A Few (Hopefully Not) Final Thoughts

In 11 days, 13 hours and 42 minutes from the moment that I write these words, I am scheduled to undergo an 8-hour operation to repair my heart. During that time my heart will stop beating, my lungs will stop breathing and my life will hinge on the functioning of sophisticated machinery and the talent of fallible humans. In a very real sense, my survival will be likely but within some meaningful measure of doubt for the full-span of an average work day.

This is my last post, my last considered public statement, before the procedure, and honestly I don’t know what I want to say. I only know that I want to say _something_ to go out with a meaningful thought, something with weight and girth and heft to it as a substantive idea.

I realize that’s my ego taking over, and that what I want to use this internet space for today is probably far removed from what you have any interest in reading. The problem is that impending surgery doesn’t actually make an individual any more deep, insightful or remotely worth listening to than they were when they weren’t scheduled to be opened up like a strip-mall Starbucks. So, I respect the choice you make to not follow down this twisting road of thought with me to what will most likely be a disappointing conclusion, and ultimately meaningless resolution when I likely emerge happy and healthy in the fall.

For the rest of you, let’s just see where this goes. What I want to say is this...

I’m really f*cking scared.

I had a dream not so long ago in which I was wheeled into surgery. This was one of those really disturbing dreams where my brain didn’t clue me in to the fact that I was dreaming. There were no fish floating past the doctor’s head. The nurse wasn’t my eighth grade Phys. Ed. teacher. The surgical lights didn’t shine on a disco ball. It was just very believable.

As the dream wandered toward its end, the anesthetist finally leaned over me and put a mask over my face. I breathed once more and then everything went black. And stayed there, and I remember clearly wondering whether I was going to wake up at all. Ever. When I did wake up, for real, I just laid there and absorbed that feeling. I wasn’t really frightened--that would come later and slowly like the changing of a season--I was just synthesizing this dark feeling of true mortality and the lingering sense of what my own death might feel like. After a while—not that long actually—I drifted back off to sleep and did not dream again.

It stayed with me, though, and out of nowhere that feeling of just ending will pop into my head, because that moment where the mask goes on or the meds get juiced into the IV or whatever it is that anesthesiologists actually do to make you not feel the knife in the chest and the saws on bone, that moment is coming hard and fast. There will be a final breath and hope will hinge on the idea that my whole system will reboot with the hardware upgrade, and my most vital organs will start their second life on the other side.

Any surgery is scary, but I feel like it would be easier to embrace the idea of some kind of spleen removal or appendectomy because the whole time those trusty lungs and heart would be rocking their groove. I’ve had these things kicking around in my chest, keeping me alive every single second basically since Haldeman and Erlichman fell on their sword for poor doomed Nixon. A week from Monday, my heart will not beat.

Mind: blown.

Every time I think of it, everything else seems achingly small by comparison, and the fear—I mean gen-u-ine terror—drops a proto-star into my lower intestines. Have you ever been almost dizzy from fear? Because I have been, a half dozen times this week already. I don’t think I’ve shown it to anyone—odd that my confidant on the matter is a host of a few thousand—and I’ve gone about the busy duty of fixing dinner, managing the creation of articles and playing 13 hours of Assassin’s Creed II as though this were the most ordinary kind of thing.

Because, they tell me it is. Ordinary, that is. They tell me that this is almost routine. They tell me that I should plan for a recovery and then get back to my ordinary life. They tell me not to worry. I could sooner give birth to a litter of pug puppies.

Meanwhile I have to dance around genuine preparations for the possibility that I’ll be dead by a week from Tuesday.

… and I can’t write the rest of that paragraph. That sentence up there feels too much like gunning the car, Thelma-and-Louise-style, toward an apocalyptic mental cliff. I do the things I have to do in disguise. "Might as well brush up the old will," I say, as though I’d just casually thought of it alongside the need to clean the garage and change the oil. Better just make a note of all the bills that have to be paid, you know just in case next month I forget that AT&T is going to want their monthly C-note.

It’s self-deception and avoidance of the first degree, and I just hope I can keep it up right into my 5:00 am ride to the hospital. Let me just get close before I let my emotional seaside cliff go crashing into the deep. Let me get in the same building with people who are legally obliged and permitted to give me some primo-choice narcotics.

Let me go into that sleep of my nightmares well and truly altered. What comes Monday night or Tuesday or in August, the slow pain and crushing exhaustion of recovery will be for some other tomorrow to deal with. I can’t spare thoughts that far ahead yet.

Here’s the thing. All of those paragraphs up there. I think now that I needed all that to preface this next thought, because none of that is what I really want to say. I say all that so that you know this next thing is all the way, full-on considered.

After it all, thirty-eight years as a boy, a man, a father, a husband, a nerd, a jock, a peon, a boss, an irresponsible failure, a proud success, a writer, a hack, a fraud, a liar, an honest man. In the wake of it all, looking back, I find that I regret nothing. There was nothing I could have done to stop my heart from degrading or to stop my aorta from bulging, and all the other things I did led me to this place and this life that I genuinely don’t want to give up. Not by a long shot.

I’ve been ridiculously lucky time and again. I’ve lived in a world where “it’s all going to work out, somehow” was always (always!) true. I never failed to find my way to the things that I need, and usually along the way managed to find a path to the things I wanted too. It’s not a complex or big-ticket life, but it’s mine and there’s nothing on the grand scale that I would have changed, because that path leads to this place and this place is mine.

So that’s it, I guess. I assume I’ll be back to talking about iPads and gaming with a broken sternum in a few months. If you’re putting down money, odds are pretty good that this post will just be a whole bunch of maudlin theater in a few weeks. But this, this empty page waiting for words, is where I can say things I can’t say out loud.

