To start telling this story, today’s post title is a quote from the musical Hamilton.
Who lives, on the day I’m writing this?
- I do, against all odds and even though a team of doctors at the Mayo Clinic essentially killed me* on September 21 in order to repair my heart before they brought me back to life.
- Mel Brooks, thank goodness, even though he is 90 years old (and whom I’ll be seeing today in person in Boston).
- Approximately 7.5 billion people, according to this link.
Who dies, on the day I’m writing this?
- Kevin Meaney, suddenly at age 60, who was one of my and my son’s favorite comedians.
- 151,600 people, according to this link.
Who tells your story?
I’ll tell you who tells my story — it’s me, through this blog. Perhaps because my story has included so many doctors and medical institutions from the moment I was born, it’s VERY important to me to be the expert of my own experience — the primary teller of my own story. Of course, I can’t control how others will tell my story after I die, but to quote Kevin Meaney about that, “I don’t care.”
Here’s how I photographically choose to tell my story of October 21, 2016, when I went to one hospital for cardiac rehab and then to another hospital to get blood work to prepare for ANOTHER surgical procedure on November 2 and also to drop in on my amazing cardiologist Dr. Deeb Salem:
And because we do need help from others to tell our stories, I want to thank my friend Carol, who is such a wonderful woman, for capturing the story of those last four photos.
Here’s the last photo that I took yesterday, to tell my story:
Now, how would you tell a story in a comment, below?
I’ll end today’s story with live gratitude to all those living and dead who helped me create this post and to you — of course! — no matter how you tell your story.
* I’m glad you lived to read this part of my story from the Mayo Clinic surgeon’s report on September 21: “The aorta was occluded, and 800 cc of cold blood cardioplegia was infused into the aortic root obtaining satisfactory asystolic arrest.” Doesn’t that sound like they satisfactorily killed me?