God bless you.
For more than 65 years, the heart my mama and daddy teamed up to give me at
birth has kept me alive with millions and millions of beats pumping oxygenated blood
throughout my growing body in all kinds of weather and through good times and bad
times.
For more than 65 years, my heart has been my best friend and the very soul of me.
For more than 65 years, my heart has given charitably with the most generous
hearts in the world.
For more than 65 years, my heart has loved with the best, sung songs with the best,
written poems with the best, laughed and cried with the best, enjoyed music with the best,
written and preached sermons with the best, prayed to and praised God with the best.
For more than 65 years, my heart has defined me, inspired the best in me and
driven me to be the best that I can be.
For more than 65 years, my heart has been my best counselor and confidant. Some
of my greatest conversations have been with my heart and some of my best advice has
come from my heart.
My heart won the heart of my high school sweetheart, Joyce, and we have been
happily married for more than 40 years after our seven-year courtship.
Now, here I am once more a patient in the University of Chicago Hospital praying
to God and trying to get His doctors to use all their God-given know-how to help save my
poor heart that has grown weaker and appears to be on its last legs.
Unless the Lord heals me outright or through UCMC's academy of celebrated
physicians, I may have to say farewell to my heart in the next few months and have it
replaced by a mechanical, turbo-power heart pump, which UCMC Chief Cardiac
Surgeon Dr. Valluvan Jeevanandam says is highly advanced, greatly-efficient, whisper-
quiet, silky smooth and tremendously durable.
Yes, I still have hope that God will heal and salvage this heart. At least, that has
been my prayer since I started this blog 10 months and 44 entries ago. At the same
time, I have been trying to do my best and trust God for the rest.
Wednesday night (March 12, 2009), I was admitted here again for new treatment
because, while my brain cancer is benign and my prostate cancer is in remission through
radiation treatment, my end-stage congestive heart failure has not progressed as well.
Two weeks ago, shortness of breath and fatigue again began to plague me, slow
me down, steal my sleep, suppress my joy and threaten my life. So to stay ahead of
things and not take anything for granted, I returned here to have the likes of Dr.
Jeevanandam, Dr. Allen Anderson, Dr. Matthew Sorentino, Dr. Savitra Fedson, Dr.
Kathy Wright, Dr. Alexandria Dunetriseu, Dr. David Miller, Dr. Jonathan Paul, Dr.
Sandeep Nathan, Dr. Neal Ray, Dr. Stuart Chen, Nurses Joly Jose, Cora Palmer, Cora
Tharps-Wilson, Melanira Ortez, Williams, Florita Lanier and Antonija Novakovich lend
their respective collective expertise in helping me resolve these serious health issues.
Thus, my weekend is being spent here going through a battery of tests to give
doctors an update of my heart's health and what can be done to relieve me of the fatigue
and shortness of breath. If some changes in my medication can do the trick, we will
explore that option. Otherwise, since my cancers eliminated me from heart transplant
candidacy last year, I may have no other choice for the pump since doctors here feel
my natural heart is too defective, too enlarged and too weak for something like a mitral
valve repair or replacement to do it much long-term good.
When I thought of the prospect of saying goodbye to my heart, I broke down and
cried in my hospital room just as most of you would if you were faced with the same
situation.
In fact, pause with me for a moment and just imagine yourself having to say
goodbye to your heart because it has given out after years of hard work and suffering.
For me, years of high blood pressure, emotional toils, trials and tribulations, burdens and
sorrows have placed tremendous pressure upon my heart because I have always been
a man of supreme passion and compassion. My greatest works I have always
endeavored to do with all my heart and from the very bottom of my heart.
A lot of people work through their minds, their muscle, their money and other
material resources. I have moved in cadence to the beat of my heart. In other words, if my
heart isn't in something, never expect my best.
So I ask you again Sisters and Brothers, could you really ever say "goodbye" to
your heart and not feel the greatest of loss?
Could you say "Goodbye" to your heart and not feel any pain? If your answer is "No,"
then you know where I'm coming from.
The Holy Bible says "from the heart flows the issues of life." The Holy Bible also
says that if confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus and believe with our HEARTS that
God raised Him from the dead, we shall be saved. King David, the shepherd sovereign
and sweet singer of song, was revered as "a man after God's own heart."
God bless you.