Thank you.

Comments

Best of luck to you, Sean. I'll be directing abundant thoughts/prayers/good vibes to you and your family.

Best of luck, Sean. We're all pulling for you.

No regrets? Not even the fact that you have never had dinner with Salma Hayek?

Good luck and thank goodness for science.

Good luck, Elysium. I eagerly await the opportunity to (facetiously) tease you about your maudlin moments.

In an Internet full of people spitting rage about changes to their favorite game or imagined slights from people they don't even know, your thoughtfulness and introspection is a welcome change. Doesn't matter if you're talking about games or your own mortality; you touch people with what you write, and I've been lucky to get to read it. I'm very much looking forward to many more years of reading and hearing what you have to say. Be well, sir.

Best of luck Sean. Thanks (as always) for an insightful article. Looking forward to many more once you've recovered.

You and your family are in my thought and prayers.

See ya on the other side man.

Good luck, Sean. We'll all be thinking of you and, for those who believe, praying for you.

A healthy attitude will pull you through almost anything. From all your articles and podcasts, you have attitude in spades. You'll do fine.

Best of luck, Sean. My thoughts will be with you. On the plus side, you'll have an awesome scar like a Female Doggoin' pirate.

Best wishes, hopes and prayers from our familiy to yours Elysium.

Go forth and conquer. You'll handle this beautifully, and be back providing multi-syllabic irony for all your friends before you know it.

So when they hook you up to the post-op IV drip of Corona, how will they add the lime?

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

There is a side of this I fear you haven't considered Sean. You could come out of anesthesia and through the groggy stupor realize that you seem to be alone. Fear and confusion crash into your brain as you realize that the hospital is quiet, no nurses, no doctors, no beeps. As you pull your iPod from your bedside table you realize that is in fact 28 days later. You are very much alive...as for the rest of us...well the rage virus took care of that. Best of luck with the zombie apocalypse!

Seriously though, best wishes for a speedy recovery. The folks to do these procedures are amazing people, they'll make sure you're patched up and you'll be gaming again before you know it.

I look forward to hearing from you in a couple of weeks!

Good luck, Elysium. We'll be waiting for your return.

Mind blown, indeed.

I'm speechless. The only thing that comes to mind is that I can't wait to hear you on the podcast again. And if this doesn't merit a podcast dedicated to MMOs, I don't know what does...

Best wishes and a good recovery, keep us posted with news when you finish the procedure.

I see the true point of this article. Its not an admittance of mortality, but one of life. Congratulations Sean, your litter of pugs will be just fine. Raise them well.

Wow. I thought gall bladder surgery was rough.

God be with you, sir.

Sean, your writing is what pulled me into this site in the first place, and every time I hear your voice on the Conference Call it brightens my day. Best wishes for a happy and healthy recovery.

Please accept my best wishes for you and your loved ones.

My wife recently had to go through an unexpected (and very painfully sudden) Gall Bladder removal surgery. We can appreciate at least a little bit of what you must be going through.

God bless.

I hope all goes well for you Sean.

Any sort of invasive surgery is certainly cause for some alarm. I went in for a delicate procedure on my spinal cord at the beginning of this year (post-surgery detailed here). While mine wasn't at the intentionally heart-stopping level, I did have to contend with some severe risks including complete paralysis from the chest down, or death -- and as my procedure was relatively rare (a few hundred done, EVER), these risks were very real. The best advice I can offer is this:

Don't Panic.

Seriously. Your doctors know what they're doing, and they're very good at what they need to do. Heart surgery, while very scary, is successfully done every day, all around the world. I'm definitely not trying to discount your concerns in any way, and I know that my advice is nearly impossible to follow, but that's where it is. No amount of worry can change the outcome. It'll all be over before you know it.

My second piece of advice is to plan ahead now, and get yourself set up with a bunch of games to play as you recover afterward.

Our thoughts will be with you and your family Sean.
Thank you for sharing. I'm sure that as you recover what you have written will continue to help others as they face similar challenges.

Thanks for writing a touching and personal piece. Best wishes.

In solidarity with the original bearded S(ea|haw)n, I promise not to shave for the next 11 days, 13 hours and 42 minutes or so. Probably much longer.

Best wishes. Look forward to hearing you again on the Conference Call. (Don't tell the others, but you're my favorite.)

Sean,

I've had the pleasure of meeting you in person at two of the Los Angeles E3 slap n tickles. Needless to say, my thoughts are with you and your family.

I have every confidence in the world that you'll have a short recovery and an impressive scar.

Think lots of positive thoughts and take pictures.

I look forward to a future E3 here in Los Angeles where the gang can all chip in and get you into a mud wrestling pit.

Take care,

Mark

Best wishes to you and your family.

I'm looking forward to reading your next article in a few weeks about the hot, frisky nurses assigned to you.

Wish you the best !

Wow.
Wish there was something I could say.
Will be watching for the next article in a few weeks, because, while this one is historic, the next one is going to feel so goddamn good to read.

I hope that if you get nothing else from reading this thread it's the realization that you're not alone. We're here, we hear what you say, and it matters a great deal.

I believe everything is going to be fine. Just remember to hug that pillow when you try to sit or turn over, and to do what the doctors say. Be patient with yourself; this will be a very long six weeks ahead. According to my grand-monster-in-law, it was longer than the last six weeks of her pregnancies and Elysia can tell you how long those go.

I'm sending good thoughts in every shape and kind I can think of to you and your family, and if there's anything corporeal I can do I hope you guys will let me know.

Best of luck with the operation and your future recovery, Sean.