’s no doubt in my mind. Any heart doctor looking at these pictures would tell you the same thing I’m telling you.”
The Turners looked at the surgeon for a minute or two, unable to speak. Then Bertha broke the silence: “What are my chances of getting through the operation?” “Ninety-five percent, Mrs. Turner, if I want to be conservative:’Dr.Brenner replied. “But to tell you the truth, I’d put it closer to 98 percent.”
“Well, that’s good:’ Mr. Turner said. “Those are good odds.” But Mrs. Turner wanted time to think. “Odds are for horseraces,” she said. “If you don’t mind my asking, Dr. Brenner, could you tell me how many of these operations you’ve done and how they came out?” Dr. Brenner told her, and then he explained the complica-
tions that could arise-that is, he gave her a glimpse of what could go wrong and what could possibly put her in that frightening 2 to 5 percent. “You come back in the morning:’ she told the doctor, “and I’ll be ready to talk.”
But when Dr. Brenner left, she turned to her husband and said, “They’re not doing any heart surgery on me. I’m putting my life and heart in God’s hands only.” It was her daughter who finally persuaded her to have the surgery. “The Lord helps those who help themselves, Mama, and if you don’t let them do this operation, you’re not helping yourself.” When Dr. Brenner arrived in the morning, Mrs. Turner said. “Okay, then, you do what you have to do.” And her husband put his head down in relief.
“Tell you what,” Dr. Brenner said. “They’ll be here to get you ready in about an hour. If you’d like, I could come in just a little before that and you and I and your family could pray for you’ good recovery and my best skill. How about that?” That’s wha: they did an hour later. They made a circle and prayed to the Lore to take good care of Bertha and to guide the surgeon’s hand. Anc Bertha added a prayer that the Lord take care of her family if she: didn’t make it through the surgery.Before it was over, Dr. Brenner had pretty much remade the arterial pathway that fed Bertha’s heart-a coronary bypass times fiv(that is, five bypass grafts)-with no complications. Mrs. Turne was home, though not quite ready to cook, in five days. Lookir; ~ back a year later, during a checkup, she told Dr. Brenner tha: although she’d been scared to death, she was grateful to him fc a second chance at life. “It’s been better than the first;’ she said. “And I’ll tell you t.. truth, looking back-it wasn’t half as bad as I’d feared.” “You’d be surprised how many patients tell us that;’ I Brenner said.